"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not by any means the chief blot on Mr. Noel's book. The fault of his book is that it tells us far more about his own personal feelings than it does about the qualities of the various works of art that are criticised. It is in fact a diary of the emotions ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... any extraordinary display of valor, but I have no desire to deprive the countess of so valiant a knight. I come, not to arrest, hut to deliver her. I come to save herself from the headsman, her family from the foul blot ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... to the foreign wars of Louis XIV, mention must be made of another blot on his reign. It was Louis XIV who renewed the persecution of the Protestants. He was moved alike by the absolutist's desire to secure complete uniformity throughout France and by the penitent's religious fervor to make amends for earlier scandals ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... judge, has often to upset the patent which he has sold in another character. But that system of go-betweens, and deputy-go-betweens, and deputy-lieutenant-go-betweens and nobody doing his own business in matters of State, it really is a national curse, and a great blot upon the national intellect. It is a disease; so let us name it. We doctors are great at naming diseases; greater ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hypocritical prudes and pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never committed (and God knows he committed enough!); and yet behold his craving for tenderness, the reaching out for truth, and hear his earnest and unquenchable prayer to be understood and loved, we blot out the record of his sins with our tears. To know the life of Byron and not be moved to profoundest pity marks one as alien ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... attained 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from the dark pool and its nameless horror; but when from the height they paused breathless and gasping to look down, there was no stain, or blot, or ripple ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Hunsden's life," he thought, "and his daughter shares it. Some secret, perhaps, of shame and disgrace—some bar sinister in their shield; and, good heavens! I am mad enough to love her—I, a Kingsland, of Kingsland, whose name and escutcheon are without a blot! What do I know of her antecedents or his? My mother spoke of some mystery in his past life; and there is a look of settled gloom in his face that nothing seems able to remove. Lord Ernest Strathmore, too—he must come to complicate matters. She is the most glorious creature the sun ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... who they may? Let me tell you, king, that it was an exceedingly great glory to you to have overcome Manfred, but a far greater one it is to overcome one's self; wherefore do you, who have to correct others, conquer yourself and curb this appetite, nor offer with such a blot to mar that which you have ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature; and he himself, with his rationality and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident—a blot of black upon a ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... stood helpless while the hammer head catapulted at the sickened face of its victim. The Major's free left arm, raised instinctively to blot out the sight of the living horror, took the terrific impact, then dropped to his side, paralyzed. Still bearing that hideous grin the flat head drew back for another blow at the exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... colonies, and told that true manhood was there to do and die for what it believed was right. When that struggle was ended, the first to clasp hands in mutual friendship and affection were Virginia and Massachusetts. If we were to blot from the history or geography of the Nation the deeds or territory of the ancient dominions of John Smith, President of Virginia and Admiral of New England, a beggarly record of area would be left, in spite of the glorious records of other sections ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... result from blotting this day from the calendar. There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew history running through ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... so soon, but he must make a fair start with ample means. The man had no scruples and no illusions; money well employed would buy him standing and friends. People were charitable to a man who had something to offer them, and the blot upon his name must be ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... had the pen in my hand, and was just thinking whether I should be Mr Snooks or Mr Smith, when I received a slap on the shoulder, accompanied with—"Well, captain, how are you by this time?" In despair I let the pen drop out of my hand, and instead of my name I left on the book a large blot. It was an old acquaintance from Albany, and before I had been ten minutes in the hotel, I was recognised by at least ten more. The Americans are such locomotives themselves, that it is useless to attempt the incognito in any part except the west side of the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... foregathered, some fellow would mount a table and harangue his friends. The bloods caught the vogue, little foreseeing that it made a hotbed for the airing of discontents, and for the parading of ideals which alone could blot out those discontents. All took to it like ducks to the village pond. There was much quackery; ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... spectre, in a threatening voice. "The invisible ones will judge and punish you, unless you make haste to conciliate them. You have forgotten that you stand under the yoke of the Philadelphians. The Emperor Napoleon believes that he has power to blot out with the blood of subjugated nations the words of the sacred oath which Lieutenant Bonaparte swore to the Philadelphians in the forest ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... its beams so far when we are bewildered in a murky night. For the place was now a moral coal-hole. The dungeons at Rome that lie under the wing of Roderick Borgia's successors are not a more awful remnant of antiquity or a fouler blot on the age, on the law, on the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... away the leaf Wherein it's writ; or, if fate won't allow So large a gap within its journal-book, I'll blot it out at least. