"Blench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first, Hamlet, it is impossible to deny, habitually assumes, without any questioning, that he ought to avenge his father. Even when he doubts, or thinks that he doubts, the honesty of the Ghost, he expresses no doubt as to what his duty will be if the Ghost turns out honest: 'If he but blench I know my course.' In the two soliloquies where he reviews his position (II. ii., 'O what a rogue and peasant slave am I,' and IV. iv., 'How all occasions do inform against me') he reproaches himself bitterly for the neglect of his duty. When he reflects on the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... two cohorts were from out the French Composed; and after those a third was formed: The vassals of Baviere—Their numbers mount To thirty thousand knights who ne'er would blench Before the foe. Beneath the sky live not A people dearer to the heart of Carle, Save those of France, the conquerors of realms. The Count Ogier de Danemarche, the brave, Will lead—What beauty sits ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... place? Where had he come from? How had he been hidden all these years? What was all this frenzy of rejoicing, this blare of trumpets, these ranks of grim men with weapons in their hands? The stunning truth fell on her; but, though she felt that all was lost, not a whit did she blench, but fronted them all as proudly as ever. One cannot but admire the dauntless woman, 'magnificent in sin.' But her cry of 'Treason! treason!' brought none to her side. As she stood solitary there, she must have felt that her day was over, and that nothing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the world? To think. I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... had been taken from the lips of Mrs Gater, housekeeper at Sneyd Hall. She had related to a reporter how, upon going into the state suite before retiring for the night, she had surprised a burglar of Herculean physique and Titanic proportions. Fortunately she knew her duty, and did not blench. The burglar had threatened her with a revolver, and then, finding such bluff futile, had deliberately jumped through a large plate-glass window and vanished. Mrs Gater could not conceive how the fellow had "effected an entrance." (According to the reporter, Mrs ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... everything is over, and it can never do any good." She gave a dry sob, and cast upon him a look of keen reproach, which he knew he deserved. "I was engaged to him once. Or," she added, as if she could not bear to see him blench, "he could think so. It was the year after you were ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... he was triumphant, loving him with a deep, passionate devotion, as honourable to them as it was precious to him. I have seen him cry like a child at evidences of their love for him, he whose courage no danger could daunt, and who was never seen to blench before hatred nor change his stern immobility in the face of his foes. Iron to enmity, he was soft as a woman to kindness; unbending as steel to pressure, he was ductile as wax to love. John Stuart Mill had the insight in 1868 to see his value, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... of the worst lines in mere expression. 'Blench' is perhaps miswritten for 'blanch;' if not, I don't understand the word. Blench signifies to flinch. If 'blanch' be the word, the next ought to be 'hair.' You cannot here use brow for the hair upon it, because a white brow or forehead is ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... trying circumstances. Did not visibly blench; answered, in off-hand manner, that London Police had had opportunity of substituting the silent boot for those in ordinary use, and had not availed themselves of it. Some had objected on domestic grounds. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... cried Giles; "do ye blench before this churlish carrion? Aha! ye shall see the trees bear many such hereabouts. Get up, my qualmish, maid-like youth; he ne'er shall injure thee nor any man again—save by the nose—faugh! Rise, rise and let us ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... it haue no tongue, will speake With most myraculous Organ.[2] Ile haue these Players, Play something like the murder of my Father, Before mine Vnkle. Ile obserue his lookes, [Sidenote: 137] Ile tent him to the quicke: If he but blench[3] [Sidenote: if a doe blench] I know my course. The Spirit that I haue seene [Sidenote: 48] May[4] be the Diuell, and the Diuel hath power [Sidenote: May be a deale, and the deale] T'assume a pleasing shape, yea and perhaps Out of my Weaknesse, and my Melancholly,[5] As he is very potent with ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... him to the chamber above the chapel. If that ye can swear your innocency with a good solid oath and an assured countenance, it is well; the lad will be at peace a little, and I will spare him. If that ye stammer or blench, or anyways boggle at the swearing, he will not believe you; and, by the mass, he shall die. There ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down on Agnes, and its rays nestled between the ringlets and her downy cheek, but its cold beams could not blench the rosy hue, that mounted to her blue veined temples, as Mr. Preston severed the fragrant exotic from its stem, and carefully pressed it between the leaves of his tablets. Many such words followed, and I walked unheeded beside them, as they lingered in this lovely place. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... bravos. At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from the shambles. Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those days—gone by now, thank God!—and whispered his name when they spoke of assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not blench before a Guise, nor blush before ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... more merrily, If my eyes were the only optics gazing, Upon a feat that's no doubt most amazing; The Thames' mouth occupied by a fine fleet! The sight—as the fleet's mine—of course is sweet, But there's one thought that rather makes me blench:— Supposing that FREMANTLE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot; The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown—yet ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... purity and whiteness of my sheets,— Which to preserve is sleep; which being spotted Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps; Give scandal to the blood o' the prince, my son,— Who I do think is mine, and love as mine,— Without ripe moving to't?—Would I do this? Could man so blench? ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... of approval, and went struggling and surging toward the prisoner, and closed around him, shouting, "Fire! fire's the ticket!" They dragged him to the horse-post, backed him against it, chained him to it, and piled wood and pine cones around him waist-deep. Still the strong face did not blench, and still the scornful smile ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... banquet! Not for all the plotters That ever shook a kingdom! Let them come, And do their worst: I shall not blench for them; 310 Nor rise the sooner; nor forbear the goblet; Nor crown me with a single rose the less; Nor lose one joyous ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to blench upon the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... very difficult to render the Italian in classical and poetic English. The three rhyming words, and the mode in which the stanzas are looped together, added greatly to the difficulty. Blank verse he would have found quite easy compared to this. But he would not blench. The thought of her praise, and of the yet better favour he might gain, spurred him on; and Harry was the sacrifice. But he would make it all up to him, when this was once ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... blenched, even then. She had not blenched since. And she never would blench. In spite of his gorgeous position and his unique reputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride in him, he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eye always told him that he ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; I'll tent him to the quick:[73] if he do blench,[74] I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy (As he is very potent with such spirits), Abuses me to damn me: I'll have good grounds ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... other the girl stood virtually alone—for the elder woman had fallen to weeping helplessly, and the attorney seemed to be unequal to this new combatant. Even so, and though her face betrayed trouble and some irresolution, she did not blench, but faced her accuser with a slowly rising passion that ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... then in thy bodily shape, if thou be'st indeed a fiend," replied the dying knight; "think not that I will blench from thee. By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me as I have done with mortal danger, Heaven or Hell should never say that I shrunk ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... Lombardy in hostage, until such time as he had given back the cities of the Church, and that he would betake him to France with all his host, without battle and without doing any scathe. But he neither for that, nor for aught else would blench one whit. ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... falling, rising, stumbling, advancing and receding—and we see the new race—in the hours of the "Great Noon-tide"—fulfilling its Prophet's hope—and we see the end of that also! And seeing all this, because the air of our watch-tower is so ice-cold and keen, we neither tremble or blench. The world is deep, and deep is pain, and deeper than pain is joy. We have seen Creation, and have exulted in it. We have seen Destruction, and have exulted in it. We have watched the long, quivering Shadow of Life shudder across our glacial ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... peasant did not blench even at this. Glaucon remained in the tent, translating and hearing all the details: how Hydarnes was to press the attack from the rear at early dawn, how Mardonius was to conduct another onset from the front. At last the general of the guard knelt before the king for ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... streets gave nothing away; and certainly the shops gave nothing away. The newspaper placards announced what seemed to be equivalent to the end of the existing social order; but Frinton apparently did not blench nor tremble; it went calmly and powerfully forward into the day (which was Saturday), relying upon the great British axiom: "To ignore is to destroy." It ignored the end of the existing social order, and lo! there was no end. Up and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Hosea Cook, the "heroines of Innis station" (Kentucky), as they have been styled, are shining examples of a firmness of spirit which sorrow could not blench nor tears dim. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... affectionate solicitude I must tell you that in that terrible moment Nais was marvellously calm and self-possessed. It could not, I think, be possible to see death nearer; yet neither before nor after the accident did my valiant little daughter even blench; her whole behavior showed the utmost resolution, and, thank God! her health has not ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... he did not blench, nor would he; being half French and of good blood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for a half century of war. He would not have blenched, even if he had not, from the sunlit ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... He saw her blench; saw fear stare from those dark eyes that could be so very bold. Then her ever-ready ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini |
