"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lords. In two facing rows, averted from the landscape, condemned to an uneasy scrutiny of their mutual prosperity, they sit in leather chairs. They curve roundly from neck to groin. They are shaven to the raw, soberly clad, derby hatted, glossily booted. Always they smoke cigars, those strange, blunt cigars that are fatter at one end than at the other. Some (these I think are the very prosperous) ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... field which would have been selected by an ambitious captain upon which to gather laurels. So far as fame is concerned, the prospect—the promise in advance—was, "You may lose, but you cannot win." Yet Taylor, in his blunt, business-like view of things, seems never to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... ardent Braves sought her hand in marriage; but she was deaf to all their entreaties and protestations, and refused all their offers. Yet she did it with so much kindness, and said so many sweet words to blunt the severity of the refusal, that all her lovers became her friends, and each, with affectionate kindness, blended with the bold bearing of one who says what he knows he has courage to perform, promised that his love mellowed into ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... our lodgings this morning, and therefore I cannot have the pleasure to dine with you to-day," was the civil excuse I was preparing. Never was expectation more beside the mark. My "guess" was altogether wrong. "What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?" was the gentleman's blunt salutation. "What have you to propose, sir?" was my reply. "I am the superintendent," he said, "of a German Sunday-school in the upper part of the city, and I should like you to come and address the children this afternoon." I promised to go, and he to send ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... performed in France by Cousin. He had popularized the philosophers. Without the acute, electric perceptions of the great German or the industry and amiable vanities of that De Sevigne among philosophers, Cousin, he presented, by fierce dashes of his crayon, black, blunt, and bluff, to the hitherto ignorant British public, some phases of the great metaphysical bearings of the age upon Literature and Art, as developed in Teutonic poetry and prose. In a word, he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... recent distribution of a Christmas charity at Millbrook, Southampton, the Rev. A. C. Blunt stated that one of the recipients had nearly reached her 102nd year. She was born in Hampshire, and down to a very recent period had been ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the sweetness or brilliancy of such as are drawn from them by means of the bow or quill. But, notwithstanding it is represented so massive, I should rather suppose it to have been a quill, or piece of ivory in imitation of one, than a stick or blunt ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and, indeed, would never happen; so she told herself with a nervous little laugh. Harry gave her no opportunity of saying so to him, for you cannot reprove glances or discourage pressings of your hand in fashion so blunt. ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... often 5 meters long and 2 decimeters wide. The lower part of the older leaves stands up straight, while the upper half droops. The younger leaves are erect with only their tips bent down. The leaf spines are short, blunt, ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... Texan herd. There were no stock whips, no needless worrying of the animals in the excitement of sport. Any dog seizing a bullock by his tail or heels would have been called off and punished, and quietness and gentleness were the rule. The horses were ridden without whips, and with spurs so blunt that they could not hurt even a human skin, and were ruled by the voice and a slight pressure on the light snaffle bridle. This is the usual plan, even where, as in Colorado, the horses are bronchos, and inherit ineradicable vice. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... wish to see account-books. Few of them can read. They want to view the treasure itself. They know—you compel me to be blunt—that the accounts have been falsified. Your books show the spoil of Cartagena to amount to some ten million livres. The men know—and they are very skilled in these computations—that it exceeds the enormous ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... its visible polity, and its universal rule, and its especial prerogatives and powers and lessons, for its disciples. But, with a divine wisdom, and contrary to its human copyist, it has carefully guarded (if I may use the expression) against extending its revelations to any point which would blunt the keenness of human research or the activity of human toil. It has taken those matters for its field in which the human mind, left to itself, could not profitably exercise itself, or progress, if it would; it has confined its revelations ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Scots are long-headed, shrewd, careful, canny, active, persistent, but reserved and blunt, and without demonstrative enthusiasm. They have a physiognomy distinct from the rest of the Scottish people, and have a quick, sharp, rather angry accent. The local Scots dialect is broad, and rich in diminutives, and is noted for the use of e for o or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... different nature, with which Sir Terence must proceed to deal at once; but their gravity was completely outweighed in the adjutant's mind by this deplorable affair of Lieutenant Butler's. Without wishing to convey an impression that the blunt and downright O'Moy was gifted with any undue measure of shrewdness, it must nevertheless be said that he was quick to perceive what fresh thorns the occurrence was likely to throw in a path that was already thorny enough in all conscience, what a semblance ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... This exclamation appeared to disconcert Yoga Rama a good deal. The standing barefooted on a board studded with nails and on broken glass are common tricks which can be seen performed by negroes at country fairs. I felt the points of the nails and found they had been filed down and were blunt. Mr. Marriott sat on the nails to the amusement of the audience while Yoga Rama had gone off the stage to remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half a minute. He then proceeded to break some bottles on ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... although my companion supposed it to be another animal, as he could not see the long quills with which the English porcupine is armed. This creature was fully two feet long. Its back was covered with thick hair of a dusky brown colour; its head was short, and its nose blunt; it had small round ears, very powerful teeth, short limbs, and feet armed with strong crooked claws. These particulars I was afterwards able to exhibit ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the day, it was not unnatural for Dr. Bayard to be in a great hurry to get home to his dinner; and consequently his manners were even more blunt and informal than usual. Without losing a minute, he took a seat in front of the lady whom he supposed to be his patient, looked scrutinizingly into her face ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... saw by his manner that he was being played upon, or perceived the secretary's drift of himself, he came in his blunt way to ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... but very naturally, this extravagance rendered snuff a butt for the wits (who all took it, by the way), to shoot at. Steele, whose weakness for dress and show were proverbial, levelled many of his blunt shafts at its use; and Pope, who himself tells us 'of his wig all powder and all snuff his band,' let fly one of his keener arrows at the beaux, whose wit lay in their snuff-boxes and tweezer cases. As the men laid by, in the Georgian era, much of the magnificence of their ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... forceps. The broad blunt nose will scalp off the growths without any injury to the normal basal tissues. Voice-destroying and stenosing trauma are thus ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... of the higher classes tends to formalism, and has stamped itself on the language in some very odd ways. The tendency common to all tongues, towards a disuse of the second person singular, as too blunt and familiar, is carried so far in Spanish and Portuguese as to disuse the second person plural also, except in the family circle, and to substitute the indirect phrases, vuestra Merced (in Spanish) and vossa Merce (in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... impossible for the Squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say, that "to call on Riccabocca was as ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... "Sergeant O'Malley, 14th Hussars, get ready," and another fastened a red band to the Sergeant's arm as he stepped forward, clad in leather jacket and leg-guards and carrying the heavy iron-and-leather head-guard necessary in sabre combats, and the blunt-edged, blunt-pointed sabre. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... works I find the statement that the pupa cases come to the surface before the moths leave them, but how the operation is performed is not described or explained. Pupa cases from earth consist of two principal parts: the blunt head and thorax covering, and the ringed abdominal sections. With many feeders there is a long, fragile tongue shield. The head is rounded and immovable of its own volition. The abdominal part is in rings that ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... few minutes; take it out of the water, and with a blunt knife scrape off all the hair. Clean it nicely, divide the head and remove the brains. Boil it tender enough to take out the bones, which will be in about 2 hours. When the head is boned, flatten it on the table, sprinkle ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... she removed her gloves very leisurely and laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through it, cutting the pages with a blunt edge of her knife. It was all very agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seemed through the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and gentlemen, who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own. A soft, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... him, she would probably have set him down as undesirable. But she knew him. His good qualities seemed to her to overwhelm the others. His charm, his elegance, his affectionateness, his nice speech, his courtesy, his quick wit, his worldliness—she really considered it extraordinary that a plain, blunt girl, such as she, should have had the luck to please him. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... me, lord," answered Sem. "Look at snails, each one of them has a different shell: one is winding, but blunt; another is winding, but pointed; a third is like a box. In the same way precisely each' people build edifices according to their blood and disposition. Be pleased also to remember that Egyptian edifices ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... and love not GOD." But that will not suffice his exacting demands. A man is not "good" until his interior disposition be all filled and taken up with pure love of GOD. And as he analyses the Christian Character, there is a pleasant blunt directness about this holy man:—"he that says he loves GOD and will not do what is in him to shew love, tell ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... would bear, and tied it hard at the Bottom of the Glass; then they struck the Edge of the Knife on the Mouth of the Glass, (thus covered with the Handkerchief to prevent Noise,) till it became a Saw, with which they cut their Irons till it was Blunt, and then had Recourse to the Mouth of the Glass again to renew the Teeth of the Saw; and so completed their Design by Degrees. This being done in the Dead of Night, and many of them at Work together, the little Noise they made was overheard by the Centinels; who informed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... to this class, she jumps the fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery gods at the back." Puffed up with this delightful chatter. "Come now, confess, won't you," I queried, "is this lady who loves me yourself?" The waiting maid smiled broadly at this blunt speech. "Don't have such a high opinion of yourself," said she, "I've never given in to any servant yet; the gods forbid that I should ever throw my arms around a gallows-bird. Let the married women see to that and kiss the marks of the scourge ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "I shouldn't think he ever got drunk," she said; "he's far too solemn. In appearance, he's rather like a very respectable young milkman, fresh-coloured, you know, and sort of blunt everywhere, but he speaks—if you can imagine a cross between a very superior curate and the pater—that's what he speaks like, except that there's just an echo of an accent—not bad, you know, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... my Lord Brouncker, Sir Robert Murrey, Dean Wilkins, and Mr. Hooke, going by coach to Colonel Blunt's to dinner. [Wricklesmarsh, in the parish of Charlton, which belonged, in 1617, to Edward Blount, Esq., whose family alienated it towards the end of the seventeenth century. The old mansion was pulled down by Sir Gregory Page, Bart., who erected ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury, struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at the straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... and at concealing Bismarck was past master. While usually figured as a blunt, bold, tyrannical man, there was also a side of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... detail, precisely as those who had dealings at the bank might have seen Campbell Wood any week-day morning for the past eight months. A man does not sleep with his clothes on. The skull of the man had been broken, as if with a blunt instrument of iron. On the charred lacework of the floor lay the leg of an old andiron with which Boaz Negro and his Angelina had set up housekeeping in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... was split or fractured, not clean cut, as with a sword or bullet, but hacked and hewn with some blunt implement, presumably either a club or a stone tomahawk. The skull of the great chief inside was entire and his skeleton unmutilated: but we could see at a glance that the remains we found huddled ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... bully and a fool," said Mr. North, who was a blunt-spoken man. "He will never get ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... expert in the use of a long bow, with wooden arrows, rather heavy and blunt at the end. Maquin said he could shoot ducks and small birds with his arrows; but I should think they were not calculated to reach objects at any great distance, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... at least the merit of expressing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians. They never swerved from their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They preferred to gain their ends by treaty, and with the consent of the Indians; but if this proved impossible, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a small straight stem. "This will do, at all events," he thought, and he set to work with his knife to cut it down. As the knife was blunt, he made but slow progress. Even when it was down, he would have to pare off the lower part, so as to make it of the same size as the upper. At length by cutting round and round, he made a notch of ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... project of civil and commercial arts, find a natural pause in the termination of its own pursuits? May the business of civil society be accomplished, and may the occasion of farther exertion be removed? Do continued disappointments reduce sanguine hopes, and familiarity with objects blunt the edge of novelty? Does experience itself cool the ardour of the mind? May the society be again compared to the individual? And may it be suspected, although the vigour of a nation, like that of a natural body, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... than a paraphrase of Pope's epistles, or, yet less than a paraphrase, a mere translation of poetry into prose. This is, surely, to attack difficulty with very disproportionate abilities, to cut the Gordian knot with very blunt instruments. When we are told of the insufficiency of former solutions, why is one of the latest, which no man can have forgotten, given us again? I am told, that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger; what can it be, then, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... had broken into the park the night before, and had been routing amongst the fern. The age and size of the animal were known by the print of the feet, the toes being round and thick, the edge of the hoof worn and blunt, the heel large, and the guards, or dew-claws, great and open, from all which appearances it was adjudged by the baronet to be "a great old boar, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Sir Walter Blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... days she kept the letter locked in her desk, not having the courage to take it out again and read it. Then she sent for Captain Holt, the only one, beside Martha, with whom she could discuss the matter. She knew his strong, honest nature, and his blunt, outspoken way of giving vent to his mind, and she hoped that his knowledge of life ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of happiness to her heart, wearied with jealousy, to find one to whom old times were precious, and who took her up where he had last seen her. His blunt ways, and downright attacks, were a refreshment to a spirit chafing against the external smoothness and refinement of her way of life, and the pleasure of yielding to his arguments was something new and unexampled. She liked to gain the bright approving look, and with her universal craving ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eminence on the top of one of Mr. John Price's high stools Patience Welcome glanced up from the ledger over which she was toiling, put the blunt end of her pen into her mouth and looked out into the street drenched in sunshine. A half dozen farmers' horses, moored to the hitching rack in front of the store, threshed restlessly with their tails at enthusiastic banqueting flies, ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... whereby I might both make some trial of myself and as it were teach the little children to go that yet can but creep." Abraham Fleming, translating Virgil's Georgics "grammatically," expresses his original "in plain words applied to blunt capacities, considering the expositor's drift to consist in delivering a direct order of construction for the relief of weak grammatists, not in attempting by curious device and disposition to content courtly ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... moving, though by inches at a time. We get our front wheels on to the bridge. Packed in among the troops, but moving steadily as they move, we cross the Scheldt. On our right the sharp bows and on our left the blunt sterns of the boats. Boat after boat pressed close, gunwale to gunwale, our roadway goes across their breasts. Their breasts are taut as the breasts of gymnasts under the tramping of the regiments. They vibrate like the breasts of living things ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... go put dese greens on. My husband will kill me if he don't find no supper ready. Here come Mrs. Blunt. She oughter feel like a penny's worth of have-mercy wid all dis ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... sonnet-honoured lady should have, including locks of gold. But the fact that the poet has slyly changed the word "amber" to "snary" in sonnet xiv., and "golden" to "sable" in sonnet xxxviii., looks as if he desired to shield her personality from too blunt a guess. However, many hints are given; she lives in the "joyful North," ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... hours had not looked up from his interminable chess game with Xavier, paused with a beleaguered knight in one blunt brown hand. ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... indignant. He had never held his kinsman in great esteem, and had never been on the best of terms with him in the past. Nevertheless, he was very far from suspecting him of what King implied. To convince him that he did Sir Lewis an injustice, Ralegh put the blunt question to ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... she should give me poison. They first went to Ercole and tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... when either a round beard or a mustache was the invariable custom? Why did he not cut his hair? Above all, why did he prowl about so much at night? As the two passed each other, Dyke, for all his good-nature, was a little blunt in his greeting and looked back at the ex-shepherd ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... took his leave of Thomasin, prayed that she might be supported in her tribulation, and so departing met Amos Bartlett who was standing outside the cottage awaiting him. The man gave a forcible and blunt description of his morning's work which brought many tears to Uncle Chirgwin's eyes; then, together, they walked to Penzance, there to chronicle the sudden death of Joan Tregenza and arrange for those necessary formalities which ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Vall keenly. "That's a pretty blunt question, Lord Virzal," he said. "I wish I knew a little more about you. When you and your Assassins started inquiring about the Lady Dallona, I tried to check up on you. I found out that you had come to Darsh from Ghamma on a ship of the family of Zorda, accompanied ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... expressed only too clearly; and who was no more scrupulous in seeking to gratify them than his father had been before him. I suppose Esmond's mistress, her son, and the Colonel himself, had been all secretly debating this matter in their minds, for when Frank broke out, in his blunt way, with:—"I think Beatrix had best be anywhere but here,"—Lady Castlewood said:—"I thank you, Frank, I have thought so, too;" and Mr. Esmond, though he only remarked that it was not for him to speak, showed plainly, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... which they belong are printed in large characters, it is a beautiful sight to watch a fleet of these stately ships glide by, with their towering sails goose-winged before the breeze, and churning up the waters with their blunt, unyielding prows. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... would follow a similar course, it would be better for themselves, for the men they lead, and for the world at large. The deputy-chairman of the society was Michael O'Neill, the audit accountant of the company, and if ever a plain-spoken man, blunt and direct of speech existed, it was he. Every word he spoke had the ring of honest sincerity. To the men he spoke more plainly even than I, and him they never resented. I think their trust in him exceeded their trust in me. True he was Irish and I was not, and then ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... a slow, bloodless struggle of one species with another—the fleet with the slow, the cunning with the stupid, the sharp-eyed and sharp-eared with the dull of eye and ear, the keen of scent with the blunt of scent—which we call natural competition; but the slow, the stupid, the dull-eyed, dull-eared, and dull-scented find their place and thrive for all that. They are dull and slow because they do not need to be otherwise; ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... mother, take this lock of hair"— and in his right hand he stretched it out to be cut away—"take this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a reproach to ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... answer you, "Oh, it was done to prevent the vulgar trippers who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern policeman into the same picture with a Druid. This really vital ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... stick as though it were a club, swinging it like a baseball bat. That would be as silly as using an overhand stab with a dagger. He used it the way a fencer would use a foil, and the hard, blunt end of it sank into the first thug's solar plexus with all the drive of the Duke's right arm and shoulder behind it. The thug gave a hoarse scream as all the air was driven from his lungs, and he dropped ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... straightest sect. There was no cant superstitions or affectation in his make-up, and what he said he meant. It was doubtful if he ever had an evil thought, and while his manners might have been at times blunt, he was always sincere and his language chosen and chaste, with the possible exception during battle. The time of which I speak, the enemy was making a furious assault on the right wing of the Eighth, and as the Major ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... now she knows it is no gentle chase, But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, 884 Because the cry remaineth in one place, Wilere fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud: Finding their enemy to be so curst, They all strain courtesy ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... under side of the rock became alive! Two ink-black eyes appeared, bulging, oval, implacable; and between them opened a great, hooked beak, like a giant parrot's. There was no separate head behind this gaping beak, but eyes and beak merely marked the blunt end of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... spurious moment he had scaled the valley-rim, and came out upon the huge plain where it was rumored the little three-toed horses roamed. And he had seen them, he had seen them! He pursued, armed only with blunt shaft and a few of the throw-stones such as Otah used; but he was less swift than the tiny horses, and his throw-stones fell wide, and it was rumored that here roamed the long-tusked shaggy ones that were larger than the very caves ... trembling, Gral had retraced ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... the democratic cantons of Switzerland, you must have seen the herdsman with the staff in one hand and the book in the other. In the constituent Assembly of France was found a peasant whose sagacity was as distinguished as his integrity, whose blunt honesty over-awed and baffled the refinements of hypocritical patriots. The people of Paris followed him with acclamations, and the name of Pere Gerard will long be mentioned with admiration and respect through ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... can easily lead you to a church where great varieties of truthful and yet comfortable doctrines are preached, pleasing to the ear, and fascinating to the senses. No blunt fellow stands in its pulpit, but rather a cultured and highly refined gentleman of modern type who delights to keep apace with the customs of the age. If you desire, I will gladly accompany you thither. It would be sad indeed were you to be turned away from religion ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... sink far lower, too. The placid, ordinary youth thinks less, and digests his food better, and has a pleasanter time, on the whole. A sensitive child feels with a keen freshness that only years can blunt. To see some fool of a man crushing a clever child is heart-rending. By curious, misguided instincts, children always look up to their full-grown companions; and the result is, that any adult ass can nip in the bud precious childish fancies, or ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... proceeded to make a fire, and cook our evening meal. A light was procured by rubbing a blunt pointed stick in a groove made in another, as if with intention of deepening it, until by the friction the dust became ignited. A peculiarly white and very light wood (the Hibiscus tiliaceus) is alone used for this purpose: it is the same which serves ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... only as auxiliary. And while the round ship was of deep draft and rode to anchor, the shallow flat-bottomed long ships were drawn up on shore. The Phoenicians took the Egyptian and Cretan models and improved them. They lowered the bows of the fighting ships, added to the blunt ram a beak near the water's edge, and strung the shields of the fighting men along the bulwarks to protect the rowers. To increase the driving force and the speed, they added a second and then a third bank of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... spurs, and we bought some. They are of blue steel inlaid with strips of silver, and the rowel is a sort of cogged wheel, from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. (See page 220.) They look terrific instruments, but really the cogs or points of the rowels are quite blunt, and they keep the horse going less by hurting him than by their incessant jingling, which is increased by bits of steel put on for the purpose. Monstrous as the spurs now used are, they are small in comparison with those of a century or two ago. One ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... help you, when all the powers of nature are in vain, yea, when your heart and your flesh shall fail you, you will be enabled still to rely with peace upon Him who has said "I will be the strength of thy heart and thy portion for ever." —H. BLUNT. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork of the Conference, gave utterance to views which while making no pretense to courtly phraseology are symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought and spoke of the Covenant which emanated from the Supreme Council. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... differentiation from the class to which he belongs. His democratic instincts become less acute when he shoulders the Lee-Metford, and he readily accommodates himself to the will of a benevolent despot of robust appearance, and blunt and somewhat contemptuous address; whom in fact he prefers to the ascetic, dispassionate General Officer of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... catastrophe. They push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. Society shaken to its base, hurls itself into the industrial suicide of the general ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of this ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... strata not reaching to the summit when the mountain was raised up, the second or third stratum or a more inferior one is there exposed to day; this may be well represented by forceably thrusting a blunt instrument through several sheets of paper, a bur will stand up with the lowermost sheet standing highest in the center of it. On this uppermost stratum, which is colder as it is more elevated, the dews are condensed in large quantities; and sliding down pass under the first ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... "So blunt, yet so pointed. A pity it's not original. But I know what you meant by your remedy. You don't see it would be a double crime, and you are too good a man even to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... diversification of their industry the exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James, it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... in the world can give, can equal in intensity, these complex joys I had when asleep; waking joys seem so slight, so vague in comparison—so much escapes the senses through lack of concentration and undivided attention—the waking perceptions are so blunt. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... didn't like it, and meant to show that he didn't. His money at least was his own, and he could do with it as he liked. The answer did not come until the question had been asked twice. Then in words as brief and manner as blunt he said,— ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... kept on beating his breast. His forehead was wrinkled in dried- up folds, his brows bristled fantastically into shaggy, dirty tufts. His heavy, blunt nose, powdered with hairs at the tip, stood out obstinately between two deep folds on either side. These folds overhung the corners of his mouth, and were joined below the chin by a network of pallid veins. A noise, light ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... say!' Geoff almost yelled in his endeavour to drown the terriers' voices. 'Who do you think has come back to the village? Why, Jerry Blunt, with one arm, poor chap, from that North Pole expedition. He has given up the sea; and you'll never guess the land trade he means to take up, not if you sat down for six weeks to think it out. You couldn't, so I may as well tell you. Training young ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... character, and introduced by the poet, no doubt, as a contrast to the turbulent and busy character of the other lady. The boisterous captain is a well-drawn and a well-supported character. He is rugged, honest, blunt, illiterate, and gallant. But it is the character of the hero Taylor which is drawn and sustained with the most art and nature. In the first place he is brave, although some have contradicted this, by saying that he did ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... terms a little blunt, "This scheme that you are advertising Was all along a private stunt Of WILSON'S singular devising; His game we weren't allowed to know; Under a misty smile he masked it; We never gave him leave to go ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... Blunt, came, and he too felt the heat, having spent hours in going his rounds in the closeness and dust. He was a rough man, and his temper did not always hold out; he told Alfred sharply that he would have no whining, and when the boy moaned and winced more than he would have ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the charred match which had lighted it. In front lay a scattering of bright metallic fragments. Sheldon recognized their significance. Tudor was notching his steel-jacketed bullets, or cutting them blunt, so that they would spread on striking—in short, he was making them into the vicious dum-dum prohibited in modern warfare. Sheldon knew now what would happen to him if a bullet struck his body. It would leave a tiny ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... say so, the whole sunny horizon of his countenance. But this was not all; you might read there a spirit of kindly sarcasm that was in complete keeping with a disposition always generous and affectionate, mostly blunt and occasionally caustic. Nothing could exceed the extreme neatness with which he attended to his dress and person. In this point he was scrupulously exact and careful; but this attention to the minor morals was ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cruel to you," she exclaimed, impulsively, "and I didn't mean to hurt you at all, Aunt Jane. You must forgive me. It's just my blunt Irish way, you see; but if I hadn't been drawn to you from the first I wouldn't have said a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... fish, which some call Chaousarou, as big as a large pike. It was only an ordinary sized one, for many larger ones are seen, eight, nine, and ten feet long, as is said. It had a snout about a foot and a half long, of about the same shape as that of the snipe, except that the extremity is blunt and not so pointed, and of a large size in proportion to the body. It has a double row of teeth, which are very sharp and dangerous;... and the form of the body is like that of a pike, but it is armed with very stout and hard scales, of silver gray color, and difficult ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him. It was blunt-fingered and broad and red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... for another reason. Posterity ever has a blunt way of asking the most inquisitive questions. The inquirer for truth will not be content with the simple statement that many of the factory owners and tradesmen bribed representative bodies to give them railroad ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... found the shoulder of a heifer had been smashed by some blunt instrument like a hammer. I myself had a couple ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... entrance passage, but I should rather have said there is another explanation of a line marked on the stone next below the vertical one. I should imagine this line, which is nothing more than a mark such "as might be ruled with a blunt steel instrument, but by a master hand for power, evenness, straightness, and still more for rectangularity to the passage axis," was a mere sign to show where the upright stone was to come. But Professor Smyth, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... becoming conscious it makes itself feeble. If there were any signs that in spite of the universal character of European decadence there was still a modicum of health, still an instinctive premonition of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the German soul, then it would be precisely this blunt resistance to Wagner which I should least like to see underrated. It does us honour, it gives us some reason to hope: France no longer has such an amount of health at her disposal. The Germans, these loiterers par excellence, as history shows, are to-day the ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... them," said Master Jonson, in his blunt, outspoken way, "I'll think thee a thought offhand to serve the turn. What? Why, this tanner calls us vagabonds. Vagabonds, forsooth! Yet vagabonds are gallows-birds, and gallows-birds are ravens. And ravens, men say, do foster forlorn children. Take my point? Good, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... after fame, and that deceitful fame of popularity; and, to help on his catastrophe, I observe likewise two sorts of people that had a hand in his fall: the first was the soldiery, which all flock unto him, as it were foretelling a mortality, and are commonly of blunt and too rough counsels, and many times dissonant from the time of the court and State; the other sort were of his family, his servants and his own creatures, such as were bound by safety, and obligations of fidelity, to have looked better ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and he laughed at the recollection. "Fairbain met us coming out of the dining-room,—you know what a delightful, blunt, blundering old fellow he is! Well, Miss Christie must have made an impression even on his bachelor heart, for he actually requested the privilege of escorting her to the Trocadero, and back to the hotel after the performance to-night—hinted at a lunch, the gay old dog, and pranced about ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... brothers should be set against each other in this manner so early in the competition. The night before the match-play part of the business commenced, I was walking down one of the streets of Portrush when I encountered Andrew himself, and in his own blunt but good-humoured way he remarked, "Young laddie, d'ye think y're gaun to tak the money awa' with ye? Ye've no chance, ye ken." I said nothing in reply, because I felt that he spoke the truth. Next day a heavy ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... twenty Indians were killed by jaguars within a lifetime. If a man has presence of mind enough to shout and make a noise and go towards the brute, the latter withdraws. Otherwise he is lost, for even if he escapes with his life, the wounds inflicted by the jaguar's blunt claws and teeth are terrible and dangerous. There are Indians in South America who are said to hunt the jaguar in the following manner. They wrap a sheepskin round the left arm and in the right hand hold a sharp two-edged knife. Then they beat up the jaguar and set dogs at him. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... very important accessory of the work-table, and two varieties are indispensable; a pair of large ones for cutting-out, with one point blunt and the other sharp, the latter to be always held downwards; and a pair of smaller ones with two sharp points. The handles should be large and round; if at all tight, they tire and disfigure ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... to which Walker led them was plainly but neatly furnished and the windows looked out upon rolling pastures. The Governor abandoned his high-flown talk and asked blunt questions as to recent visitors, apparently referring to criminals who had lodged at the farm. They talked quite openly while Archie unpacked his bag. The restless activity of the folk of the underworld, their methods of communication and points of rendezvous seemed part of a vast system and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... he muttered, as there was a rustle in the moist patch of jungle, and he caught sight of the loathsome blunt muzzle of what looked like a monstrous eft staring hard at him, not ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down for ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Senior Surgeon's blunt, wholesome invitation to ride had been perfectly sweet when he prescribed it for her in the Superintendent's office, the invitation had certainly soured most amazingly in the succeeding ten minutes. Abruptly now, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... deeds and from herself The mind acquires. Severer argument: 10 Not less attractive; nor deserving less A constant ear. For what are all the forms Educed by fancy from corporeal things, Greatness, or pomp, or symmetry of parts? Not tending to the heart, soon feeble grows, As the blunt arrow 'gainst the knotty trunk, Their impulse on the sense: while the pall'd eye Expects in vain its tribute; asks in vain, Where are the ornaments it once admired? Not so the moral species, nor the powers 20 Of Passion and of Thought. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... not believe a moderate use of tobacco for a mature person is necessarily a sin, yet we do believe that it does blunt the moral sense, and soon leads to spiritual weakness and indifference, which are sins. To love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength, and one's neighbor as himself, means not only a denial ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... to us, as you promised, sir; and there was no hanging on longer with nobody to work the ship," was the blunt reply. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher—the highest joys. Genius claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And yet at this time Sheridan ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... head, I think—in a helmet, looking down, with big drooped eyelids. If it isn't Jeanne it ought to be. Anyhow it's you.... That's what's been bothering me. I thought it was just because you had black hair bobbed like a fifteen century page. But it isn't that. It's her forehead and her blunt nose, and her innocent, heroic chin. And the thick, beautiful mouth.... And the look—as if she could see behind her eyelids—dreadful things going to happen to her. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" Alfred Edward Housman "When I was ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... natural temper not unlike the Gauls; impatient, fiery, inconstant, ostentatious, boastful, fond of novelty; and like all barbarians, fierce, treacherous, and cruel. Their arms were short javelins, small shields of a slight texture, and great cutting swords with a blunt point, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... your ladyship perfectly. Mr. Oldfield is a respectable solicitor, and Wheeler is a sharp country practitioner; and—to use my favorite Americanism—you feel like fighting with a blunt ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... neck, brutal of jaw, low-browed, red of face, blunt of speech, the finest, most unmerciful tackler on the football team, stepped up to Stephen and said a few words in a low tone. Courtland could not hear what they were save that they ended with an oath, the choicest of ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... suit any style of beauty better than steel bars," she said lightly as Mrs. Hastings came fluttering back. Mrs. Hastings fluttered ponderously, as humblebees fly. Indeed, when one considered, there was really a "blunt-faced bee" look ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... from a different motive, is uncertain. There was formerly a story in circulation that he was defeated as a candidate for some political office and retired in disgust from the haunts and ways of men. This however is not likely. Thomas Laighton was a man of a blunt and rugged sincerity, tenacious and determined; such as would not be likely to lose his mental balance at the first unfavorable ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... is a blunt, outspoken man. If things do not go to his liking, he is quick to tell you. Doctor Franklin is humorous and polite, but firm as a God-placed mountain. You may put your shoulder against the mountain and push and think ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... black: the head depressed, with the sides erect, leaving a blunt ridge on the upper part, in which the eyes are placed: the ridge over the eyes covered with larger scales than those over the head; eyes rather small, with a fleshy ridge above them; eye-lids covered with minute, and surrounded by a delicate serrated ridge of small upright scales: ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... hardly liked to oppose his reasons to Reginald's blunt speech, and Reginald, dismissing the subject from his mind, began to talk of something else. He ran on very volubly for a little while, without receiving any interruption from his brother, and, looking at him, he saw very plainly that Louis ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... [Note 292: /blunt:/ dull, slow. Or there may be a quibble involved in connection with 'mettle' in the next line. Brutus alludes to the 'tardy form' (l. 296) Casca has just 'put on' in winding so long about the matter ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Punch's blunt inquiry, "Why?" in last week's cartoon different answers would, I suppose, be returned by various Members. The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER would say that the reassembling of Parliament was necessary in order that he might obtain a further Vote of Credit from the representatives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... were published, I received from Dr. Downes a copy of a paper "On the Influence of Light on Protoplasm," written by himself and Mr. T.P. Blunt, M.A., which was communicated to the Royal Society in 1878. It was a continuation of a preceding paper which, referring chiefly ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... are subtler sides to this subject, and it is of these I fain would speak. We are apt to blunt our literary sense by reading far too much, and to lessen our capacity for getting the great delights from books by making reading into a routine and a drudgery. Of course I know that reading books has its utilitarian side, and that we have to consider printed matter ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... absence; the other met the commissioner himself, and demanded of him point-blank what he had been doing with the princess. The question was so bluntly put and the man's attitude so impudent that Samson lost his temper and couched his denial in blunt bellicose bad language. The vehemence convinced the questioner that he was lying, as the maharajah was shortly informed. So the fact became established beyond the possibility of refutation that Yasmini had been closeted with Samson ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy |
