"Bungled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away rather brusquely, leaving him disconsolate and uneasy. He felt that he had bungled matters; but before he had time to consider Berenice appeared, and joined him ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... George unrolled it, and fastened one end over the nose of the boat. Harris stood in the middle to take it from George and roll it on to me, and I kept by the stern to receive it. It was a long time coming down to me. George did his part all right, but it was new work to Harris, and he bungled it. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... like poison and brimstone to me. An ugly, contraband knave, smuggled into the world by some lewd prank of the devil—with his malicious little pig's eyes, foxy hair, and nut-cracker chin, just as if Nature, enraged at such a bungled piece of goods, had seized the ugly monster by it, and flung him aside. No! rather than throw away my daughter on a vagabond like ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "If we have bungled our lives, made grave mistakes, it's better to abide by them courageously than defy—well, the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Billy! What are you monkeying about?" said the doctor quite crossly. He was anxious to escape from a position that had become intolerable to him. For months he had been looking forward to this meeting and now he had bungled it. In the first place he had begun by not knowing the girl who for three years and more had been in his dreams day and night, then he had carried himself like a schoolboy in her presence, and lastly had frightened her almost to death by his clumsy announcement ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... Fifteen, after a poor start, suddenly awoke to the fact that this was not going to be the conventional massacre by any means. The First had scored an unconverted try five minutes after the kick-off, and it was after this that the Second began to get together. The school back bungled the drop out badly, and had to find touch in his own twenty-five, and after that it was anyone's game. The scrums were a treat to behold. Payne was a monument of strength. Time after time the Second had the ball out to their three-quarters, and just after half-time Bowden slipped through ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... day. The answer named a day of the week and a day of the month which did not agree; whereupon Mr. Knowles wrote by the safer medium of the post for an explanation, thinking that the post-office clerks must have bungled the message, and received ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the sun was sinking over the beautiful harbor of Singapore—that most valuable strategic Gate of the Far East, where Crown Colonial administration, however, is allowed by a lethargic British Government to become more and more bungled every year—we settled down on board the French mail steamer Nera, bound for Shanghai. My friends, good fellows, in reluctantly speeding me on my way, prophesied that this would prove to be my last long voyage to a last long ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... if nature threw my body In so perverse a mould? yet when she cast Her envious hand upon my supple joints, Unable to resist, and rumpled them On heaps in their dark lodging, to revenge Her bungled work, she stampt my mind more fair; And as from chaos, huddled and deformed, The god struck fire, and lighted up the lamps That beautify the sky, so he informed This ill-shaped body with a daring soul; And, making less than ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... you and all I wanted to do for you, that I regarded her as a very dear friend, nothing more. And because I looked upon her this way, I foolishly went to her once to confess my love for another; her dearest and most intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my meaning and thought I was speaking of herself and in a way she accepted me; and before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have never seen her since; but I shall never forget the eyes which looked at me so gladly, smiting me so cruelly ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the full significance and possibilities of his discovery—had he done so the devils would not have bungled matters so often, and no embarrassing confessions would have been forthcoming. But he saw clearly enough that he had in his hand a mighty weapon against his rival, and history has recorded the manner and effectiveness ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... it brings and the injury to the firm and to Mr. Eggleston, for I don't forget he's my partner. I didn't think it would end in ruin. I bungled it badly, maybe." ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a glance,—things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I am right! ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... has done for him. The publication of the Reminiscences is indeed a mystery to me: for I should [have] thought that, even in a mercantile point of view, it would indispose others, as me it did, to the Biography. But Iago must have bungled in his work so far as I, for one, am concerned, if the result is such as I find it—or unless I am very obtuse indeed. So I tell Mr. Norton; who is about to edit Carlyle's Letters to Emerson, and whom I should ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... of Festubert, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, and all minor attacks which led to little salients, were but experimental adventures in the science of slaughter, badly bungled in our laboratories. They had no meaning apart from providing those mistakes by which men learn; ghastly mistakes, burning more than the fingers of life's children. They were only diversions of impatience in the monotonous routine of trench warfare ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... pleasantries aside, we must look ourselves over carefully before we see our New York friend. He must not find us with unclean linen. Elias, I'm worried, I'll confess, but I'm not afraid. Is there anything that we have bungled?" ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... by the desire to convince his servant that his speculations were groundless, he made a great to-do over the imposed task of hanging the pictures, jesting merrily about the possibility of their heads being snapped off by Mistress Viola if she popped in the next morning to find that they had bungled ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... but she could be trusted. Perhaps after all the man had escaped that night. Perhaps it was this very person who had created the furore at the meeting. Who was he? How did he get in? Why were proper steps not taken to safeguard the room against all possibilities of this nature? Bah! Anderson had bungled the thing from the start. He was a boy sent on ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... motive was not humanitarian. He knew that if he could seize the headman's stronghold and effectively occupy the surrounding country, we should stay there and after a protest or two the French would have to acquiesce. As it happened, he bungled the business, and, worst of all, had to be extricated by the people he meant to outwit. They led him politely but very firmly across the frontier, and now it's our part to express our regret and promise to avoid ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... went back to his seat, sobbing with the hysterical weakness of a sick man. "He's bungled the business, Colonel," he said bitterly. "Oh, God! If you ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... just second man from now on. Maybe not even second man. You tried out this dictator business and you bungled it. You went soft. You're taking orders from me from now on. No questions, no back talk. You do as I say and maybe you won't ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... the packing room of the flour mill with the master's eye, he was in the cooperage, the center of a group round one of the hooping machines. It had got out of gear, and the workman had bungled in shutting off power; the result was chaos that threatened to stop the whole department for the rest of the day. Ranger brushed away the wrangling tinkerers and examined the machine. After grasping the problem in all its details, he threw himself flat upon his ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... all on account of your disposal of the rugs, for the moment you had left a very handsome young lady came along, and, looking at me, said, with such a pleasant smile, 'Why, what a pretty rug you have there; but how the steward has bungled it about you! Let me fix it,' and with that she gave it a touch here and a smooth down there, and the result was really so nice that I hated to go down to breakfast. It is a pity you went away so quickly yesterday morning. You might have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Peters was a Prince, and a Knight, and a Lover, and a Sweetheart, and her Man; she had just agreed to all this with her soul, less than an hour ago under the red haw. No wonder she was late, no wonder she spilled and smeared; and red of face she blundered and bungled, for the first time in her life. Then in came Kate. She must lose no time, the corn must be finished before it rained. She must hurry—for the first time dinner was late, while Polly was messing ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and he tried to remind him of their former meeting. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult for him to talk of memories so intimate; now it was torture for him. He bungled his sentences, could not find words, said absurd things which made him blush. Hassler let him flounder on and never ceased to look at him with his vague, indifferent eyes. When Christophe had reached the end of his story, Hassler went on rocking his knee in silence for a moment, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... He bungled through the Latin in a grating irresolute sort of a way, with several false quantities, for each of which the next boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated as ablatives, and perfects ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Barjols' second; you are mine. Arrange this affair between you. Only," added the young man, pressing the Englishman's hand and looking fixedly at him, "see that it holds a chance of certain death for one of us. Otherwise I shall complain that it has been bungled." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the place of this man, was simply stagnation, for not one of the three men was better than his fellows, and there were but vague points of difference between them; in such wise that the new master bungled the very same work as the previous one had bungled, forgetful, perforce, of programmes and promises as soon as ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... gone to the Council, and ring up again. This time he would probably get the nurse and confide to her his number in Mantua. Next morning Juliet and her nurse had only to drop in at the nearest drug store, and confide to Romeo the whole plot which Balthazar so sadly bungled. All that was needed was a telephone, and Romeo would have understood that Juliet was only feigning death for the sake ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... distinguished, although I suppose that he isn't really handsome—at least, not like Dr. Bentley. He isn't so wonderful as Don; but I think that he is more understanding. He seemed to realize just how I felt this morning, and he was as sweet and considerate as a woman when I bungled things awfully in the operating room. The head nurse gave me a deserved call down, however, and it was perhaps just as well that she did, for my mind needed to be 'brought back.' Only my body was in the hospital, and the real me, as Mr. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... manner bungled the job? Or had he passed it up? He must find out how much the greener knew. The boss guessed that if the other had unearthed the plot, he would ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... bunglers if it is so," said the archdeacon; "and indeed, to tell the truth, I think you have bungled it. At any rate, you must own this; you have not done the half what ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... "I don't know whither this pretence of yours is designed to lead you, but I know well whither it will lead myself— namely, with this hoe of mine, to complete the work which I bungled in Florence. And to the achievement of that I shall instantly proceed, unless you get up from your polluted knees and tell me your real and present business ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... regarded Tom at that moment with a puzzled observation, as if she wondered if she had seen him before; and now, as Tom hesitated and bungled at the "Miss Smith," Peggy's own manner showed signs of consciousness, if not of embarrassment. Oh, oh! what could it all mean but that he had known everything from the first? "And I fancied at the first he acted as he did because he thought she wasn't quite fine enough; and all the time he knew ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... laugh, you fool?' cried his cousin, 'you lose more than I. You've bungled it worse than even I did. If you had a spark of feeling, you would be shaking in your boots with vexation. But I'll tell you one thing—I'll have that eight hundred pound—I'll have that and go to Swan River—that's mine, anyway, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... right to prosecute, but——" He did not state his antithesis. They had come to the crux which Crashaw had wished to avoid. He had no influence with the committee of the L.E.A., and Challis's recommendation would have much weight. Crashaw intended that Victor Stott should attend school, but he had bungled his preliminaries; he had rested on his own authority, and forgotten that Challis had little respect for that influence. Conciliation was the only card ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... weaved his fantastic web. His editor told him he was engaged to report football, not to play it with the paper. But he couldn't help it. He had got, he said, the ensanguined habit. Still, I was not to imagine that he bungled things. He jolly well knew his way about. In his wildest flights there was a homing impulse; he was preparing a place for himself all the time (that it happened to be my place didn't seem to afflict him in the least). Like St. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... character he gained the command of our respect. Though we agreed on deck that he had bungled his story, it impressed us; we felt less able to cope with him, and less willing to encounter ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... orders, the underworld of the ancient world, and began seeking power among barbarian peoples, it no longer had to deal with exhausted men, but with men still inwardly savage and capable of self-torture—in brief, strong men, but bungled men. Here, unlike in the case of the Buddhists, the cause of discontent with self, suffering through self, is not merely a general sensitiveness and susceptibility to pain, but, on the contrary, an inordinate thirst for inflicting ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... chagrin did Karl and Caspar behold the spectacle of the bearcoot's departure; and for a while they were under the impression that Ossaroo had bungled the business with which he had ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... be at all surprised if you did," said Furneaux. "You have the luck of a Carnegie. Look at the way you bungled that affair of Lady Morris's diamonds, until you happened to see her maid meeting Gentleman George at the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... in his hands and have bungled it! To have been surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... annoyance. "I don't want you to; I don't, myself. I've bungled the matter as I might have known I would. I was trying to put into words an undefined uneasiness of mine, a quite formless desire to have you possessed of the whole case as it had come up in my mind. I've made a mess of it," said Ferris rising, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... "It's I who bungled, the other day, when I suggested your giving Mrs Polsue a duplicate list of the names and addresses. I thought it would please her and save you half the secretarial labour; and now it appears that ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... your father was appointed. The only trouble was that Jane, bright and clever as she is, bungled ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... perhaps unintended complaint, have put me completely beside myself again. It has been troubling me for over a year and I should like to get clear out of here. Nothing pleases me any more. The more distinctions I receive the more I feel that it is all vanity. My life is bungled, and so I have thought to myself I ought to have nothing more to do with strivings and vanities, and ought to be able to employ my pedagogical inclinations, which after all are my most characteristic quality, as a superintendent of public morals. It would not be anything new. If the plan ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to pursue carriers, but the doves had a fair start and might be able to get away. The two birds of prey which the men brought were moreover not the type of hawk used especially to hunt pigeons, but young falcons or tercels. The men bungled in handling them; they evidently belonged to the castle, not to the troop. When they finally rose into the air, Pere Azuli, the veteran blue pigeon, and Rien-du-Tout, the little dun-colored stray Peirol had ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... activities and indefatigable powers. But it had found itself without materials for work. Of the scholastic philosophy and the chivalric poetry of the Middle Ages there remained but little that could be utilized: the few bungled formulae, the few half-obsolete rhymes still remaining, were as unintelligible, in their spirit of feudalism and monasticism and mysticism, as were the Angevin English and the monkish Latin in which they were written to these men of the sixteenth century. All the intellectual ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee |
