"Blunted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passed the Rock without calling. I was not disappointed, for there was slight inducement for going ashore, oppressed as I was with the ever-present incubus of dread. At intervals this feeling became less acute, but only to return, strengthened by its short absences. After a time my danger sense became blunted. The nervous system became torpid under continuous stress, and refused to pass on the sensations with sufficient intensity to the brain; or the weary brain was asleep at its post and did not heed the warnings. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... confess himself beaten with the idealist who has discovered that Rome was not built in a day, nor revolutions made with rose-water. He has to work as long as he has strength; to work in spite of, even by strength of, sorrow, disappointment, wounded vanity, and blunted sensibilities; and therefore he must search for some profounder solution for the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... association with good, little Connie who was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit blunted." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... exertion; had he been obliged to exercise the talents with which he was so liberally endowed for his own support and the benefit of mankind; had he some profession which compelled him to mingle in the world, till the too exquisite edge of his sensibilities were blunted by contact with firmer, rougher natures, what a blessing it would have been! With what pride would I have seen him go forth to his daily duties, sure that he was imparting and receiving good. With what rapture would I have welcomed his ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... life soured by disappointment; yet somehow this man had managed to win a way into the hearts of many people. The few villagers of Locksley all had their tender word or humble tribute of affection to offer the dame and her sorrowing son; and thus much of the edge of their grief was blunted. Until the interment the priest stayed with them, and so did old Gamewell, who paid all the fees and expenses inevitable in ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... the gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to take his chances with them. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... in expectation of her master's return. The day passed quietly, without events of any kind. Magdalen dreamed away the hours over a book. A weary patience of expectation was all she felt now—the poignant torment of thought was dulled and blunted at last. She passed the day and the evening in the parlor, vaguely conscious of a strange feeling of aversion to going back to her own room. As the night advanced, as the noises ceased indoors and out, her restlessness began to return. She endeavored ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... refinement. He knew and liked the culture of the cities in its highest sense. His youth had not been spent in the North American wilderness. He had tasted the life of London and Paris, and long use and practice had not blunted his mind to the extraordinary contrasts ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... making extracts for his book, he would ask himself, "Why take all this trouble? Who is going to be made wiser or happier by this rigmarole?" and his pleasure in the work was gone again for days. The consciousness of exile, instead of being blunted by time, weighed ever more heavily upon him. He never realized till now what an absolute necessity it was to his nature to lean upon a kindred spirit, for he had never before been without one. Since ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Mr. Kennedy announcing his decrees, Charley and Kate should hasten to some retired spot where they could commune in solitude; the effect of which communing was to reduce them to a somewhat calmer and rather happy state of mind. Charley's sorrow was blunted by sympathy with Kate's joy, and Kate's joy was subdued by sympathy with Charley's sorrow; so that, after the first effervescing burst, they settled down into a calm and comfortable state of flatness, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... from any other dispute; she had not realized it as a final, an almost irrevocable act on his part, which could only be met by reprisal on hers. All those points of law which had been so sharply enforced upon her must have fallen blunted from her longing to be at one with him; she had, perhaps, not imagined her defence in open court, except as ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... he found it daily easier to keep hold of the bridle, as Miss Goldthwaite termed it. Keziah had been dismissed also, and Lucy's burden was sometimes more than she could bear. Miss Hepsy refused to see what others saw—that the girl was overwrought; and her feelings had been blunted so long, that only a very sharp shock would bring them into use again. And the time had not come yet. For more highly favoured young folks than Tom and Lucy Hurst, these frosty days brought innumerable enjoyments in their train—skating and sleighing ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... mentioning it at the Cape of Good Hope to Dr. Andrew Smith, he told me that he recollected finding on the south-eastern coast of Africa, about one hundred miles to the eastward of St. John's river, some quartz crystals with their edges blunted from attrition, and mixed with gravel on the sea-beach. Each crystal was about five lines in diameter, and from an inch to an inch and a half in length. Many of them had a small canal extending from one extremity to the other, perfectly cylindrical, and of a size that ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... proportion from the external aspects of daily life in towns has probably a greater effect than we are apt to realize in deadening the imagination, and it certainly seems to produce a certain insensibility to beauty of line and composition, since the perception must necessarily be blunted by being inured to the commonplace and sordid. The instinct for harmony of line and form becomes weakened, and can only be slowly revived by long and careful study in art, instead of finding its constant and most vital stimulus in ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... stopped, seeming struck, almost beyond the power of speech, with meditative commiseration ; but then, suddenly rousing himself, as if recollecting his "almost blunted purpose," he passionately exclaimed, "Oh could those—the thousands, the millions, who have groaned and languished under the iron rod of his oppressions- -could they but—whatever region they inhabit— be permitted ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best—fears for his eternal salvation, dread of the Divine wrath upon him. Of course, in these days these weapons, though often effective in vexing good men and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not infrequently injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo; they were then in all their sharpness ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... hand, the more ingenuous amongst other Dissenters of each denomination, sensible of the ease they enjoyed by our bold and steady suffering, which abated the heat of the persecutors and blunted the edge of the sword before it came to them, frankly acknowledged the benefit received; calling us the bulwark that kept off the force of the stroke from them, and praying that we might be preserved ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... goose or pork— it is, barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table and formally "strapped" for allowing the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... oases of the desert, in the very centre of a sterility that would put the labor and the art of man at defiance for a century. In the midst of this terrific picture of want sat a cretin, with his semi-human attributes, the lolling tongue, the blunted faculties, and the degraded appetites, to complete the desolation. Issuing from this belt of annihilated vegetation, the scene became again as pleasant as the fancy could desire, or the eye crave. Fountains leaped from rock to rock in the sun's rays; ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... which I trace these lines, a fear lest, in the absorbing interest of researches which tend to increase to a marvellous degree the power of man over all matter, animate or inanimate, I may have blunted my own moral perceptions; and that there may be much in the knowledge which I sought and acquired from the pure desire of investigating hidden truths, that could be more abused to purposes of tremendous ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Nazinred had brought home, and with which he had hoped to rejoice the hearts of his wife and child, were utterly neglected. He let Isquay do what she pleased with them. The only thing that seemed to comfort him was the tobacco, for that, he found, when smoked to excess, blunted the ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... father, and all the household; and after a while the old Doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who, whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and delight ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... her say timidly in her foreign voice: "Thank you, sir!" the policeman's retreating steps, the outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again. That something in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he could not see her. They were all the same, these women; could not speak the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tried to recapture some of the power of the folk tale by imitating its method. In many cases they have had a fair degree of success: in one case, that of Hans Christian Andersen, the success is admittedly very complete. As a rule, however, the sharpness of the sense of wonder has been blunted, and many imitators of the old fairy tale succeed in keeping only the shell. Another class of modern fantastic tale is that of the pourquoi story, which has the explanation of something as its object. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... despondency. In other cases there may be irritability of temper, a want of will determination, and progressive loss of memory. The special senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—may all be blunted. The Bight and hearing are often markedly affected. Colour blindness is sometimes a result, and there may be that impairment of vision known tobacco AMBLYOPIA. As regards the hearing, too, there is not unfrequently a drumming in the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... somewhere in the outer periphery of his thought—nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak—as a vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... not born for that. I must have a being who can lead me from sorrows—yes, even from my graver studies; one with whom I can joke and play, and carry on light and happy conversations, that the sharpness of sorrow may be blunted and the heat of anger made mild. Give me a wife, dear Friedrich, and you know what kind of one I want. She must be young, pretty, well educated, serene, tender, patient. Money enough give her, but not too much. For riches I do not seek; and as for blood and ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... amateur became possessed of it. The Frenchman, it appears, came to England, and paid a visit to an English nurseryman, who was the possessor of five plants, raised from Japanese seeds. The hospitable Englishman entertained the Frenchman only too well. He allowed his commercial instincts to be blunted by wine, and sold to his guest the five plants for the sum of 25 guineas. Next morning, when time for reflection came, the Englishman attempted to regain one only of the plants for the same sum that the Frenchman had ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... when the Fates lay their hand upon a man his senses are wont to be blunted and dimmed, so Gallus, being led on by these alluring persuasions to the expectation of a better fortune, quitted Antioch under the guidance of an unfriendly star, and hurried, as the old proverb ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... purer joy receive, In the proud mansions of the rich and great? Or, tell me, can the wounded bosom heave With blunted anguish ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... I passed through the camp, I was astonished at the order and regularity which prevailed among these barbarians. Some were exercising their horses in the mimic representation of a battle; part fled with incredible speed, while the rest pursued, and darted blunted javelins at their antagonists. Yet even those who fled would frequently turn upon their pursuers and make them repent their rashness. Some, while their horses were running in full speed, would vault from off their backs ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... then the facts of a Christian man's life are for him the best brighteners of the hope beyond. Of course, that is so. 'Justified by faith'—'peace with God'—'access into grace'; what, in the name of common-sense, can death do with these things? How can its blunted sword cut the bond that unites a soul that has had such experiences as these with the source of them all? Nothing can be more grotesque, nothing more incongruous, than to think that that subordinate and accidental fact, whose region is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... it quietly—in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... did not appear as Mark had pictured him. Instead of the lithe enthusiast with flaming eyes he saw a heavily built man with blunted features, wearing powerful horn spectacles, his expression morose, his movements ungainly. He had, however, a mellow and strangely sympathetic voice, in which Mark fancied that he perceived the power he was reputed to wield over the soldiers for whose well-being he fought so hard. Mark would ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... admiration. One person will choose his library companions for their stateliness and splendid raiment, another for their flavour of antiquity, or the fine company that they kept in old times. Montaigne loved his friends on the shelf, because they always received him kindly and 'blunted the point of his grief.' He turned the volumes over in his round tower within any method or design; 'at one while,' he says, 'I meditate, at another time I make notes, or dictate, as I walk up and down, such whimsies as meet you here.' He cared little about the look of their ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... knowledge of Indian character would place him sufficiently on his guard to make abortive any attempts against him, and determined to keep a watchful eye upon his wild companion for the present, and until time should have blunted sensibility to the injury. For this reason, and in order also to counteract, as far as might be, the effect of the incidents at the house of the Assistant, after purchasing the articles which they came out to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... gilded life, but not remorse or shame. And when she dies by her own hand, it is not in madness, but to escape humiliation. Suicide was one of the worst features of Pagan antiquity. It was a base and cowardly reluctance to meet the evils of life, as much as indifference to the future and a blunted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... alternately bore away great share of the Honour. That Sport ended, Marshals were appointed for the Field, and every thing in great form settled for the Combat. The Cavaliers were all in good earnest, but orders were given to bring 'em blunted Lances, and to forbid the drawing of a Sword upon pain of his Highness's Displeasure. The Trumpets sounded and they began their Course: The Ladies' Hearts, particularly the Incognita and Leonora's beat time to the ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... saw that he had been witless indeed. The thought of raising the bid of five hundred gold to a thousand or more had bemused him, blunted ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... said with light contrition. "Well, now you've sniffed at it, how about trying on Tickler?" He picked up the gleaming blunted crescent and jogged ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... devolv'd I cast me, praying him for pity's sake That he would open to me: but first fell Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times The letter, that denotes the inward stain, He on my forehead with the blunted point Of his drawn sword inscrib'd. And "Look," he cried, "When enter'd, that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... (which I could not tell before), To lacerate poor PETER GRAY vindictively you swore; I told you if you used that blunted axe you'd rue the day, And so you will, young GILBERT, ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it—whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain—he ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... scenes out of simple materials but always with the eye of a craftsman for striking effects and incidents.... The "Return from Market," "The Marriage Bargain," and the last scene ... have the illusion of life, and are in a phrase—which, though blunted by misuse, expresses a real need in Irish Art—"racy of the ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... say, Lizzie, before passing from this subject, and mark my words; my spirit is not so broken nor my sense of justice so blunted but that one day I shall have that miniature again. I have sworn it, and as I live, I'll keep my vow. But I must hasten on; it is already growing late. I come now to the last and sorest trouble ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... which answered no question! The old woman herself shared in the wild merriment of the little ones! I have always wondered 15 at the ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness. Accustomed to live in the present, they use every pleasure as soon as it offers itself. But the rich, blunted by luxury, gain happiness less easily. They must have all things in harmony before they ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... loved by a courtesan: that is a victory of infinitely greater difficulty. With them the body has worn out the soul, the senses have burned up the heart, dissipation has blunted the feelings. They have long known the words that we say to them, the means we use; they have sold the love that they inspire. They love by profession, and not by instinct. They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... already protestant Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty German Highland and the German Netherland Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Maritime heretics Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces They had come to disbelieve ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... our borders, steady progress has been made in building a world of order. The people of West Berlin remain both free and secure. A settlement, though still precarious, has been reached in Laos. The spearpoint of aggression has been blunted in Viet-Nam. The end of agony may be in sight in the Congo. The doctrine of troika is dead. And, while danger continues, a deadly threat has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... side I concluded it was an Arab. As I went forward I discovered bodies scattered in twos and threes over the grass-plain. Great grey vultures were tearing the rotting flesh from the bones, feasting upon the carrion. Broken guns, bent swords and blunted daggers lay about in profusion, while the further I went, the more numerous became the hideous bodies which the long grass seemed to be striving to hide. This was assuredly the battle-field whereon the army of the Great White ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... my bold Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity which consists ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... and simple heart Through life disdains a double part. He never needs the screen of lies His inward bosom to disguise. In vain malicious tongues assail; Let envy snarl, let slander rail, From virtue's shield (secure from wound) Their blunted, venomed shafts rebound. So shines his light before mankind, His actions prove his honest mind. 10 If in his country's cause he rise, Debating senates to advise, Unbribed, unawed, he dares impart The honest dictates of his heart. No ministerial frown he fears, But in ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... six months that year—from April to September; but then went to Scotland, deer-stalking, shooting pheasants. He was back for Christmas and brought a houseful of guests—all men. Again she welcomed him, again she was kind. He was now a little blunted to the fine shades of love, took his happiness as it happened to come, and could rub his hands over the household blessing she was. By-and-by, at the end of her fourth year, she took over the gardens as well as the house, was accepted by Mr. Menzies as his liege-lady and by young Clyde ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... fiber has been coarsened. The war has blunted my sensitiveness to human suffering. In 1914 I wept tears of distress over a rabbit which I had shot. I could go out now at the command of my government in cold-blooded fashion and commit all the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... of the Son of God with the flesh the agnitio filii first became possible to all; that is the fundamental novelty. The next problem was to restore the law of freedom. Here a threefold process was necessary. In the first place the Law of Moses, the Decalogue, had been disfigured and blunted by the "traditio seniorum". First of all then the pure moral law had to be restored; secondly, it was now necessary to extend and fulfil it by expressly searching out the inclinations of the heart in all cases, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... if you like, clean away all the cement along the edges of the leads; but it is quite easy to be too precise and neat in the matter and make the work look hard. If you do it, a blunted ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... man alive," the stranger cried impatiently, turning sharply round upon the farmer, who was trimming an incorrigible wick with a pair of blunted snuffers. "Remember, I've got to go back to Malsham; I haven't ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... was very faint—the words reached Helena plainly enough as words, but they seemed to reach her consciousness in an unreal, unnatural, blunted way, coma-like—pregnant of significance, yet with the significance itself ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... The body is at first obese, but rapidly loses flesh, the skin becomes greasy and damp, owing to hypersecretion of the sebaceous and sudoriparous glands, and soils the garments. Memory becomes enfeebled, speech uncertain and defective (dysarthria), the association of ideas sluggish, sensibility blunted, perception confused, judgment erroneous, and every species of regular and continued application impossible. The earlier hallucinations reappear, but in a less vivid form and only at long intervals; then paralysis more or less rapidly becomes ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Learning's changelings, know by rote The clarion watchword of each Grecian school And follow none, the flawless sword which smote The pagan Hydra is an effete tool Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now Shall scale the august ancient heights ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... others, only a word or so, but there was amongst them an obvious haste to get away, of which Persimmon Sneed was cognizant, albeit his head was swimming, his breath short, his eyes dazzled by the fire which he feared. His understanding, however, was blunted in some sort, it seemed to him, for he could make no sense of Nick Peters's observation as he took him by the arm, although afterward ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was a fortunate discovery. Jack went down on his knees, and with the edge of the axe began carefully to force out the nails. But as they were firmly fixed in, and the operation blunted our axe, we carried the oar up with us to the place where we had left the rest of our things, intending to burn the wood away from the iron at a more ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... oak that soars on high, And scorns the whirlwind's breath Behold thy Poet's youth defy The blunted dart of Death! His gaze as ardent as the light That shoots athwart the heaven, His soul yet fiercer than the light In the eternal heaven, Of Him, in whom as in an ocean-surge Creation ebbs and flows—and worlds arise and merge! Through Nature steers the poet's thought to find No fear but this—one ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... first authors that taught the dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness, and inelegance of style. He showed them, that zeal and purity might be expressed and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... blonde yawned. "It depends on your funny bone. Mine's got blunted. I'm the lady that the Irish comedy guy slaps in the face with a bunch of lettuce. Say, there's something about you that makes a person get gabby and tell things. You'd make a ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... infection, for my office required me to go daily into the midst of them; nor in filling the house with the exhalations of gunpowder, vinegar, or tar. They consisted in cleanliness, reasonable exercise, and wholesome diet. Custom had likewise blunted the edge of our apprehensions. To take this person into my house, and bestow upon him the requisite attendance, was the scheme that first occurred to me. In this, however, the advice of my wife was to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Hear, hear ye rocks! that Balder Ventures to hope!—stern fate is now contented! Blunted is Surtur's spear, and Nanna wavers! Oh virtue! which, when blood rag'd high didst triumph, How sure, how nobly thou reward'st thy lover! Ye rocks which so lately gave ear to my groans, Now hear of my hope and my gladness the tones, And reply ye proud ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... coffin. There he remained with his eyes wide open for a long time, thinking over all that had happened during the last two months of his life, especially in his own soul. By dint of suffering and making others suffer, his aggressive and revengeful anguish had lost its edge, like a blunted sword. He scarcely had the heart left in him to owe any one or anything a grudge; he let his rebellious wrath float away down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of wrestling, weary of fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything, that he was quite worn out; and tried to stupefy his heart ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... for an instant and then, in response to what it said to him, scudded around the angle of rock by which he had reached the shelf. As he did so an arrow whizzed past his right ear and blunted against ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... old Cities of Refuge no weapons of any kind were allowed to be made. Those who possessed them had to surrender them. This is true in a nobler and better sense regarding the Gospel Stronghold. There can be no deadly weapons forged there. Their edge is blunted: "There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."[46] Satan's armoury has been plundered; the "Stronger than he" has "taken from him all his armour wherein he trusted, ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... and pans, bottles and bundles, spades and mattocks, and suchlike useful but homely instruments. There was nobody there to laugh, however, or to cry either. Tears were then scarce articles in New Orleans; for people had got accustomed to death, and their feelings were more or less blunted. But even had the yellow fever not been there, I doubt if any one would have laughed at me; there is too much sound sense amongst us. Our town beauties—ay, the most fashionable and elegant of them—think nothing of installing themselves, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... such moments, was like a theatre with all the lustres blazing. That the illumination should have been kindled by his cousin's husband was not precisely agreeable to Marvell, who thought Peter a bore in society and an insufferable nuisance on closer terms. But he was becoming blunted to Undine's lack of discrimination; and his own treatment of Van Degen was always tempered ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... there is a nucleus of whiter iron-earth surrounded by many concentric strata of darker and lighter iron-earth alternately. In one, which now lies before me, the nucleus is a prism of a triangular form with blunted angles, and about half an inch high, and an inch and half broad; on every side of this are concentric strata of similar iron-earth alternately browner and less brown; each stratum is about a tenth of an inch in thickness and there are ten of them in number. To what known ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... King, "no! not of straightforward dealing and of honor! That is what comes of being mixed up in politics. People forget what honor means, their sense of it becomes blunted. Unfortunately mine does not! Mr. Premier, you have profoundly distressed me; you have made my position extremely difficult. And I do not think that you had any excuse ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... hull of a North Shore ferry boat, blunted a little at the ends and cut off about a foot below the water-line, and parallel to it, then you will have something shaped somewhat like the hull of a Darling mud-rooter. But the river boat is much ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... the other emendations which he has endeavoured, whether with good or bad fortune, are too trivial to deserve mention. For surely the weapons of criticism ought not to be blunted against an editor, who can imagine that he is restoring poetry, while he is amusing himself with alterations ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... felt better, now that the vichy had been "killed"; mentally his temper became more vicious than ever as he thought of Dumont's blunted wit at his expense—a wit with edge enough left to make a ragged, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... verdure and water-growth gradually growing confused and dim. To Vane all now seemed dreamlike and strange. He was in no trouble—there was no sense of dread, and the despair of a few minutes before was blunted, as with his body lower in the water, which kept rising now above his lips, he slowly ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed sight and hearing, blunted the sense of smell, and left her system a wreck. Though she gradually recovered health she remained a blind deaf-mute, but was kindly treated and was in particular made a sort of playmate by an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and faculties are evenly balanced, when the perceptions are not blunted, nor the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable than the fulness of the life that throbbed in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... several of these men respecting the all-important subject of religion; but 'I found their hearts blunted, and with their ears they heard heavily, and their eyes were closed.' There was one in particular to whom I showed the New Testament and addressed for a considerable time. He listened, or seemed to listen, patiently, taking occasional copious draughts from ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... growled out, "Never fear; no man wants to get his throat cut, so we'll fight." I was surprised at their want of enthusiasm; but when men have been much knocked about in the world, and have all their finer feelings blunted, that, among other sentiments, is completely ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... that the window remained open, until Ponto erected his crest as a footfall came steadily along, nearer and nearer. Uplifting one of his pendant lips, he gave a low growl through his blunted teeth, and listened again; but apparently satisfied that the step was familiar, he replaced his head on his crossed paws, and presently Robert Fulmort's head and the upper part of his person, in correct evening costume, were thrust in at ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dwarf or extend it. If we are content to rest satisfied with a small amount of knowledge we can do so, and even cease to suffer in our own self-esteem by feeling we are stupid, or indolent, or ignorant. Our perceptions are gradually blunted, and society is kind enough to case most of its remarks and opinions in a sugar-coating, so that the real truth never reaches us. We gradually find, then, that an opinion that soothes our personal vanity and self-esteem is a very pleasant opinion. So long as we cherish ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... a compact automatic pistol, a blunted shape no larger than his palm. It was a beautiful mechanism, and as with his silken razors, merely to hold it, to test the smooth action, gave ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the Erie he approved the measure enabling corrupt operators to retain possession of the road for an indefinite period in defiance of the stockholders. It is probable that the real character and fatal tendency of his associates had not been revealed to him. Nevertheless, ambition seems to have blunted a strong, alert mind. The appointment of Ingraham, Cardozo, and Barnard to the General Term of the Supreme Court within the city of New York, if further evidence were needed, revealed the Governor's subserviency. To avoid the Tweed judges ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... day's work of a man accustomed to toil does not consist of 5 hours; it is a 10 hours' day for 300 days a year, and lasts all his life. Of course, when a man is harnessed to a machine, his health is soon undermined and his intelligence is blunted; but when man has the possibility of varying occupations, and especially of alternating manual with intellectual work, he can remain occupied without fatigue, and even with pleasure, for 10 or 12 hours a day. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... could walk alone. She limped. Instantly her companion's blunted emotions quickened into life. He caught her ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... just those of one's own race we hate most—that is when they have given us the reason for doing so—and this man has furnished me with such motives to hate him as can never be forgotten. Twenty years have not blunted my desire for vengeance; though, on account of the great distance that separated us, I supposed I should never find an opportunity of fulfilling my vow. Strange it is that two men, with relations like ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... powerfully attracted him.[2] To derive delight from what inflicts pain on any sentient creature revolted his conscience and offended his reason, because he perceived that the character which does not shrink from associating its own joy with the anguish of another, is either found or left mortally blunted to the finest impressions ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... fancy yields place to matured imagination. And if this was so with Wordsworth, whose childhood was so exceptional, still more shall we find it to be true of the average child. The early freshness of the senses may be blunted; the eager curiosity may be satiated; but where the nature remains unspoilt, the sense of wonder and of joy will extend its range and gain in ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... to death. The very thought blunted his faculties for a time; and he was conscious of little beyond a dull wonder. Could it be possible that the tragedy of his death was enacting in that peaceful, secluded nook? Could Nature be so indifferent or so unconscious if it ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... point of the war. You did more than to give the Allies the support to which, as a nation, our faith was pledged. You proved that our altruism, our pacific spirit, and our sense of justice have not blunted our virility ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... stone, said to have fallen from the cloud, which had the figure of a parallelopiped, blunted at the angles; and was as it were varnished, on the outside, with a black crust; and quite unlike any stones whatever of the soil of the country ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... found no place within her. The youth and tender constitution of the Lord of Avannes could not long endure this, and he began to grow so pale and lean that even without his mask he might well have passed unrecognised; yet the mad love that he had for this woman so blunted his understanding that he imagined he had strength to accomplish feats that even Hercules had tried in vain. However, being at last constrained by sickness and advised thereto by his lady, who was not so fond of him sick as sound, he asked his master's leave ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Honey, and began to loathe The taste of Sweetnesse, whereof a little More then a little, is by much too much. So when he had occasion to be seene, He was but as the Cuckow is in Iune, Heard, not regarded: seene but with such Eyes, As sicke and blunted with Communitie, Affoord no extraordinarie Gaze, Such as is bent on Sunne-like Maiestie, When it shines seldome in admiring Eyes: But rather drowz'd, and hung their eye-lids downe, Slept in his Face, and rendred such aspect As Cloudie men vse to doe to their aduersaries, Being ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... all,—all,—my lifelong hatred, my cherished purpose. Blank amazement was in the gaze that he turned upon me. I feared that impending death had blunted his senses, and that he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... players, with bucklers and blunted tulwars, played occasionally against each other, and offered to engage any of the bystanders. Occasionally the invitation would be accepted, but the sword players always proved too skilful for the rough soldiers, who retired discomfited, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... met with. This fine member of the Rutacean family was covered with pale-blue flowers. It produces a gum used especially by the English in the preparation of tooth-powder; but the hardness of its wood, which would have blunted our weapons, induced me to pass it by. A little farther on, l'Encuerado spied out a liquid-amber tree, valuable on account of the balsam that oozes from its branches when cut, which is burned by the Indians as incense. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... reinforced by a number of sympathizing comrades, returned, and furious at the escape of their victim, burned his dwelling to the ground. Drentell never forgot his ignominious repulse nor the wound he received at the hands of Haim Kusel. His own offence counted as naught, so blunted was his moral sense. To inflict misery upon a Jew was at all times considered meritorious, but for a Jew to so far forget himself as to assault an officer of the Czar, was a crime for which the whole race would one ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... mid the hedge of foemen his blunted sword he threw, And, laid like the oars of a longship the level war-shafts pressed On 'gainst the unshielded elder, and clashed amidst his breast, And dead he fell, thrust backward, and rang on the dead men's gear: But still ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... dollar an' sixty-seven cents, Casey,' he says to me, 'if the checks is all in, which I trust they air!'" Casey got out his plug of chewing tobacco and pried off a blunted corner. "An' hell Bill! I had that much in the bank when I started," ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... that was in her earlier maidenhood, With such a fervent flame of human love, Which being rudely blunted glanced and shot Only to holy things; to prayer and praise She gave herself, to fast ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... farther away from the gorge-like head of Toba with its aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles below Salmon Bay the island-dotted area of the Gulf of Georgia began. There a snowfall seldom endured long, and the teeth of the frost were blunted by eternal rains. There the logging camps worked full blast the year around, in sunshine and drizzle and fog. All that region bordering on the open sea bore a more genial aspect and supported more people and industries in scattered groups than could ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... doubt, counted for something. Her face was, perhaps, a little too full for beauty—the delicately coloured cheeks and the large smiling mouth. But her brown eyes were very fine, with very dark pupils, and marked eyebrows; and her nose and chin, with their soft, blunted lines, seemed to promise laughter and easy ways. She was very lightly and roundly made; and everything about her, her step, her sunburn, her freckles, her evident muscular strength, spoke of open-air life and physical exercise. Yet, for all this general aspect of a comely ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... even astonished us. We fancied we were standing before a rhetorical sophist, who for jest and practice knew how to give a fair appearance to the strangest things. Unfortunately this first impression became blunted but too soon; for at the end of every discourse, manage the thing as I would, the man came back again to the same theme. He was not to be held fast to older events, although they interested him,—although he had them present to his mind with their minutest circumstances. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... you will find it queer, take my word for it." This was earnestly uttered; and I felt at the same time a bony finger laid on my arm, that cut it sharply like a blunted knife. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... trenches. Immediately a host of miscreants—fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching opportunities to plunder—made a dash at the camp, but the women defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Captain Cranstoun, with a sneer of much bitterness, and pointing to the blunted and useless implements, "are the peetiful theengs on which hong the lives of our brave fallows. Nae doot the next dispotches will say a great deal aboot the eexcellent arrangements for attock; but if ye do not fall, Geerald, a hope ye'll make a proper repreesentation of the affair. As ye belong ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... curled close about his well-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when he passed across a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had been a wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy moustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end; a broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek bones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows, darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide and unwrinkled ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... preservation, and as only one hundred copies were printed, I hope it will rather excite than gratify curiosity on the subject of Lord Fountainhall. I expected to see you before I should have thought of publishing the Letter on the Revolution, and hoped to whet your almost blunted purpose about doing that and some other things yourself. I think a selection from the Decisions just on the contrary principle which was naturally enough adopted by the former publishers, rejected[12] ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... another speech from me. Harkye, sir. I know you of old for a ready scoundrel, but you never had a stout heart; and hard work, with (maybe) chains upon those legs of yours, and shorter food than when I "pinched" and "ground" you, has blunted your wits, or you would not come with such a tale as this to me. You a hold upon me! Keep it, or publish it to the world, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... it stands on a table covered with a cloth; and lemons like blunted fishes blob in the yellow water. It looks solid, like a jelly, in the thick glasses. Why can't they drink it without spilling it? Everybody spills it, and before the glass is handed back the last drops are ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... courage, else the circumstances under which he had worked for the past ten years—the sometimes perilous, sometimes downright charnel conditions left by the fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would have broken him long ago. But that same hard experience had honed rather than blunted the edge of his imagination, and the prospect of a close-quarters stalking of an unknown and patently hostile ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... not listening. He had even lost the sense of being watched in a sort of heavy tranquillity. His uneasiness, his exasperation, his scorn were blunted at last by all these trying hours. It seemed to him that now they were blunted for ever. "I am a match for them all," he thought, with a conviction too firm to be exulting. The woman revolutionist had ceased speaking; he was not looking at her; there was no one passing along the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... first appears. We perceive that the bevelled end-part consists of a series of truncated cones, fitting one into the other, with their wide base slightly projecting. This arrangement produces a sort of file, a sort of rasp with very much blunted teeth. When pressed on the slide, the thread divides into four pieces of unequal length. The two longer end in the toothed bevel. They come together in a very narrow groove, which receives the two other, rather shorter pieces. These both end in a point, which, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... they bore the body of the king within the wall. There they occupied a little mound in a sea of enemies, and there each man fought till he died, stabbing with his dagger when his sword was broken, and biting, and striking with the fist, when the dagger-point was blunted. Among them all, none made a better end than Eurytus. He was suffering from a disease of the eyes, but he bade them arm him, and lead him into the thick of the battle. Of another, Dieneces, it is told that hearing the arrows of the Persians would darken ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... to my father the whole secret of my peril. He was not very much shocked at what I had done, for poverty had perhaps blunted his sense of honor and principle. He was not very much shocked, but he was frightened, and he promised to do all in his power to assist ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... courage and power, which in earlier life would have fitted him for one of us. Earth holds but few to whom Nature has given the qualities that can bear the ordeal. But time and excess, that have quickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagination. I relinquish ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... her he loved, went like one in a dream. He hired a horse and a guide at the little hostelry, and rode swiftly towards the German frontier. But all was mechanical; his senses felt blunted; trees and houses and men moved by him like objects seen through a veil. His companions spoke to him twice, but he did not answer. Only once he cried out savagely, "Shall we never be out ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... remissness of the soldiers on duty, had been the proximate cause of the slaughter, I do believe that the death-warrant was unwittingly spoken. The man's bearing and demeanor are rough, even to coarseness, and his sensibilities probably blunted from having perpetually to listen to complaints and tales of wrong-doing, which he must perforce ignore; but I do not think his nature is harsh or cruel; the bark of Cerberus is much worse than the bite; and he is quite capable of benevolent ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... anything but love. But just now he was really thinking of matrimony, and had on this very morning acknowledged to himself that he had become sufficiently attached to Clara Van Siever to justify him in asking her to be his wife. In his present mood he was not anxious for one of those tilts with blunted swords and half-severed lances in the lists of Cupid of which Mrs Dobbs Broughton was so fond. Nevertheless, if she insisted that he should now descend into the arena and go through the paraphernalia of a mock tournament, he must obey her. It is the hardship of men that when called upon ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... departure from Cumberland would be powerless to snap asunder—the doubt whether we any of us saw the end as the end would really be—gathered more and more darkly over my mind. Poignant as it was, the sense of suffering caused by the miserable end of my brief, presumptuous love seemed to be blunted and deadened by the still stronger sense of something obscurely impending, something invisibly threatening, that Time ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... relief, at least to her mother's mind, when young Mrs. Harcourt returned, and without a word took up the reins again. No one disputed her claims. Now and then there would be a lazy protest from Audrey—a concealed sarcasm that fell blunted beneath the calm amiability of the elder sister. Geraldine was always perfectly good-tempered; the sense of propriety that guided all her actions never permitted her to grow hot in argument; and when a person is always in the right, as young Mrs. Harcourt believed herself to be, the small irritations ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... himself, which he took out of a drawer, and then, with a little flourish as to his own deserts in the matter of the guardianship of the money—a flourish neither unnatural nor unkindly—handed over to the lad both the letter and a cheque on a London bank, took his receipt, talked a little, but with a blunted memory, about the lad's father, gave him a little general business advice, asked whether his sister was still alive, and bade him good morning. Both were satisfied, and the young man left the office with the cheque lying warm in his pocket, looking slowly and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kind. The supper, at the close of the day was a brief function, but brutal as it was brief. It was something of a shock, the first night we were in camp, but at the close of my first day's work I found myself on a level with the grossest. The finer instincts were blunted or gone and I was in the clutch of a hunger like that of the jungle, where might and cunning rule. At a signal from the cook, we rushed in, crushed by main force into a seat, seized whatever was nearest and began. Scarcely ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... lover's housekeeper and lives with him on terms of the closest intimacy, the liaison takes a more serious character and there is a certain degree of affection or even love. However, all these concubinages are generally limited to a few weeks or months, so that the natural love of the woman becomes blunted by successive polyandry. It is always more or less a question ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... that at the beginning of the story the feeling of cold is soon blunted in the reader and becomes habitual, owing to the frequent repetition of the word "cold," and (2), the word ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... dictionary, which, being too heavy to be considered movable, occupied one corner of the table by itself: the earthen tobacco-jar, with a small piece chipped from the cover; pamphlets and books, standing or lying upon one another; heaps of rusty steel and blunted quill pens; a quire or two of blue and white letter-paper; a paper-knife, loose in the handle, but smooth of edge; a box of lucifer matches, and several burnt ends; an extra pipe or two; the professor's straw hat; a brass rack for holding ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... of sin, and feel an anxious desire to approve yourself as a faithful servant to your heavenly Master. I do not, therefore, suppose that at present any temptation would induce you to incur the guilt of a deliberate falsehood. The perception of moral evil may, however, be so blunted by habits of mere carelessness, that I should have no dependence on your adhering for many future years to even this degree of plain, downright truth, unless those habits are decidedly broken through. But do not, from this, imagine that I consider a distinct, decided falsehood more, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... forget: This visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. But, look, amazement on thy mother sits: O, step between her and her fighting soul. Speak ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... The heavy, space-blunted report of the circling horseman's gun—and Overland calmly spat out the sand that flitted across his lips. The rider had ventured a shot and had ridden behind ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... on noisy contemporary fiction, his finer perception blunted by the daily and raucous yell of the New York press, his imagination too long over-strained by Broadway drama and now flaccid and incapable of further response to its leering or shrieking appeal, the din of twentieth-century ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... fittest thing we have. Trousers are a thing of yesterday with us, but our top-hat carries us back to the Wars of the Roses and beyond. It is not its beauty that explains it. I have never heard any one deny that it is ugly, though custom may have blunted our sense of its ugliness. It is not its utility. I have never heard any one claim that this strange cylinder had that quality. It is not its comfort It is stiff, it is heavy, it is unmanageable in a wind and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... at the boy with growing earnestness. It was not reassuring to consider the possibility of his boy growing up with blunted ideals, with feeble convictions and a faint sense of the eternal difference between sharp cut right and wrong. The most sorrowful experience in Paul Douglas's life might be coming to him at this time if he should find his own son lacking in the real essentials ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... commonwealth fell in the great crash of the French Revolution. Their beneficial effects were more visible now—sustained and bound together as the nation was by the sense of a common danger, and by the consciousness of its daily developing strength—than at a later day when prosperity and luxury had blunted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He shewed them, that zeal and purity might be expressed and ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... fine moral sense of James Lewis was blunted. He had taken an evil counselor into his heart, stimulated a spirit of covetousness—latent in almost every mind—which caused him to desire the possession of things beyond his ability ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... much of published materials, and Sanskrit MSS. also are so easily obtained from India, that much might be done in England, or in France, or in Germany—much that would be of interest not only to Oriental scholars, but to all philosophers whose powers of independent appreciation are not entirely blunted by their study of Plato and Aristotle, of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... breast the slope with fearless heart and dauntless soul; and as soon as she had advanced a few steps a hubbub of voices broke out all around her, but she heard not a sound, by reason of her hearing being blunted by the cotton-wool. Then hideous cries arose with horrid din, still she heard them not; and at last they grew to a storm of shouts and shrieks and groans and moans flavoured with foul language such as shameless women use when railing one at other. She caught now and then an echo of the sounds ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... once by Kenneth Malcolm, a favourite partner, boy though he was. But the keen edge of her interest was blunted. She wanted one thing only to be alone with Theo; to set his mind at rest: and those 'separated selves,' who drew her like nothing else on earth, became of a sudden mere voluble obstructions ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "As to the flatterers you speak of and their ingratitude, I shall deal with them another time, and they will meet with their due punishment as soon as I have had my thunderbolt repaired. The two largest darts of it were broken and blunted the other day when I got in a rage and flung it at the sophist Anaxagoras, who was trying to make his disciples believe that we gods do not exist at all. However, I missed him, for Pericles held his hand over him, but the bolt struck the temple of the Dioscuri and set ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... on board the other vessels in which he afterwards served did not differ greatly from that which he had left; but he had become accustomed to it, and his sensibilities were blunted by long habit. It was not until some four years had thus passed that he again began to feel a longing for Europe—he would not acknowledge to himself that it was Norway exactly that he wanted to see again;—and after looking out then for some time for a suitable ship ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... punished. A farmer who is careless with his dikes and allows the water to run through flood his neighbor's land must restore the value of the grain he has damaged. The owner of a vicious ox which has gored a man must pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the animal and had not blunted its horns. A builder who puts up a shaky house which afterwards collapses and kills the tenant is himself to be put to death. On the other hand, the code has some rude features. Punishments were severe. For injuries to the body there was the simple rule ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... reminded me of a dog and a wild cat, so nimble were the boy's springs, and so fierce his attacks. Lucinus fairly lost his temper at last, and I stopped the fight, for although they fought with blunted weapons, he might well have injured the lad badly with a downright cut, and that would have meant ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... if it had been, the presence of the queen, Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him with some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Milt, when the sting and faith of romance were blunted, would engage in Great Propositions, and fight for the recognition of his—toothpicks. Would his creations be favorites in the best lunch rooms? ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... quarrel with her mother had been very serious, each swearing that under no circumstances would she again consent to live with the other. The daughter of course knew that the mother would receive her again should she ask to be received. But in such case she must go back with shortened pinions and blunted beak. Her sojourn with Mrs. Green was to last for one month, and at the end of that time she must seek for a home. If she put John Morton's legacy out to interest, she would now be mistress of a small ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... sons of the Lion! your watch is the wild-lands, The garb of the Highlands is mingled with blue, Though the target and bosses are bright in the Highlands, The axe in your hands might be blunted well, too. Then forward—and see ye be huntsmen true, And, as erst the red deer felling, So fell ye the Gaul, and so strike ye all The tribes in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a dull and blunted perception that some great calamity had overtaken me. I was in my mother's dressing-room, and Julia was holding to my nostrils some sharp essence, which had penetrated to the brain and brought back consciousness. My father was sitting by the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society; ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... experiment. David's heart waxed proud within him that he had walked out of Framley to the regeneration of a country. He likened himself to Joseph, son of Jacob; and at once the fineness of his first purposes became blunted. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