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... property. A number of checks and obstructions, unknown to man, exist for her, and hem her in at every step. Much that is allowed to man is forbidden to her; a number of social rights and privileges, enjoyed by the former, are, if exercised by her, a blot or a crime. She suffers both as a social and a sex entity, and it is hard to say in which of the two ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... having received a very cold answer, declaring his wishes to be in favour of Lord Hervey, he immediately declared himself with his reconsideration advertisement; afterwards Charles Wynn hit the blot which bad been overlooked, or probably never looked for, in the case of Charles Dundas when proposed by Sheridan, and who was objected to by Mr. Pitt, as not being capable on account of not having previously taken the oath at the table before the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot. The writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the letter as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it were, of this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go to Dantzic and to ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... still glued in frozen horror to the scene. The screaming of the frightened troop of elephants had receded into the distance. Out on the open, through a haze of dust, I saw the blot of coloured raiment that showed where the body of Prince Hasan lay. And for the moment there was naught but pity in my heart for the youth who had played by my side, and gathered knowledge, if not wisdom, ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... inner heart do I approve and embrace this our close, but unharassing way of life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or dog's-ear. You will much oblige me by ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... maiden so beautiful that her Shining Majesty would be a black blot beside her. As she went, the Spring and all its sweetness blew from her garments. Her robe was green with small gold flowers. Her eyes were closed, but she resembled a cherry tree, snowy with bloom and dew. Her voice was like ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... is made doubly impressive by the travelling artist sketching the same. The poet too lends his sublime aid to render the act one never to be forgotten. In the present age of the world, many parents, from some deep-seated prejudice, strive to blot out this unpretending family entirely; but little children with tearful eyes bring the Historian, the Artist, and the Poet at once to the rescue, exclaiming, "Then ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... did reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is what I would say:—"Upon my country do not visit my sins. Upon my country's fame let me fasten no blot. Wherever I am wrong, inelegant, inaccurate, provincial, visit all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... unbaptised rhymes, Writ in my wild unhallowed times; For every sentence, clause, and word, That's not inlaid with Thee, my Lord, Forgive me, God, and blot each line Out of my book that is not Thine. But if, 'mongst all, thou find'st here one Worthy Thy benediction; That one of all the rest shall be The glory ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... three clerks and a head clerk; and the old head clerk is the worst of all, for he can't understand anything." But she only said this to frighten Jack the Dullard: and the clerks gave a great crow of delight, and each one spurted a blot out of his pen on ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... leave the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre! Then the banker he say, 'And you will go and blab, I suppose?' And then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache—so! and I say: 'Pardon, senor, you haf mistake, The Saltillo haf for three hundred year no stain, no blot upon him. Eet is not now—the last of the race—who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and dishonor!' And then it is that the band begin to play, and the animals stand on their hind leg and waltz, and behold, the row he ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... paint as to 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 upon ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... house is with him, he's to see They nothing want, nor yet abused be By false intruders, doctrines, or (perchance) By the misplacing of an ordinance.[7] These also are to see they wander not From place or duty, lest they get a blot To their profession, or bring some disease Upon the whole, or get a trick to lease, Or lie unto their God, by doing what By sacred statutes he commanded not. Call them your cooks, they're skill'd in dressing food To ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... {106a} Another untoward blot! but leaving no doubt of the word. The only doubt is whether he meant the MUZZLE of the animal itself, or one of those leathern muzzles which are often employed to coerce the violence of ferocious animals. In besieged cities men have been reduced to such extremities. But the MUZZLE, in this place, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... to whisper things of her, to which, as well for the sake of the lady, as that they were highly disagreeable to the rule of right and the fitness of things, we will give no credit, and therefore shall not blot our paper with them. The pedagogue, 'tis certain, whipped on, without getting a step nearer ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... could his mortal sin be forgiven? Not in the Sacrament of Penance, for the Protestant does not go to confession; and if he does, his minister—not being a true priest—has no power to forgive sins. Does he know that without confession it requires an act of perfect contrition to blot out mortal sin, and can he easily make such an act? What we call contrition is often only imperfect contrition—that is, sorrow for our sins because we fear their punishment in Hell or dread the loss of Heaven. If a Catholic—with all the instruction he has received about ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... of this little blot, Emma found that his visit hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made himself—how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He appeared to have a very open temper—certainly a very ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... for an instant looking at her, but not heeding her words. "Will you listen to me again? Will you forget the wrong I did you?—my stupidity and folly and unworthiness? Will you blot out the past and let me begin again. I see you as clearly now as the light of that window. Will ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... boy," said she, "never say a word of your arrest to anybody, do not write to a living soul; it would ruin you for life; we must hide this blot on your character. I will soon have you out. I will collect the money—be quite easy. Write down what you want for your work. You shall soon be free, or I ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... meet the evils created by a weak and irresponsible administration, partly by the restoration of old forms, partly by the recognition of new and pressing claims. There is a point at which reform, except it go so far as to blot out a constitution and substitute another in its place, must act as a weakening and dissolving force. That point is reached when an existing government is effectually hampered from exercising the prerogatives of sovereignty and no other power is sufficiently strengthened to act as its ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... she did after coming to her room was to take the magazine from under the Bible, and open to the story. There was an ink-blot on the first page, which some one had evidently been trying to remove with the edge of a knife. It must have been done hastily, for the leaf was jagged, and most ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... he was sure that the branch had crackled under the pressure of a foot. Somebody—or something—was approaching his fire, which now threw a dull red light across the forest glade. Enoch's eyes were fastened first upon one blot of shadow and then another. Occasionally, too, he darted a glance over his shoulder, that the approaching enemy might not come upon him unawares. Just at that time Enoch would have given much for ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... wrought against them—to spread abroad the fire of their indignation, the story of their ravished womanhood and broken families all over France. They watched him leaden-eyed and wept softly. To forget, to forget, that was all that they wanted—to blot out all the past. This man with the top-hat and the evening-dress, he hadn't suffered—how could he understand? They didn't want to remember; with those flaxen-haired children against their breasts the one boon they craved was forgetfulness. And so ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp. In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... creator. Where, then, can we fix the limit of that unconscious, fiendish force that evolved a Nero, and incarnated in human bodies the myriads of demoniac spirits that walk the earth to-day? Egotistical scientist (sciolist) calm the cyclone, quiet the engulphing earthquake, blot from human history the records of war, pestilence, famine, the tales of St. Bartholomew and the Inquisition, and then deny by material philosophy the possibility of even a Calvinistic hell; deny the personality of man because your microscope and scalpel can not find a soul by dissecting ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... unpleasant sight," one of the leadys said. "You've seen the photographs; you know what you'll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick
... at foot and head (whence its name, the 'cottage' style) was not wholly successful. The use of the labour-saving device of the 'roll,' in preference to impressing each section of the pattern by hand, is another blot. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to find an English or Scotch binding of this period which is less than charming, and the best of them are admirable. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a new grace ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... institutions of law, the thin red line of the army, all melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrush of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the jackal and the python ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... ear - and don't let the papers get hold of it - she is of no family. None, they say; literally a common woman. Of course, we have out-islanders, who MAY be villeins; but we give them the benefit of the doubt, which is impossible with Helen of Vailima; our blot, our pitted speck. The pitted speck I have said is our precentor. It is always a woman who starts Samoan song; the men who sing second do not enter for a bar or two. Poor, dear Faauma, the unchaste, the extruded Eve of our ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think you like Cecil,' said she, half-puzzled by his subtlety, but hitting what she thought to be a 'blot.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... craves a certain materialism and clings pertinaciously to what is tangible, as if that were of more importance than the spirit accidentally involved in it. And, in truth, the original manuscript has always something which print itself must inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of hand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical execution, bring us close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtle intimations for which language has ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hands of statesmen, men distinguished among a thousand parties for clear integrity, disinterested virtue, and spotless fame. This, my lord, would be a field worthy of your lordship's prowess. Could you but gain the interested, could you eternize rapacity, and preserve inviolate the blot of the English name, what laurels would not ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... an end, Mrs. Gurley rose, smoothed down her apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed opposite Laura's she espied an under-garment, lying wantonly across the counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she seemed to swell like a turkey-cock, seemed literally to grow before Laura's eyes as, striding to the door, she commanded an invisible some one to send Lilith Gordon to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... cried, "after all the pain you have given me; to blot out the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake of the nights that I ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... prisoners added greatly to the difficulties, and Napoleon took a step which has been a foul blot on his reputation. They were marched into a vast square formed of French troops; as soon as all had entered the fatal square the troops opened fire upon them, and the whole were massacred. The terrible slaughter occupied a considerable ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... been begging my bread from Robert Beaufort's lackey! I said nothing; the man went on his business on tiptoe, that the mud might not splash above the soles of his shoes. Then, thoughts so black that they seemed to blot out every star from the sky—thoughts I had often wrestled against, but to which I now gave myself up with a sort of mad joy—seized me: and I remembered you. I had still preserved the address you gave me; I went straight to the house. Your friend, on naming you, received ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I have always thought your objection to church-going a blot upon an otherwise estimable character. Hitherto I have been too busy to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... ominously in the light of the moon; or listened towards it if it was dark. When the moon rose late, and The Stone chanced to be directly in front of it, a black sphere seemed to be rolling into the light to blot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... everything I had to do. All this I thought was a virtue, though it will not serve as any excuse for me, because I knew what it was to procure my own satisfaction in everything, and so ignorance does not blot out the blame. There may be some excuse in the fact that the monastery was not founded in great perfection. I, wicked as I was, followed after that which I saw was wrong, and ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... belonging strictly to the National Government, and to no separate State, has furnished a fruitful subject of remonstrance from British Christians with America. We have abolished slavery there, and thus wiped out the only blot of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... after all, nothing is easier than to take in hand, among our acquaintances, a comic character—a big, fat man—and draw a coarse likeness of him on paper, the sworn enemies of poetic inspiration are often led to blot some paper in this way to amuse a circle of friends. It is true that a pure heart, a well-made mind, will never confound these vulgar productions with the inspirations of simple genius. But purity of feeling is the very thing that is wanting, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... became a more interested spectator. He began to revolve again, and at the very end of his rope, slipping around with tigerish gracefulness; or, the rope taut, he halted as near as possible to the two in the corn, stamped one forefoot angrily and shook his curly head. There, a bold affront, was that blot of glaring scarlet. It awoke in him a long-slumbering ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... I have shown, twelve feet of stalagmite intervenes in the caves between the remains of pre-glacial and post-glacial man. As this deposit forms at a very slow rate, it indicates that, for long ages after the great destruction, man did not dwell in Europe. Slowly, "like a great blot that spreads," the race expanded again ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... characteristic and expressive of modern picture-making and novel-writing,—called "Hauling" or more definitely "Paysan rentrant du Fumier," which represents a man's back, or at least the back of his waistcoat and trousers, and hat, in full light, and a small blot where his face should be, with a small scratch where its nose should be, elongated into one representing a chink of timber ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... was—hardly more than a black blot on the extreme edge of the engraving—the head of a man or woman, a good deal muffled up, the back turned to the spectator, and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... time return'd not. She's my dove— Oh! wing'd she ever from my longing heart, The waters of my life would quick subside, And leave me stranded on the shoals of Time. What if God saw her hovering aloft, And smiled her in amongst his cherubim? What if the draught of bliss should, Lethe-like, Blot me for ever from her memory, So that she sought me never, never more? Oblivion! take again this fearful power— No more shall Fate be tempted with my wealth, Lest covetous it rob me of ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the sight of his shining hair and happy eyes," muttered Loki to himself. "If I could just blot them out of Asgard I should be revenging myself upon the gods for their bitterness toward me, for harm to Balder would hurt them more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... pen: Stein—myself—the world at large—or was this only the aimless startled cry of a solitary man confronted by his fate? "An awful thing has happened," he wrote before he flung the pen down for the first time; look at the ink blot resembling the head of an arrow under these words. After a while he had tried again, scrawling heavily, as if with a hand of lead, another line. "I must now at once . . ." The pen had spluttered, and that time he gave it up. There's nothing more; he had seen a broad gulf ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... would marry him; she would do it to save her father and sister. Then the filigree basket heaped with rubies and pearls and emeralds and sapphires! As for the other, what cared he if he rotted? It gave him the whip hand over the doddering council. Master he would be; he would blot out all things which stood in his path. A king, till he had gathered what fortune he needed. Then let ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... soldiers, there was a man pulling down all the books and stamping over the N's and eagles on the title-page with blue ink, which, if it did not make a plain L, at least blotted out the N; but I should apprehend that every one who saw the blot would think more of the vain endeavour of Louis to take his place than if the N had ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... to his imagination. Far more really than he saw the dim church and the trees, he saw Finlay grovelling on the ground and the stern men crouching over him. He saw a knife gleam in the lantern's light. He shut his eyes, as if by shutting them he could blot out the pictures of his imagination. He waited to hear a shriek, a smothered cry, a groan, the laboured breath of struggling men, the splash of blood. The suspense became an agony. He rose to his ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... unequal to the task of explaining, without hurting anyone's feelings, that she had always regarded Cuthbert as a piece of cheese and a blot ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... words. What is your motive? What is it that you plan? Why should you seek to stop me when I am trying to blot your face out of my mind? Strange labor is that—to try to forget what I ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... man, one that hath grace, a generous spirit, tender of his reputation, will be deeply wounded, and so grievously affected with it, that he had rather give myriads of crowns, lose his life, than suffer the least defamation of honour, or blot in his good name. And if so be that he cannot avoid it, as a nightingale, Que cantando victa moritur, (saith [1687]Mizaldus,) dies for shame if another bird sing better, he languisheth and pineth away in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the law shows her teeth, but dares not bite, And 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... light streamed through the fog above; the restless, shifting vapours glimmered; a dazzling blot grew from the mist. It was the sun. Little by little the landscape became more distinct; the pallid, watery sky lightened; a streak of blue cut the zenith. Everywhere in the road great, lumbering wagons stood, loaded with straw; the sickly morning light fell on silent files ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... door and watched him go. "There's another good lad. I'd like to be finding him again, too, some day." She pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings. "Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... or death—tonight? Kaya." The rest was a blot. He scanned them again more closely and shook the hair ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... future but misery and despair. To few men is it given to love as he loved the girl before him, and in that moment he suffered an agony of suspense which might well have caused the recording angel to blot out the follies of his ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... brought down to the level of the other Allies. In alliance with the city rabble, the Giovani Fiumani, Italian soldiers attacked the French: "I can state emphatically," says Mr. Ryan, "that the French guards did nothing whatever to provoke the assault, some details of which would blot the escutcheon of most savage tribes. I saw soldiers of France killed, after surrender, by their supposed Allies.... I could scarcely believe my ears when Italian officers rapped out the order to load. But they seemed to remember that Frenchmen can fight." However, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... not go. I would not if I could. I wish to remember him as he lived, and one, glance at his dead face would blot out ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... needlework of some sort; for she is extremely expert at it." "There is no occasion to have recourse to that remedy, senora," said Altisidora; "for the mere thought of the cruelty with which this vagabond villain has treated me will suffice to blot him out of my memory without any other device; with your highness's leave I will retire, not to have before my eyes, I won't say his rueful countenance, but his abominable, ugly looks." "That reminds me of the common saying, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... continue to walk the sod, that the man who had these things on his black heretic conscience should continue to haunt the scene of his crimes and lord it over those whom his misdeeds had sullied, was to the common mind unthinkable—nay, incredible: a blot on God's good day. To every potato-setter who, out of the corner of his eye, watched his passage, to every beggar by the road whose whine masked heart-felt curses, to the very children who fell back from the cabin door to escape his evil eye, this was ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... incarnation of spiritual light that ever spent its brief moment on earth: "Crucify Him! Release unto us Barabbas, the Thief." It was this savage force, serving all masters with equal ferocious zeal, that Theodosius turned against the Serapion at Alexandria, in the name of Christianity, to blot out of existence the inestimable treasures of knowledge and literature that had been ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... of Provence. Possibly he was led astray also by his desire to create an epic poem, in which a visit to the lower regions is a necessity. The entire episode is impossible and uninteresting, and is a blot in the beautiful idyll. Later on, this desire to insert the supernatural leads the poet to interrupt the action of his poem, while the three Maries relate to the unconscious Mireio at great length the story of their coming from Jerusalem to Provence. Interesting ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... light, there was an arc-lamp, veiled with gauze of the faintest yellow; and upon the table in the centre stood a decanter of wine and a box of cigars. The room would have been perfect but for a horrid blot upon it—a blot which stared at me from the outer wall with bloodshot eyes and hideous visage. It was the picture of a man's head that had been severed from the body; and was repulsive enough to have been painted by Wiertz himself. The ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... secret voting. Very likely this is as it should be, still it is a sad disgrace that such a thing should be at all necessary, and does not speak well for human nature. Why should it not be possible for men to vote openly? Because some who have done so have had to suffer loss. Is not this a blot upon our civilization, to ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... mortal born, and even though you wish it not, the will of the Gods will be thus. But thou, opening the light of a lamp, art both writing this letter, which thou still art carrying in thy hands, and again you blot out the same characters, and seal, and loose again, and cast the tablet to the ground, pouring abundant tears, and thou lackest naught of the unwonted things that tend to madness. Why art thou troubled, why art thou troubled? What new thing, what new thing [has happened] concerning thee, O king? ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... these two questions most emphatically come in the category of those which affect in the most far-reaching way the home life of the Nation. The horrors incident to the employment of young children in factories or at work anywhere are a blot on our civilization. It is true that each. State must ultimately settle the question in its own way; but a thorough official investigation of the matter, with the results published broadcast, would greatly help toward arousing the public conscience and securing ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in the east next morning, when we again scrambled through the dwarf beechwood to the precipice above the lake. Like an ink-blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were all there now—cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy peaks, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... women as witches; only a hundred and fifty years ago we find John Wesley, founder of Methodism, declaring that "the giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." And if you investigate this witch-burning, you will find that it is only one aspect of a blot upon civilization, the Christian Mysogyny. You see, there were two Hebrew legends—one that woman was made out of a man's rib, and the other that she ate an apple; therefore in modern England a wife must be content with a legal status lower than ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to-morrow, that Sunday, might never come!" he exclaimed suddenly, this time in utter despair. "Why could not this one week be without a Sunday—si le miracle exists? What would it be to Providence to blot out one Sunday from the calendar? If only to prove His power to the atheists et que tout soit dit! Oh, how I loved her! Twenty years, these twenty years, and she has never ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... husband; and he did his best to persuade his wife to join him with their children, but naturally without success. In 1802 the marriage was legally annulled, and Frau van Heusden took his name. She did her best to atone for the blot on her repute by a self-sacrificing lovableness, and was in close sympathy with Bilderdijk on the intellectual side. Like him she was familiar with all the resources of the art of poetry. Most ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gouple. We fit each other like 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 ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... pronounced in his hatred of wrong, and naturally enough he was found on the side of Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Whittier, in their great battle against that huge blot on civilization, slavery in America. He spoke and wrote in behalf of the abolitionists at a time when the anti-slavery men were openly despised as heartily in the North as they were feared and detested in the South. He wrote with a pen which never faltered, and satire, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... don't know 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
... who reads the Law Gave him three weeks of life, Three little weeks in which to heal His soul of his soul's strife, And cleanse from every blot of blood The hand ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... first date of the fifth map, which was labelled "A Century of the World State," and here, as all the sea was blue, so all the land was gold, save one black blot that might have been made by a single spattered drop of ink, for it was no bigger than the Irish Island. The persistence of this remaining black on the map of the world troubled my boyish mind, as it has troubled three generations ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... of Nineveh might conquer Babylon, might even enter within its gates in the hour of triumph, and, when once he had it at his mercy, might throw down its walls, demolish its palaces, destroy its ziggurat, burn its houses, exterminate or carry off its inhabitants, and blot out its name from the list of nations; but so long as he recoiled from the sacrilege involved in such irreparable destruction, he was not merely powerless to reduce it to the level of an ordinary leading provincial town, such as Tela or Tushkhan, but he could not even deprive it in any way ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... My blot of ink is hardly dry. It is a large one, too; of abnormal shape, and altogether monstrous, whether one considers it from the physical side or studies it in its moral bearings. It is very much more than an accident; it has something of the nature of an outrage. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... lower or shady side it was something of a surprise to receive a flash of sunlight directly in the eye. I stepped back. On the pavement at my feet there floated a blot of quivering yellow light; it danced directly towards me, and again I ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... shrieked Clorinda, pulling the paper from under his hand in time to preserve it from the great blot of ink that descended on the table-cover instead. "Dat's a purty splotch, now, ain't it; yer a nice hand, ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... possible dearer than ever to him from these conversations, but there was something—though Maurice himself would not have admitted it—in making Lucia's father an object of interest and sympathy, instead of leaving him a kind of dark but inevitable blot on the history of ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... would be a blot upon the best conceivable man to be egotistical, a fortiori must ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... marvelous richness in finish, is dedicated to the awful goddess Kali, and each morning a goat is sacrificed to this deity, ever craving blood, by Hindu priests attached to the Maharajah's court. This is a revolting blot on a series of majestic buildings that unite to make ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... ruler had sat listlessly upon his stool with the two puppet monarchs enthroned behind him, but of a sudden a dark shadow passed over his face, and he sprang to his feet in one of those gusts of passion which were the single blot upon ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that they had arrived, and downward further swooped the bombing machines, the raiders intent on sighting their intended quarry so as to blot it out ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... chaste muse employ'd her heav'n-taught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line, which dying he could wish to blot. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... over. But so intent she was, that she was careless of her person, careless that her bodice was open at the neck and that more people than Manvers were aware of it. A flower was in her mouth, or he thought so, judging from the blot of scarlet thereabouts; her face was set fixedly towards the town—too fixedly that he might care, since she cared so little, whether she saw him there or not. And after all, not she, but the manners of the game centred ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... beheld a dappling and streaking, a mottling and massing of clouds on the blue. The fog of the London valley, and the smoke of the London chimneys, did not always, any more than the cares and sorrows and sins of its souls, blot out its heaven as if it had never looked on the earth. But he had learned much since he went to the country; he had gone nearer to Nature, and seen that in her lap she carried many more things than ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... They were baked a la mode backwoods. It is hardly proper for me to give a recipe in this place, that belongs more properly to the "Household Departments" of the newspapers. But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell something about cooking, which Prof. Blot does not know, I may say that they were broken and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top of the old box-stove. By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was burned to ashes, but the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the fellow had foolishly put up his hands. A few blows passed and then—Jerry told what happened rather apologetically—"It was a pity, Roger. It wasn't altogether his fault, but he is a bounder. My fist struck his face, seemed to smear it, literally, all into a blot of red. It wasn't like hitting a man in the ring, it was like—like poking a bag full of dirty linen. The whole fabric seemed to give way. He toppled back, turned a complete somersault ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was forced to write of these things and of the "crowning delight of the summer," the tour through Switzerland. She said, "My picture gallery of memory is hung henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindness cannot blot or cause ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... their lives, and also the wrecked and criminal lives of his followers. The picture of the derelict crew in their little boat was ever in his mind as he had last seen them watching with despairing eyes their ship sail away; and again as distance blurred all form, and it lay a blot on the sunny waters, immediately before it was hidden by the ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... hearkened unto," but his power was to assert itself in deeds rather than in words. He appeared at the head of a troop of his own raising at Edgehill; but with the eye of a born soldier he at once saw the blot in the army of Essex. "A set of poor tapsters and town apprentices," he warned Hampden, "would never fight against men of honour"; and he pointed to religious enthusiasm as the one weapon which ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady, one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended, in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological moment, when all the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... open. It is not the first time he has shown his devotion to our cause. You say he has not signed it; true he has not written his name, not even the initials, yet his signature is upon the sheet,—the insignificant ink-blot. It would not be accepted as testimony in a court-martial, but it is sufficient for me," ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... but, accepting the facts as they stand, there is no more pathetic figure in all the history of Spain than this poor, mistreated Juana la Loca, "the mad Juana," and to every diligent student of Spanish history this instance of woman's inhumanity to woman will ever be a blot on the scutcheon of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... what I'm concerned to know just now. And you? What are you proposing to do when you get there?" He withdrew his eyes from the bright seascape and let them travel slowly over his son. "You! sitting there like a blot on God's sunshine! By what right should you expect another world, who have cut such a figure in this one? I have known love and lust, and drink and hard work and hard fighting; I have been down in the depths, and again I have known moments to make a man ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and turned their laborers into slaves. Drunkenness, dissipation, poverty, disaffection, and misery—that is what you will find in the open villages. Now, in Islip you have an omnipotent squire, and that is an abomination in theory, a mediaeval monster, a blot on modern civilization; but practically the poor monster is a softener of poverty, an incarnate buffer between the poor and tyranny, the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the Staines and their relations. The Staines had very few friends, and those they had were hard riding, hunting people, who never look their best in satin. There was no doubt that the Staines sitting in the front seat were a blot on the whole affair. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... go? I know little, verily, and care less. Only let me lie down and sleep for ever, and forget everything—I ask but so much. I think God might let me have that. One has to wake ever, here, to another dreary day. If man might but sleep and not wake! or—ah, if man could blot out thirty years, and I sit once more in my mail on my Feraunt at the gate of Hennebon! Dreams, dreams, all empty dreams! Come, child, and lay by this wimple. 'Tis man's duty to hie him abed now. Let's do our duty. 'Tis all man has left to me—leave to do as I am bidden. What was that bruit ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... against them were so loud, that Governments were constrained to take official notice of them. Exemplary punishments were judged necessary; and, at length, the most cruel and barbarous kinds were resorted to. What a blot upon the history of those times, are the dreadful tortures of quartering alive, and breaking upon the wheel! These means being insufficient to prevent the perpetration of crimes; it was thought expedient to banish ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... increase in magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem to have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark day-visions; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... will not occur again. I give notice that if it does, I shall carry out the punishment. I do not desire to see a blot made on the courage of our men by those who escape from the trenches to avoid the rifle and machine gun fire of the enemy. Henceforth, I shall hold responsible all Officers who do not shoot with their revolvers all the privates who try to escape from the trenches on ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... from the hands of Christ and his apostles in all its perfections, and as long as infidels stop short of the New Testament itself, and short of Christ and his apostles, in their warfare, we may well believe that all their efforts to blot out Christianity will be vain. Protestants themselves have demurred as much as infidels against the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, and fully as much against the errors of each other as denominations. "Truth stands true to her God, man ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... he did not sit and think them. He was busy all the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new foundation for a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high-water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... rested upon the grass beside him, and she, poor child, mistaking the promptings of that action, suffered it to lie in his strong grasp. With averted head she gazed upon the sea below, until a mist of tears rose up to blot it out. The breeze seemed full of melody and gladness. God was very good to her, and sent her in her hour of need this great consolation—a consolation indeed that must have served to efface whatever sorrow could have ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... that from my secret stand Dost note the follies of each mortal here, Oh, if Eliza's steps employ thy hand, Blot the sad legend with a mortal tear. Nor when she errs, through passion's wild extreme, Mark then her course, nor heed each trifling wrong; Nor, when her sad attachment is her theme, Note down the transports of her erring tongue. But, when she sighs for sorrows ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... remained,—she had seen her on the street only the day before. The sight of this person she had always found offensive, and now, she felt, in view of what she had just learned, it must be even more so. Never, while this woman lived in the town, would she be able to throw the veil of forgetfulness over this blot upon her ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to hit hard, she hovered so closely over the truth as sometimes to run the risk of uncovering it. The poor fellow had made long voyages abroad and saved some money. He had loved his wife passionately—that was the only blot on his character. He always dreamt of coming home, and settling down in comfort for the rest of his life. He had come at last, and a fine welcome had awaited him. His wife was as proud as Lucifer—the daughter of some green-grocer, of course. She had been ashamed of her husband, ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... lance-corporal, and the beggar says I saved his life; but it was really through carrying a fat letter from his sister—not even his sweetheart. We chaff him at missing such a romantic chance. He got off with a flesh wound, but there is a great blot of red ink on the letter. You may imagine we were not anxious to let our comrades go unavenged. My superiors being sick or otherwise occupied, I was allowed to make a night-march with thirty-five men on a farm nine miles away—just to get square. It was a nasty piece of work, as we were within ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... her anchor. I scrambled out of my bunk, and took a peep through the port in the ship's side, to see what the weather was like; it was scarcely daylight yet; the glass of the port was blurred with the quick splashing of rain, and the sky was simply a blot of scurrying, dirty grey vapour. I made a quick mental reference to the condition of the tide, deducting therefrom the direction of the ship's head, and thus arrived at the fact that the wind still hung in the same quarter as yesterday, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... my revenge. I, Philippa, Duchess of Hazlewood on this your wedding-day, reveal to you the first stain on the name of Arleigh—unvail the first blot on one of the noblest escutcheons in the land. You have married not only a low-born girl, but the daughter of a felon—a felon's daughter is mistress of proud Beechwood! You who scorned Philippa L'Estrange, who had the cruelty to refuse the love of a woman who ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... long in coming. Such a delay always aggravated the slow fire within him. He had nothing of Ladd's patience. He wanted action. The gray shadow below thinned out, and the patch of mesquite made a blot upon the pale valley. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... does the future exert a wonderful power over our lives, in that it holds for us the inheritance undefiled and incorruptible, the patrimony of eternity. And who can measure the influence of this belief over human character? Blot it out, and what inspiration have we to struggle on? If we are to perish as the beast of the field, wither like the grass, and vanish like the transient cloud, man has no grand, sublime impulsion in this life. But let him believe that he is the child of God, that there is an immortal soul, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... indisposition, and would have admitted more fully the alarming' symptoms she felt, were it not for the declining health of her daughter. If there be one misery in life more calculated than another to wither and consume the heart, to make society odious, man to look like a blot in the creation, and the very providence of God doubtful, it is to feel one's character publicly slandered and misrepresented by the cowardly and malignant, by the skulking scoundrel and the moral assassin—to feel yourself loaded with imputations that are false, calumnious, and cruel. Mary M'Loughlin ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... give 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! ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... awe of those rogues at Borne is now less than it was.' And again, speaking of Roman insolence: 'They push on blindly ahead—there is no listening or reasoning. Well, I have seen; more water-bubbles than even theirs, and once such an outrageous smoke that it managed to blot out the sun, but the smoke never lasted, and the sun still shines. I shall continue to keep the truth bright and expose it, and am as far from fearing my ungracious masters as they are ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... rising]. Ah! Well, Martha!—No, no, no, if you please! [He restrains her approach.] Observe the retribution of an unchastened will. You have never seen my face for sixteen years! However, like a cloud, I blot out your transgressions ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... bid thee come: Is she sick? why then be sure, She invites thee to the cure: Doth she cross thy suit with "No?" Tush, she loves to hear thee woo: Doth she call the faith of man In question? Nay, she loves thee than; And if e'er she makes a blot, She's lost if that thou hit'st her not. He that after ten denials, Dares attempt no farther trials, Hath no warrant to acquire The dainties of his ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... carefully in summer. There were grape-vine arbors and wild rose hedges, and the wide verandas were embowered. In summer there were many rowboats on the lake, and they lingered more often in the deep shade of the weeping willows fringing the banks. The only blot on the aristocratic landscape was a low brown restaurant kept by a Frenchman, known as "Old Blazes." It was a resort for gay parties that were quite respectable and for others that were not. Behind the public rooms was ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... conversed with all the ease of cordial and guileless friendship, how did Valerie rejoice in secret that upon that friendship there rested no blot of shame! and that she had not forfeited those consolations for a home without love, which had at last settled into cheerful nor unhallowed resignation,—consolations only to be found in the conscience ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... left. A slight haze filled the air, not heavy enough to blot out the stars; but sufficient to promise hoarfrost at least. Somehow there was no reason to despair as ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... going on all over England—and they would no doubt develop into respectable and virtuous citizens; but the spectacle of their joy was one that had no single agreeable feature. These loutish, rowdy, loud-talking, intolerable young men were a blot upon the sweet day, the pleasant countryside. Probably, Hugh thought, there was something sexual beneath it all, and the insolence of the group was in some dim way concerned with the instinct for impressing and captivating the female heart. Perhaps the more demure ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Protestant England and Holland sent words of cheer to their fellow-religionists. We can not enter into the details of this conflict. The result was that the king found it impossible to exterminate the Protestants, or to blot out their faith. A policy of semi-tolerance was gradually introduced, though in various parts of the kingdom the persecuting spirit remained for several years unbroken. The king, chagrined by the failure of his plans, would not allow the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... gently to the snow. Lurching to his feet, he stood swaying above the scientist's body, ready to defend the helpless man against any who came to take him. Defiant curses died in his paralyzed throat as darkness swooped down to blot out all consciousness. His steel-sinewed body, beaten at last, slumped protectingly over the lanky ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... before; And though th' event oft answers not the same— Suffice that high attempts have never shame. The mean observer, whom base safety keeps, Lives without honour, dies without a name, And in eternal darkness ever sleeps.— And therefore, Delia, 'tis to me no blot To have attempted, tho' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... further side of the hall the black coats of the workers made a blot out of which intense faces looked and across which the flickering gas jets in the centre of ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... his spine resting against the box-seat and his long legs drawn back under him, and he again had the little basket of figs on his knees, and clasped it with his big knotty hands as though it were something fragile and rare which the slightest jolting might damage. His cassock showed like a huge blot, and in his coarse ashen face, that of a peasant yet near to the wild soil and but slightly polished by a few years of theological studies, his eyes alone seemed to live, glowing with the dark flame of a devouring passion. On seeing him ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... railroads and steamboats and telegraphs; who would see undone in Egypt all that great Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to forget than emulate him; a man who found his great empire a blot upon the earth—a degraded, poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime, and brutality—and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life and then pass to the dust and the worms and leave ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... XVIII. that there had been no interruption of the Bourbon reign, and the attempt to blot from history the twenty-five most eventful years in the annals of France, deservedly excited both contempt and ridicule. An American writer of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... between one shadow and another; but she laughed, though no sound issued from the gaping mouth, as she stood in the last patch of shadow which was separated by some few yards of silvery path from the black blot upon the wall which covered ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... perhaps laugh at the wicked generation of pill-venders, that seeks for places to put up its sign. But does not this tolerance indicate the note of vulgarity in us, as Father Newman might say? Is it not a blot on the people as well as on the rocks? Let them fill the columns of newspapers with their ill-smelling advertisements, and sham testimonials from the Reverend Smith, Brown, and Jones; but let us prevent them from setting their traps for our infirmities in the spots God has chosen for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the pretty white porch of the hospital, looking out across its squares of flower-edged turf at the long street of Westmore. In the warm gold-powdered light of September the factory town still seemed a blot on the face of nature; yet here and there, on all sides, Justine's eye saw signs of humanizing change. The rough banks along the street had been levelled and sodded; young maples, set in rows, already made a long festoon of gold against the dingy house-fronts; and the houses themselves—once ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton |
