"Fizzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bertram gets everybody," he said. Isabelle felt no inclination to discuss with Cairy her talk about neurasthenia and religion. So their chatter drifted from the people they had seen to Cairy himself, his last play, "which was a rank fizzle," and the plan of the new one. One got on fast and far with Cairy, if one were a woman and felt his charm. By the time they had reached the hotel, he was counselling Isabelle most wisely how she should ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... man present had the public spirit to set 'em up," lamented the judge. "They drank in pairs, and I'd blistered my throat at their damn jail-raising! What sort of a fizzle would it have been if I hadn't been on hand to impart distinction ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... them an earlier visit; for the time of the uprising, it will be remembered, had been fixed for about the middle of August. The time assigned arrived, but "all was quiet on the Potomac," and along the placid and fragrant Chicago. It was a complete fizzle, but not from want of harmonious action on the part of the Copperheads of the Northwest, but to the chagrin of the Rebel government, Gen. Price failed to make his appearance in the vicinity of St. Louis, or Buckner about Louisville. The ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... would at least shake him out of his soft and well-lined rut. Indeed, Io was frank enough with herself to admit that a perverse desire to explode a bomb under her imperturbable and too-assured suitor had been an element in her projected elopement. Never would that bomb explode. It would not even fizzle enough to alarm Eyre or her family. For not a soul knew of the frustrated scheme, except Holmesley and the reliable friend in Paradiso whom she was to visit; not her father, Sims Welland, traveling in Europe on business, nor her aunt, Mrs. Thatcher Forbes, in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lobby, the library, or the smoke-room, rather than listen to a debater whose rise a few months ago would have meant a general and excited incursion of everybody that could hear. Starting thus, Mr. Balfour made the worst of a bad case, his speech was a failure, and as the American would put it, a fizzle; ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... She wrote the following hurried note from Hartford in 1862, which gives some idea of her occupations and frame of mind: "I am going to Washington to see the heads of departments myself, and to satisfy myself that I may refer to the Emancipation Proclamation as a reality and a substance, not a fizzle out at the little end of the horn, as I should be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in Europe to any such impotent conclusion.... I mean to have a talk with 'Father Abraham' ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... what I ought to receive," he said, with surly grimace. "Here I've got to go and look up some one else, and she made the performance fizzle out to-night, besides being a deal of trouble all along ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... a generalization—and you must look at it that way. In reality society is infinitely complex, and the ramifications and possibilities are endless. It can do a lot more things than fizzle or go boom. Pressure of population, war or persecution patterns can cause waves of immigration. Plant and animal species can be wiped out by momentary needs or fashions. Remember the fate of the passenger pigeon ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... get along very well at school —instead of getting his lessons he drew pictures, and thirty years ago such conduct was proof of total depravity. Like the amateur blacksmith who started to make a horseshoe and finally contented himself with a fizzle, the Abbeys gave up theology and law, and decided that if Edwin became a good printer it would be enough. And then, how often printers became writers—then editors and finally proprietors! Edwin might yet own the "Ledger" and have a collection of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... have us frightening his relatives and friends, telling every one that he is two. Keep out of his way so that he shall have to come here, and to send word first that he is coming. I'll arrange a scene for him with his Sonia. It may be sublime, and again it may be a fizzle. One way or the other, if Sonia says so, we'll fly to the west out of his ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... play football at college? You are so tall. Fairy's tall, too. Fairy's very grand-looking. I've tried my best to eat lots, and exercise, and make myself bigger, but—I am a fizzle." ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... A small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs. See FIZZLE. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... sensation when you're half way between your parapet and theirs—other fellows say they've felt it too—when you're afraid it (the feeling) should fizzle out before you get there. But it doesn't. It grows more and more so, simply swinging you on to them, and that swing makes up for all the rotten times put together. You needn't be sorry for us. It's ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... the one which by its logic, its clearness, and its humor, did most for the Whig cause. "Gentlemen inform me," says one Boston reporter, who came too late for the exercises, "that it was one of the best speeches ever heard in Worcester, and that several Whigs who had gone off on the Free Soil fizzle have come back again ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... out at six A. M., roaming about the campus with the Alfalfa Delt pin on his necktie. The next night the Chi Yi Sighs took him on for one hundred and seventeen rounds in their brand new lodge, which had a sheet-iron initiation den. The whole thing was a fizzle. When we looked Ole over the next morning we couldn't find so much as a scratch on him. He was wearing the Chi Yi pin beside the Alfalfa Delt pin, and he was as happy as a baby with a bottle of ink. There were nine broken window-lights in the Chi Yi lodge, and we heard in a ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... I've almost a notion to try it!" Mr. Ranny's eyes were shining. "Do you believe I could pull it off, Quin? I've made such a darned fizzle of things in the past that I'm almost afraid to kick over the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... a different kind of work. It is in this light that you must try and regard it, son. I want to make a man of you if I can. I must make a man of you. You are the only child I have, and if I stand by and allow you to make a fizzle of your life I shall be quite as much to blame as you. Remember that unhappy as you are this affair ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... displaying the least concern. "Wal, I don't know. Y' see this thing's li'ble to fizzle some. We've had 'em before. Guess my missis an' the gal'll stay right here by us. I 'low I feel they're safer wi' us. Mebbe it's jest a notion. If things gits hummin' I'd say come right along over an' share in wi' us. Y' see if ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... and Hen Lacomb!" cried Jack, who seemed to have acquired a new boldness. "I charge you with plotting to make a fizzle of the shipwreck these picture people planned. You were going to pretend the vessel was sinking, before the time set for the pictures, and you were going to get them to abandon the schooner. Then you and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... and if this stupid business of dying had to be gone through I wanted to do it here in this old house. I wanted a few weeks or months of peace and quiet and h-happiness." Her voice broke, then steadied again. "Golly—what a fizzle!" She shivered. "This afternoon I got my—notice! How I wished you were here! I came up to my room, burned that diary—you snooped just in time, Peter!—and wrote two letters. I didn't dare leave the house to mail them. I might have dropped ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... play, and, when it comes to oratory, they've got me lashed to a pole; but they're always in debt. They never get anything for what they do. In other words, young man, they are like a sky-rocket without a stick,—plenty of brilliancy, but no direction, and they blow up and fizzle all over ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on the rail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in the moonlight, and shouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... said the Secretary of War, "that it is a damned fizzle. It means that he doesn't intend to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... went on, "I really want to do some good with it, and I've tried in lots of ways and I've never hit it off. I should just like to tell you about some of the things I've made a fizzle of in the last year,—if it wouldn't ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... times man has attempted to govern and shape the destinies of all things living on this earth. He has made of his reign a miserable fizzle. It is our turn ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... a horse is different, you never get tired of a good one. He don't fizzle out1 like the rest. You like him better and better every day. He seems a part of yourself; he is your better half, your 'halter hego' as I heard a cockney once ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to Shorty and I won't but what I will do is play a joke on him right back only I will make it a good one and not no fizzle like ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... anyone until I see what I can do," she decided. "I'd love to surprise Francis Edward David Carson Kendall, otherwise known as Frad, but I'll wait till I know whether it is to be the sort of surprise he'd welcome before I spring it on him. He wouldn't appreciate a hideous fizzle, like some of those we saw, and I'd hate to inflict a newly discovered twin brother with anything ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... better protection of the citizens, had issued orders that a battery of artillery, a company of engineers, with the 2nd Battalion, 17th Regiment, be held in readiness to proceed to St. Andrews as soon as transport was available. We did not expect anything but a fizzle. However, it was a change, and, I ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... Colfax, as the man entered, "ye made a rare fizzle of a piece of business some weeks ago. Ye ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the bloom of his simplicity, and to elevate him into an oracle. I suppose this is inevitable as soon as one goes into print; and Phelps has gone into print in the local papers. He has been bitten with the literary "git up." Justly regarding most of the Adirondack literature as a "perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work, and written much on the natural history of his region. Long ago he made a large map of the mountain country; and, until recent surveys, it was the only one that could lay any claim to accuracy. His history is no doubt original in form, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all but completely gone to pieces," Reade confided to his chum. "Say, but I'm glad Mr. Newnham himself isn't the one who has to get the road through in time. If it rested with him I'm afraid he'd fizzle. But we'll pull it through, Harry, old chum—-we'll pull ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... mad, and all the time I felt like one of these whizzing rockets that go rushing through the air and die out in a miserable little fizzle at the end. I can stand it in the daytime, but at night I almost go crazy. And you have no idea how many women do lose their minds out here. Nearly every year some poor insane creature has to be shipped home. You ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... they never make money. They're always in debt. They never get anything for what they do. In other words, young man, they are like a sky rocket without a stick—plenty of brilliancy, but no direction. They blow up and fizzle all ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... of the Fenian leaders was killed in the late Frontier Fizzle, yet many of them are reported as being badly wounded—as to their feelings. General O'NEIL'S feelings are dreadfully hurt by the ignominy of a constable and a cell, which was a bad Cell for a Celt. The feelings of General GLEASON (and they must be multitudinous, since ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... Joe had made a fizzle of it Willard might have forgiven him, but Joe, after a few rather poor balls, tightened up and struck out several men neatly, though they were not ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... course!" I can hear you sneer. "Just another of Biddy's emotional interests—bound to fizzle out before very long." But this is a good deal more than an emotional interest, and I don't think it will fizzle out so quickly. For one thing, THIS man is quite different from all the other men I've ever ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... put thee into service to be wiper to Don Pedro de Castile; wipe, only wipe, and no more. The poor fox wiped as hard as he could, here and there, within and without; but the false old trot did so fizzle and fist that she stunk like a hundred devils, which put the poor fox to a great deal of ill ease, for he knew not to what side to turn himself to escape the unsavoury perfume of this old woman's postern blasts. And whilst to that effect ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... been on the Brule long enough to vote, office seekers kept coming through, asking the indorsement of The Wand. "It's no wonder the men we elect to run things make such a fizzle when they get into office," Ma Wagor snorted one day with impatience; "they wear themselves plumb ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... scoffing at Duespeptos and all sound hygiene, was aiming to make of this terrestrial ball one illimitable fry turned over and well done,—a fry ever doing and never done, which should simmer and fizzle on eternally down the ages. An abstract fry—let me here record it—suits me passing well; yet I like not the concrete and personal broil. I trip gayly to a feast, prepared to eat, but not, as in the supper of Polonius, to be eaten. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... want to give it a good trial, Ned, as we did from the tower," said Tom. "Though I don't believe there'll be a fizzle this time." ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... blue, and beaten men on that dusty train that dusty day, Dr. Warren Slavens, late of Missouri, was without question the deepest down in the quagmire of failure. He hated himself for the fizzle that he had made of it, and he hated the world that would not open the gates and give him one straight dash for the goal ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... has been expressed by our elderly barber in Fleet Street. At the end of July, 1914, he told me confidentially, as he snipped the short hairs at the back of my head, that there was going to be no war; the whole thing was just going to fizzle out. Now he says it is going to be a very, very long business, as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... - rather late days, and I still suspect I had somehow offended you; however, all's well that ends well, and I am glad I am forgiven - did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of Dodd? He was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him. And then the problem that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist can DO NOTHING ELSE? is one that continually exercises myself. He cannot: granted. But ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you're wanted very bad, that you're just the scamp to figure in a lot of story books; I wonder whether some simpleton won't undertake to use you that way. The only trouble will be that if he invents yarns about you, he'll make a fizzle of it, and, if he tells the truth, he will hardly be believed; but," added the youth, as if the mantle of prophecy had fallen on him, "it will depend a good deal on who it is that writes your life. Like enough it will be some fellow who won't be credited, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... ran in. "Fairy wants to know if you are getting stage fright, Lark? My, you do look nice! Now, for goodness' sake, Lark, remember the parsonage, and don't make a fizzle of it." ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... induce me to go there again," she declared, "and I consider myself very fortunate to have escaped from it with my life. It 's filled with all sorts of horrible things, that fizzle up and go off, or that make you turn some dreadful color if you look at them. I expect to hear a great clap some day, and half an hour afterward to see Gordon brought home in several hundred small pieces, put up in a dozen little bottles. I got a horrid little stain in the middle ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... second.—The Reverend Alonzo Fizzle had preached his farewell-sermon to his disconsolate people in Drowsytown. The next morning, Monday, he was strolling musingly along a silent road among the melancholy woods. The pastor of a neighboring flock, the Reverend Darius Dizzle, was driving by in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... effervescence, fermentation; bubbling &c v.. nebula; cloudliness &c (opacity) 426 [Obs.]; nebulosity &c (dimness) 422. V. bubble, boil, foam, froth, mantle, sparkle, guggle^, gurgle; effervesce, ferment, fizzle. Adj. bubbling &c v.; frothy, nappy^, effervescent, sparkling, mousseux [Fr.], frothy [Fr.Tr.], up. cloudy &c n.; thunderheaded^; vaporous, nebulous, overcast. Phr. the lowring element scowls o'er ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rather high game, violating international law every day. ... England's attempt to starve Germany has been a fizzle. Germany will be better off this summer than she was two years ago, have more food on hand. There are no more men in Germany outside of the Army. Practically every one has been called out who could carry a gun, but the women are running the mills and the prisoners are tilling the farms. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... start asking questions like that you've got to be ready to run. And if it fizzles out you've lost all chance of coming back for a second try. That could fizzle out because they simply deny the validity of all ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... most profane fits when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and addressing no one in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, to the result of his cogitations, observed that "it was considerable of a fizzle." ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various |
