"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of an eye. The man in the sheep-skin-chaps clubbed his rifle at the galloping pony. The pinto reared, flung back, pitched over the edge of the Rim Rocks. Then the cloud blot, earth and air sponged into the wet blur of a washed slate, shrieking furies of peltering rain, a roar of the hurricane wind, a blinding flash, the air torn to tatters! The cloud burst hurled down in sheets, the red clay road runnelling flood torrents. Wayland ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the morning of success, that grand Invincible discoverer of our land Had made no lodge or wigwam desolate To carry trophies to the proud and great; If on our history's page there were no blot Left by the cruel rapine of Cabot, Of Verrazin, and Hudson, dare we claim The Indian of the plains, ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blot hath escaped the watchfulness of the setter forth: if thou wilt thou mayst amend it. The sonnet on the forty-fourth page, against all right Italianate laws, hath but thirteen lines withal: add another to thy liking, if thou art a Maker; or, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... will portray his words with signs of labour and deliberation, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet. Even nations are distinguished by their writing; ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... betimes; therefore he makes this one argument with God, that he would blot out his transgressions, that he would forgive his adultery, his murders, and horrible hypocrisy. Do it, O Lord, saith he, do it, and "then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... so far from fearing your putting me to death, you would confer a favour on me, for you would deliver me from all the troubles and misfortunes which the future may have in store.' Now death had delivered him, yet none the less does his fate lie like a blot on the men who sent him to his doom, and turned a deaf ear to his prayers for help until it was too late. England was stricken with horror and grief at the news, and showed her sorrow in the way which Gordon would have chosen, not by erecting statues or buildings to his memory, ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... quivering expanse of alkali the crawling splotch of black showed up as plainly as a blot of ink on a sheet of clean white blotting paper. Peering over the edge of the chassis they all scrutinized ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... I was a little boy in school, and one day made a big blot on the very first page of my new copybook, that I didn't have the heart to go on any further, and I recollect well how I teased my father to buy me a new book, and cried and sulked until he finally took his knife and neatly cut out the blotted page. Then I was comforted ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... of their line, the nearest to the swamp, and he had been watching patches of ghostly light flitting above the rank water-weeds. For the past few moments those wisps of faded radiance had been gathering into a growing anthropomorphic blot hanging over the morass several yards away. And the misty outlines were now assuming more concrete shape. He watched, unable to believe in what he was seeing. At first the general outline, non-defined as it was, made him think of a ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... down and skulked in the woods, or ran wildly to the rear, was made to do all the fighting on the first day of July. This latter class of journalists were a menace to the army, a disgrace to their profession, and a blot upon humanity. Even the Cubans ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... are you taking on so for? Where did such a caprice come from? Am I finding fault with your dress? Why, isn't it a dress?—and anybody will say it's a dress. But it isn't becoming to you; it's absolutely not the right thing for your style of beauty—blot out my soul if I lie. For you a gold one would be little enough; let's have one embroidered with seed-pearls. Ah! there you smile, my jewel! You see, I know what I'm ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... among the women of the neighbourhood. He was a German baron, who had forfeited his title and estates through killing a man in a duel; and never a milder pair of eyes looked timidly through spectacles. He was a famous musician, who had chosen to blot himself out of the world for love of a high-born lady; and, in his opinion, women were useful to cook and ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... What! to be wedded to a compound of the most hideous deformity! "Soon enough!" To blot out the memory of the pure and immortal one, and to link herself to a revolting and miserable object! It were better to be lying peacefully beneath the green earth than to walk about a living corpse, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... Mrs. Upton do? She could not change the course of Destiny. One—especially if she is a widow with bad eyes, and in feeble health, living on the poorest place in the State—cannot stop the stars in their courses. She could not blot out the past, nor undo what she had done. She would not if she could. She could not undo what she had done when she ran away with Jim and married him. She would not if she could. At least, the memory of those three years ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... dim, oblong, white blot in the middle distance; a nebulous blur in the painting, as if there had been some chemical impurity in the pigment causing it to fade, or rather as if a long drop of some acid, or perhaps a splash of salt water, had fallen upon the canvas while ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... again dramatized on the narrow stage of my woman's imagination. But instead of bringing me release, it brought me heart-ache; instead of spelling victory, it came involved with the thin humiliations of compromise. For things could never be the same again. The blot was there on the scutcheon, and could never be argued away. The man I loved had let the grit get into the bearings of his soul, had let that grit grind away life's delicate surfaces without even knowing the wine ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... of domination should in time usurp the place of those laborious, enthusiastic, and pious missionaries who, so happily for the natives, had managed to revolutionize their minds, and so spared their country those scenes of blood which blot with a fearful stain the history of Spanish power in America. But the influence of churchmen, as usual, in the Philippines, was not always to be well directed; for the merciless Inquisition having established itself at Manilla, commenced ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... your majesty, (If, for I want that glib and oily heart, To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known, It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, No unchaste action, or dishonored step That hath deprived me of your grace and favor; But even for want of that, for which I am richer; A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue I am glad I have not, tho' not to have ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... impetus, momentarily diminishing in the night's illusory perspective; presently it was little more than a fugitive blot, gliding swiftly in midstream. And then, it was gone entirely, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... you could get the right kind of evidence against the Montmartre gang," he sighed. "It is a gang, too—a high-class gang. In fact—well, it must be done. That place is a blot on the city. The police never have really tried to get anything on it. Miss Kendall never could, could you? I admit I never have. It seems to be understood that it is practically impossible to prove anything against ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... is to think of the things you have, and not of the things you have not. A man was once told that Caesar was going to cause him great unhappiness, and he replied that if Caesar could blot out the sun with a blanket he might make him unhappy. But if he had the sun to shine upon him, he would still be happy. We all have the sun to shine upon us, and other things a-plenty to be happy over, if we will just count them up. ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... south sea treasures are not brought to light; When churchmen scripture for the classics quit, Polite apostates from God's grace to wit; When men grow great from their revenue spent, And fly from bailiffs into parliament; When dying sinners, to blot out their score, Bequeath the church the leavings of a whore; To chafe our spleen, when themes like these increase, Shall panegyric reign, and censure cease? Shall poesy, like law, turn wrong to right, And dedications wash ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... and, if I had not strength to pour out my inward lamentations, I could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling from the roll of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... suffer yourself to be drawn into anything wrong or improper, you will be the first individual of your family that ever brought a stain upon it. It would grieve me—deeply would it grieve me, to witness such a blot upon so honest—but no, I will not, for I ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... it. You're mistaken in saying we never thought of it. I have; and been searching for it everywhere. But it's gone; and what's become of it, I know not. They may have thrown it overboard before forsaking the ship—possibly to blot out all traces. Still, it's odd too, De Lara leaving these ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humor which he calls his judgment? What is it but a servitude like that imposed by ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... for the deliverance of the exiles: "O GOD, if our hearts arise from the land in which we now dwell as slaves, and repent, and pray to Thee, and confess our sins in Thy presence, then, O Jehovah, do Thou blot out the sins of Thy own people, who have sinned against Thee. Do not Thou, O GOD, cause us to be wholly destroyed. Wherefore it is that we glorify Thy ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... have not forgotten what I said had been omitted by you and your colleagues, and what a heavy cloud I declared to be hanging over the Republic. A great pest had been removed by your means, a great blot on the Roman people wiped out, immense glory in truth acquired by yourselves: but an engine for exercising kingly power had been put into the hands of Lepidus and Antony, of whom the former was the more fickle of the two, the latter the more corrupt, ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... disclosure; and should it meet the eye, as I have no doubt it will, of some one not a stranger to its crimes, I beseech him to consider his ways. Why should he live a curse to the earth—a destroyer of his kind—a blot upon creation—a dishonour to his Maker? Heaven and earth are equally ready to receive the returning prodigal. The only danger—the only disgrace is to continue where you are. In behalf of our Maker, in behalf of humanity, in behalf of all that is noble and virtuous, I beseech you ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... Against the quiet, and a black line creep Across the sky, and widen like a mouth, Until the broken heavens streamed apart, Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires, Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God. I lay there, a black blot upon a shield Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held Until I staggered up and cried aloud, And then it seemed that something far too great For knowledge, and illimitable as God, Rent the dark sky like lightning, and I fell, And, falling, heard a wild and ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... army consisted of only 3000 men; so that not only had his opponents the benefit of walls, from behind which they might deliver their fire, but they outnumbered his little force by more than three to one. Taitsan was, however, a great prize to be aimed at, for its fall would blot out the remembrance of the disaster which had occurred when it was last attacked. Captain Holland on that occasion had assaulted it from the south. Gordon's quick military eye showed him that he ought to seize the canal leading ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... philanthropic purposes. A vast number of the commoners too were idle thriftless beings, whose rights on a few acres enabled them to live a life of pilfering and poaching; and it was a very good thing when such people were induced to lead a more regular and respectable existence. The great blot on the process was that it made the English labourer a landless man. Compensation was given him at the time of enclosure in the shape of allotments or sums of money, but the former he was generally compelled to give up owing to the expense he had been put to at allotment, and the latter ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... while, though so noiselessly that when he opened his eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the little embroidery frame at the window. Finding himself alone, he sat up in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it could. For a little space the walls of the room became as the interior of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rushing of many waters. After the surroundings had resumed their ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... orchard and garden are doomed. They are torn down, dug out, washed to pieces, and then washed over side hills. Where the process of hydraulic mining has been, or is being carried on, the country presents an appearance of devastation and ruin that is scarcely imaginable; forming a frightful blot upon ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... We gave the bottle a black eye, i.e. drank it almost up. He cannot say black is the white of my eye; he cannot point out a blot in ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... felt doubly assured, and the knowledge made my heart light, even while I dreaded the consequences to us both. To have won was much, even although hope of possession did not accompany the winning. Neither of us might ever again blot out those passionate words of love, nor forget the glad meeting of ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... forty years ago, forty pounds of his own, and had spent it all since, should yet be able now to shew his forty pounds again; what has he got thereby, or how much richer is he at last than he was when he first set up for himself? Nay, doth not the blot of his ill living betwixt his first and his last, lie as a blemish upon him, unless he should redeem himself also, by works of supererogation, from the scandal that justice may lay ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... had just to hope for the best. The Yeomanry were also Corps reserve at Lala Baba where they were safe. But when they advanced, supposing they had to, they would have to cross a perfectly open plain under shell fire. This was the special blot on the scheme but there was no getting away from it. There was no room for them in the front line trenches and communication trenches to the front had ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... a sin, no making amends. All sins, from such as those which men call the smallest to the greatest, are registered, to be brought up in judgment against the sinner, and the all-cleansing blood of Jesus can alone blot them out. Man, as a proof of his living faith in Christ's atonement,—of his sorrow for sins committed,—of his hatred of sin, of his repentance,— will, of necessity, do all he can to make amends to his fellow-man for the wrong he has done him; he will restore what he has taken; he will ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston
... she said, at last in decision, "I am going to ask you to blot that all out—to forget that you even suspect me of being Christie ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... imprisoned spirit. Adventurous projects succeeded each other in his thoughts. He turned to the lands where life was freer, where perchance his happiness awaited him, had he but the courage to set forth. What brought him to London, this squalid blot on the map of the round world? Why did he consume the irrecoverable hours amid its hostile ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... overlooked,—and finally, the paint, of which the outside really consists, thrusting forward its chalky blankness, as it were a standing defiance of all possibility of assimilation,—all combine to form something that shall forever remain a blot in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... volumes of poems must be added to the total. Ben Jonson was often told by the players that 'whatsoever he penned he never blotted out (i.e. erased) a line.' The editors of the First Folio attested that 'what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' Signs of hasty workmanship are not lacking, but they are few when it is considered how rapidly his numerous compositions came from his pen, and they are in the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... will not render myself a prisoner alive. 'Tis better to die by a ball than by a shameful cord!" "Do you think," answered Djemboulat, "that my arms were made for a chain! Allah keep me from such a blot: the Russians may take my body, but not my soul. Never, never! Brethren, comrades!" he cried to the others; "fortune has betrayed us, but the steel will not. Let us sell our lives dearly to the Giaour. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... says: "The spirit of the age is censorious. There is no doubt of that, or that with every new day the tendency toward pessimism increases. But even taking these facts into consideration, there is no denying that the young man about town of the nineteenth century is a blot upon our boasted modern civilization. His is not a pleasant figure to contemplate, though it is one that we all see very often and know very well—clothed irreproachably in the most expensive raiment that London tailors and unlimited credit can supply. He lives lazily ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... wait a minute!" I exclaimed, seizing the inky paper. "I want to see whether I am doing right or not to sign. If that is a butterfly I am right, and if anything else, no matter what, I am wrong." I took the sheet, doubled it in the middle of the enormous blot, and pressed it firmly together. Emile Perrin thereupon began to laugh, giving up his mannikin attitude entirely. He leaned over to examine the paper with me, and we opened it very gently just as one opens one's hand after imprisoning a fly. When the paper ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... expenses of their conquest in the prisoners taken in battle, who were sold to the slave merchants; and this is the real blot on Caesar's career. But the blot was not personally upon Caesar, but upon the age in which he lived. The great Pomponius Atticus himself was a dealer in human chattels. That prisoners of war should be sold ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... prisoner is clearly guilty. Why, the fellow practically confesses it. We ought to put some stop to the killing and general rascality up there in the settlement. Our section is fast becoming a monstrous blot on the fair name of the Commonwealth! (Dillingham again.) What is there left for us to do but carry out the law? What is there left for——' My voice died away weakly. Something in the Colonel's face effectually blasted my budding eloquence. At that moment ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... seemed to pity him—a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the man with bitter reproaches. "Allah blot out your name, you thief!" she cried. "You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself, you dog ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... irony in the fact that no place could be found to barter to a foreign power but the very birthplace of the champion of Italy's liberty; and the best friend of this fair country cannot but acknowledge this act on the part of Victor Emmanuel to have been unjust to her devoted people, and a blot on her ancient honour and glory; but at the same time, France will share in the condemnation of the world, for exacting so great and unnatural a sacrifice. It is equally iniquitous for a sovereign to barter away the birthright of his subjects as for any foreign power to require ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... ([Greek: elegchomenoi]) by their own conscience,' as St. John relates, they had pronounced the other's acquittal. Finally, note that by Himself declining to 'condemn' the accused woman, our Lord also did in effect blot out those curses which He had already written against her in the dust,—when He made the floor of the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... a fresh impulse of anger against Lady Raynham. She wanted to forget the past—blot it all out of her memory—and out of the memory of the man whose contempt had hurt her more than anything in her whole life before. And now it seemed as though everything were combining to emphasise those very things which had ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... consider, in such a case as Mr Boffin's, what a cheap article ink is, and how far it may be made to go. As a grain of musk will scent a drawer for many years, and still lose nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a halfpenny-worth of ink would blot Mr Boffin to the roots of his hair and the calves of his legs, without inscribing a line on the paper before him, or appearing to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was really gone. Would it soften the father's heart and teach him the truth of Pascal's proverb that "The heart has reasons of its own that the reason knows not of;" or would it blot out the last remnant of faith, and leave Mr. Gear without a God as he had been without a Bible and ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... be the end, then, to lie at the mercy of this madman till death came to blot out all his efforts, all his hopes. He made a last feeble effort to stanch that deadly flow, failed, sank ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Convinced that something would occur, I had made my preparations; nor was I deceived. You may add, also, that not until my marriage is invalidated, Anne's offspring illegitimatised, and herself beheaded, shall I consider the foul blot upon ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Egypt had been written down, and the direction concerning him. He met us by the way, and smote the hindmost of us, even all that were feeble, when we were faint and weary; and it had been said to our fathers that when we had rest from our enemies round about us, we were to blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven—"Thou shalt not forget it" was the word delivered to us. I had the record of the battle in Rephidim when Joshua discomfited Amalek, not in his own strength, but in the strength of the uplifted arms of the aged Moses, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain of curses from the oldest male heirs; but ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... repent, I repent. O Lord, let the Blood which flowed on that very day down the Holy Rood blot out my sins, atone for ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, But spare his ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... in the teeth of the law of nations, Signorina, and a blot on Tuscan civilization. Ah! you perceive the artillerists are aware of what you say, and are putting aside their tools. Cospetto! 'tis a thousand pities, too, they couldn't fire the third shot, that you might see it strike the lugger; ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... poison hath encompassed the roots; No marvel though the leprous infant die, When the stern dam envenometh the dug. Why then, give sin a passport to offend, And youth the dangerous rein of liberty; Blot out the strict forbidding of the law; And cancel every canon that prescribes A shame for shame or penance for offence. No, let me die, if his too boisterous will Will have it so, before I will consent To be an actor in his ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... shuffle and palter until the dreaded rival should cross the frontier. A French Netherlands they considered even mere dangerous than a Spanish, and Elizabeth partook of their sentiments, although incapable of their promptness. With the perverseness which was the chief blot upon her character, she was pleased that the Duke should be still a dangler for her hand, even while she was intriguing against his political hopes. She listened with undisguised rapture to his proposal of love, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... chair, and blowing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the two halves of a pear. I am a boet. Do you hear me, younk Armstronk? I am a boet I am a berson of imachination. I can invent. I can gontrive. There is nopoty in the vorlt who can gonstruct a blot like me. But I gannot egspress myself. Now, you gan egspress me; that is your desdiny. You will egspress Cheorge Dargo. You will descend to future aitches as the dranslader ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... have only to sign it." And a receipt duly prepared was handed to Mother Etienne, who in a trembling hand appended her signature and a flourish. I don't know that she did not even embellish it with a huge blot ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... the ritual of a thousand years, and revolted from the authority of the supreme head of the Christian world? Would Mary suffer him to pass unpunished who had displaced her mother from the nuptial bed, and pronounced her own birth to be stained with an ignominious blot, and who had exalted a rival to the throne? And Gardiner and Bonner, too, those bigoted prelates and ministers who would have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority of the Pope, were not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... of pain could be effaced by after-happiness, the remainder of this day would have amply sufficed to blot out the past week. Never did Cecil feel more glad than when his mother kissed him, called him her own darling boy, and at his request forgave Jessie's escapade, and gave her and Frances a week's holiday, ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... recognition was mutual was evident from Mr Bickersdyke's look. But apart from this, he gave no sign of having already had the pleasure of making Mike's acquaintance. He merely stared at him as if he were a blot on the arrangement of ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... cheering spectacle. These premises were now a mere blot of desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn. All the copse up the Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just here, in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the night from control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and left it waste ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... o'er—my pleasant task is done:—[178] My long-sustaining Friend of many years! If I do blot thy final page with tears,[179] Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none. But Thou, my young creation! my Soul's child! Which ever playing round me came and smiled, And wooed me from myself with thy sweet sight, Thou too art gone—and so ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... himself after he had scanned it, "so I was not mistaken after all! The mystery is deeper than I thought. By Jove! that fellow, Joseph Blot, alias Weirmarsh, alias Detmold, Ponting and half a dozen other names, no doubt, is playing a deep game—a dangerous ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... store their valuable, as none possessed their confidence in such a measure as he. If he had stayed still longer with Moses, people would have declared that he had absconded with all these things and fled to Moses to share it with him, and that would have been a blot on his fair name and that of Moses. Jethro had furthermore made many debts during the year in which he came to Moses, for, owing to the hail God had sent upon Egypt before the exodus of Israel, a great famine ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... "fiercer" than the flames of the piles of Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Italy, Germany, and England, in which thousands of them have been burnt to ashes? For shame! Mr. Everett. The recording angel may drop a tear upon what you have written, not to blot it out, but in compassion for the miseries for which you seem to think words of "complaint" are ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... is a blunder; every battle a blot of shame upon human nature; and the greatest wisdom a successful belligerent can shew, even when he has been forced into the fray by his beaten antagonist, is to get out of it as fast as he can. But some wars are viewed, not as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that shadow of a man which we call his reputation. The line which dying we could wish to blot has been blotted out for us by a hand so tender, so patient, so used to its kindly task, that the page looks as fair as if it had never borne the record of our infirmity or our transgression. And then so few would be wholly content with their legacy of fame. You remember poor ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Macedonia had dwindled to a dim blot on the north-eastern horizon. Of the steamer herself nothing was to be seen. We had been loafing along, till now, our sails shaking half the time and spilling the wind; and twice, for short periods, we had been hove to. But there was no more loafing. Sheets were trimmed, and Wolf Larsen ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... hunt-pack, and for an instant he bent his lithe form close to the snow, measuring with the acuteness of his race the distance of the pursuers. Then he looked for his white companion, and failed to see the motionless blot that marked where the other had fallen. A look of alarm shot into his eyes, and resting his rifle between his knees he placed his hands, trumpet fashion, to his mouth and gave a signal call which, on a still night like ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... hold Upon the seven hills thy reign! O Mother without blot or stain, Crowned with bright crowns of ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... was speaking the truth. As soon as the indictment had been read, the proceedings began. Robeckal whiningly declared that he bitterly regretted what he had done. He had been seduced by Fanfaro, and would give his right hand if he could blot out the recollection of ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... aught of ill was done Thy child, when Agamemnon scarce was gone, Sate at the looking-glass, and tress by tress Didst comb the twined gold in loneliness. When any wife, her lord being far away. Toils to be fair, O blot her out that day As false within! What would she with a cheek So bright in strange men's eyes, unless she seek Some treason? None but I, thy child, could so Watch thee in Hellas: none but I could know Thy face ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... sons, Edina, social, kind, With open arms the stranger hail; Their views enlarg'd, their liberal mind, Above the narrow, rural vale: Attentive still to Sorrow's wail, Or modest Merit's silent claim; And never may their sources fail! And never Envy blot their name! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... sentiment. The knights may have been thrown off their guard by the suddenness of Caepio's attack upon their privileges, and a few months of organisation and canvassing may have been all that they needed to restore the majority required for effacing the blot upon their name. But the chief reason is doubtless to be sought in the external circumstances of the moment, and can only be fully illustrated by the description which we shall soon be giving of the great events that were taking place on the northern frontiers of the empire. ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... wood and dark green as to ironwork the simple-minded distribution of these colours evoked the images of simple-minded peace, of arcadian felicity; and the childish comedy of disease and sorrow struck me sometimes as an abominably real blot ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... clearing an old writer from uncleannesses that cause him now to be a name only where he should be a power. Dr. Francklin has understood his work in that way better than Dr. Bowdler did. He does not Bowdlerise who uses pumice to a blot, but he who rubs the copy into holes wherever he can find an honest letter with a downstroke thicker than becomes a fine-nibbed pen. A trivial play of fancy in one of the pieces in this volume, easily removed, would have been as a dead fly in the pot of ointment, and would have deprived ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... guess anything. Oh, he had been happy during these years, because it was not in him to be unhappy; besides, how many interests life had had to offer him, how many friends, how much success, how many women only too willing to help him to blot out the thought of the altered, petrified, pitiful little wife at home who wouldn't spend his money, who was appalled by his books, who drifted away and away from him, and always if he tried to have it out with her asked him with patient obstinacy what he thought the things he wrote ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... it all for you. I would not have you do it, had you willed it, For I would keep you without blot or stain, A thing unblemished, unassailed, untarnished. Men do not know what women do for love. Have I not wrecked my soul for your ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... before the world. He knew that world well, knew its tyrannical code, its puzzling verdicts, its unaccountable clemency to the wolf, its inflexible severity for the lamb, above all, its holy horror of a blot that has been scored, of a sin, then only unpardonable, that ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... [Footnote 8: The greatest blot on the character of Columbus is contained in this and a succeeding letter. Under the shallow pretense of benefiting the souls of idolators, he suggested to the Spanish rulers the advisability of shipping the natives to Spain as slaves. He appeals to their cupidity by picturing the revenue ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... an Englishman should feel acutely sensitive to this blot in the law of England and desire the speedy disappearance of a system so open to scathing sarcasm. It is natural that every humane person should grow impatient of the spectacle of so many blighted lives, of so much ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the last century, the main line had, so far as the union of its members was blessed by the Church, expired, and no legitimate offspring were left. Gilbert's spouse, accordingly, must, if a genuine Oliverres, have come into the world with a considerable blot on her 'scutcheon. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, will ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... rolls beneath us, while the eternal Reason from above permeates its gloom, and irradiates its depths. We now behold the reason, and absolutely rejoice in the contemplation, of that which once seemed like a dark blot on the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... how great I am," declared the inventor, instantly off, on the hint supplied by his visitor. "But just the minute that insurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle the skies! I'll blot out the stars for 'em! I'll show New York! I know what I'm doing! And nothing on earth is going to stop me! All these fool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars! Deadly cigars is what they ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... to him for aid and found it not, His eyes were never blind to man's distress, Youth and old age he lived, nor once forgot The anguish and the ache of loneliness; His name was free from stain or shameful blot And in his ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... he was of a joyous alertness. Leaning upon the stile, he drew a deep breath of the salt air and raised his eyes to the night sky curving, so high was he placed, for an immense arc about his tiny form. To the north the Plough trailed its length, but south, high over the dark blot which to the keen sight of love meant Cloom, Spica, brilliant crown of Virgo, pulsed whitely, while the glittering sisterhood of Aquila and Lyra, Corona and Libra swept towards the east, ushering up the sky the slim young moon, as bright as they but more serene, like a young ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... of God that in due time this land and this people shall be put into the melting-pot. And when the season appointed shall come, sorrow and death, rebellion and treachery shall stalk through the land, and naught shall stand of its present kingdoms; the pagans shall blot out the holy memory of God and Christ, and shall turn the fanes of prayer into the lairs of wolves, and owls shall rest where hymns of praise have been sung. And no wars of goodly knights may hinder these things of dreadful doom. But I have this message for ye two, Galahad ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... day that the steamer dropped anchor in the lee of a wooded promontory where a score or more of sheet-iron shacks making an unsightly blot upon the fair face of nature proclaimed the fact that civilization had set its heel. Straggling upon the outskirts were the thatched huts of natives, picturesque in their primeval savagery, harmonizing with the background of tropical jungle and accentuating the squalid hideousness ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the nights as he made up his ledgers and settled his accounts. In leisure moments he read in the intolerable book of the Past. Of all its sorrows and failures, its frantic follies and its besotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes. His mental clarity was unrelieved by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen crystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that is stretched continually. He realised this, thinking: "Presently ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... strangely at the great bloody blot on my breast and his look made me conscious of a dark hurrying of my mind. Morton came stamping up the steps with blunt queries, with anxious mien. When he saw the front of me he halted, threw wide ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... returns to a stricken house: What shape is that he rears on high? A withe of the Willow, set round with Heads: They blot that evening sky. ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... words, Sir Hubert. I had always heard yourself and the knights here spoken of as brave and gallant gentlemen, whose sole fault was that they chose to take part with a rebel prince, rather than with the King of England. I rejoice that you have cleared your name of so foul a blot as this would have placed upon it, and I acknowledge that your conduct now is knightly and courteous. But I can no more parley. The sun is within a few minutes of twelve, and I must surrender, to meet such ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... The only blot on the system is the detestable double fastening to the carriage doors, and the curious fancy, prevalent on the Continent, that a platform is a vanity. It is a perpetual wonder to me that some of the wider ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him. Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at once, and the drooping head would have been proud again, and she would have gone away forever ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... kiss had been the key that turned in the lock of his heart and opened up to reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... have made a man happy, Sir Thomas had abundant grounds for happiness in this world. Yes, in this world, but not beyond it. For Sir Thomas was just simply and thoroughly a man of the world, and a most respectable man of the world too. No man could place his finger on a blot in his character or conduct. He lived for the world, and the world applauded him. He lived to please self, and to ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... same woes which at length drove Germany to frenzy and made simple burghers prefer bitter death to the tyranny of the French. The rulers of Russia have stained her records foully since the days of 1812, but their worst sins cannot blot out the memory of the national uprising. Years are but trivial; seventy-six of them seem a long time; but those who study history broadly know that the dawn of a better future for Russia showed its first gleam when the aroused and indignant race rose and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... window sash and showered snow fragments upon the untidy hair. A second went a serene way through the opening and dissolved in a blot of hissing water on the kitchen stove. The frame slammed to with a violence which threatened destruction to the window glass, and John grabbed his shovel ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... All about him were lords and ladies in gorgeous array; the walls were hung with rare embroideries; the table was weighted with gold platters and richly carved goblets filled with sweet nectars. But the king himself, with his horrid, ugly head, was like a great blot on a fair parchment, and even Prince Marvel could not repress a shudder as ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... for the very first time she was truly glad he had gone in that abrupt, speechless fashion—in spite of the heartache and the long years between them, really and truly glad. Nothing had been spoilt; they had snatched at no stolen joys. And the rapture, (what rapture!) of meeting would blot out all that they had suffered in silence—the separation—all ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... lark; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines, and make the notes run into each other; and when I try to blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which, turned into sound by good father Louis the Dominican, will tell you, if you can only hear it aright, what is not to be told in any human speech; not even ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... use their utmost efforts, who strain every fibre and every nerve to get you, will despise you and detest you as soon as they have succeeded in making you yield to their wishes. This is one of the worst blots on the male man's character, a blot from which the female character is entirely free. And some men—fortunately their number is not very large—are such moral skunks that they take morbid pleasure in boasting publicly of their sexual conquests, and unscrupulously peddle about the name of the girl whom, by cunning ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... asked her to dance; had not yet paid her more than a passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which perpetually made part of his consciousness, had been half screened by the image of Philip Wakem, which came across it like a blot; there was some attachment between her and Philip; at least there was an attachment on his side, which made her feel in some bondage. Here, then, Stephen told himself, was another claim of honor which called on him to resist the attraction ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... swerve. 'Par exemple', I swear to you by Saint Jacques to guide Monsieur through the passes of the Pyrenees to Oleron as surely as through these woods, and to defend him against the Devil, if need be, as well as your papers, which we will bring you back without blot or tear. As for recompense, I want none. I always find it in the action itself. Besides, I do not receive money, for I am a gentleman. The Laubardemonts are a very ancient and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous badness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the paper when we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there was no need for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was buying stamps, and, finishing his bargain before the ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... picture's champion and sponsor. It was he who so often stepped forward and asserted, with the voice of a bronco-buster, that it would be a lasting blot, sir, upon the name of this great state if it should decline to recognize in a proper manner the genius that had so brilliantly transferred to imperishable canvas a scene so typical of the great sources of our state's wealth and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... his appointment had distinguished himself chiefly by his extreme opposition to the administration, and by his intrigues against Hamilton, which were so dishonestly conducted that they ultimately compelled the publication of the "Reynolds Pamphlet," a sore trial to its author, and a lasting blot on the fame of the enemy who made the publication necessary. From such a man loyalty to the President who appointed him was hardly to be expected. But there was no reason to suppose that he would lose his head, and forget that ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... act in King Haakon's reign was to have himself crowned king, and thus to rid himself of the blot on his claim to the throne. After some negotiations with the Pope, a cardinal was sent from Rome, the ceremony being performed with much pomp and ceremony, and followed with the most magnificent feasts and festivities Norway had ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Norwegian was already leaving the room, and the two were alone. And perhaps to give her timeor himselfhe stood for a moment still and thoughtful by the side of the fireplace. And Hazel, who had thought she would take the first moment that offered to clear her name of the blot left upon it, sat in a sort of ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... descend tout de suite. I heard myself tell Brian that I should not be long away. I saw my face in the glass, deathly pale in its frame of dark hair, the eyes immense, with the pupils dilating over the blue, as an inky pool might drown a border of violets and blot out their colour. Even my lips were white. I was glad I had on a black dress—glad in a bad, deceitful way; though for a moment after learning who Jimmy Beckett was, I had felt a true thrill of loyal satisfaction because I was in ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... too bright for them, and shone into their consciences, and showed them that the wages of sin was death. The law of God, St. Paul tells us, was written in their hearts; and how much soever, poor creatures, they might try to blot it out and forget it, yet it would rise up in judgment against them, day by day, night by night, convincing them of sin. So they in their terror sold themselves to false priests, who pretended to know of plans for helping them to escape from this angry God, and gave themselves up to superstitions, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... the love he had given to Edith Challoner. This was something springing full-born out of nothing! a force which, for the first time in his life, made him complaisant to the natural weaknesses of man! a dream and yet a reality strong enough to blot out the past, remake the present, change the aspect of all his hopes, and outline a new fate. He did not know himself. There was nothing in his whole history to give him an understanding of such feelings ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... long, and the nervous strain affected me, as it has often done since, in such a way that there was a singing in my ears and dark spots swam before my eyes. Wherever I looked there appeared to my horror a dark blot, and, full of anxiety, I thought that perhaps this was already the beginning of the curse. I dared not look at Susanna any more for fear of throwing the black spot on her, and at last I could not forbear looking at the floor where I stood to see if there were possibly burnt ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... that the new lesson might not quite overwhelm the yet feeble faith of these followers, Jesus assured them that after his death and resurrection he would come as Messianic Judge and fulfil the hopes which his prediction of death seemed to blot out utterly (Mark viii. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... me, May no pain grieve me To see flow over The cup my brother Or neighbour hath, with Thy blessings so free. Covetous burning And unchristian yearning For ill possessions, Blot out such transgressions, Cast them, O Father! all into ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... in the firm but just execution of the law now in operation, and I should be glad to approve such further discreet legislation as will rid the country of this blot upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... part of the whole story for me was the knowledge that the catastrophe was unnecessary, that it might have been avoided. My men and I have been cold and have been near to starvation in the Arctic, when cold and hunger were inevitable; but the horrors of Cape Sabine were not inevitable. They are a blot upon the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... constitutional history, and he could not be expected to deal with his subject from that special point of view. Freeman's complaint, which is quite just, was that he neglected almost entirely the relations of the Crown with the Houses of Parliament and with the courts of law. The moral blot accounts for a good deal of the indignation which Froude excited in minds far less jaundiced than Freeman's. No one hated injustice more than Froude. But cruelty as such did not inspire him with any horror. No punishment, however ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... years of maturity did I perceive that these conflicts, which, long after, I heard execrated in certain quarters as a blot upon Prussian history, rather deserved the warmest gratitude of the nation. During those beautiful spring days, no matter by what hands—among them were the noblest and purest—were sown the seeds of the dignity and freedom of public life which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he remembered his calling, and with a clear voice he chanted the great psalm of the man who has sinned: "Miserere mei Deus—Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions." ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... characteristic of the man: "Be a good man, my dear; be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." There is nothing in the record of Sir Walter's life which any friend would wish to blot. One can but be pained to excess by the record of his business troubles, so hopeless in their entanglements, but through all these even, his character glows with undiminished brightness, and we love him ever more and more. He was a man built on a large scale, both in intellect ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... elder of her two sons were living, such would be his name, and his age twenty-two years. This inclined Currado to think that Giannotto and Giusfredi were indeed one and the same; and it occurred to him, that, if so it were, he might at once shew himself most merciful and blot out his daughter's shame and his own by giving her to him in marriage; wherefore he sent for Giannotto privily, and questioned him in detail touching his past life. And finding by indubitable evidence that he was indeed ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... ruling his mind, Mr. Seward labors in the Senate and before the people with all the learning and ability he possesses to rouse one half of the nation against the other to dam up, dry up or blot out "this mean and miserable rivulet." From Boston to Kansas, like another Peter the Hermit, he preaches a crusade against the institutions and people of the Southern States. He proclaims an irrepressible conflict between free labor and slave labor, between Free States ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... used to make me glad, But now it knows me not; This weight of brightness makes me sad— It isolates a blot. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald |
