"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taint the air And make all life unlovely. Will it last? Beauty alone endures from age to age, From age to age endures, handmaid of God. Poets who walk with her on earth go hence Bearing a talisman. You bury one, With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field; The snows and rains blot out his very name, As he from life seems blotted: through Time's glass Slip the invisible and magic sands That mark the century, then falls a day The world is suddenly conscious of a flower, Imperishable, ever to be prized, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lay 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 ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... is a blot upon the American national honor, and the most mystifying part of it is that intelligent people, the best people, are not a party to it. The railroads want the Chinese laborer. The great ranches of the West need ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... 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
... and unconscionable intrigue for party advantage by our opponents. There is in this no suggestion of unkind sentiments toward our leading adversaries. We can utter the sentiment voiced on the hill above Jerusalem and when America has come to understand we stand ready to blot out a dark chapter of our national life and to pronounce a pardon upon a course of conduct charitably covered by 'they know not ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... It cannot be sooth That you talk like an angry illogical girl. Yes, banish the Hebrews, as wholly as ruth. Be cold in your wrath as the Neva's chill swirl, Snub friendly remonstrance, blunt satire's keen blade. With a blot of black ink! Will it carry you far? A CAESAR must not be a fool or afraid; There's no place in earth's round for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... am! Oh, Petro, don't be horrid, just when I really need you to be nice. And you can be nice—very nice. Don't let's even think about the family past. It's awful! It's a blot! But it can't be helped. We must try to live it down. And we can, with our money. We can and we must. A great chance has come to us. All the more because of—of what you reminded me—we must be careful of the sort of people we ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... never knew—never knew for dead certain that she was as glad as he was. How could he know? Would he ever know? Would he always have this craving—this pang like hunger, somehow, to make Janey so much part of him that there wasn't any of her to escape? He wanted to blot out everybody, everything. He wished now he'd turned off the light. That might have brought her nearer. And now those letters from the children rustled in her blouse. He could have chucked them into ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... too well," said he, "what would become of you? Blaines College shall never blot out the Department of Charities. I nearly forgot a bit of news. Gloomy news. The Post is going to fire your ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... portion of a book whose beauty is naivete. But whether we accept or reject the story of the negro malefactor hung in a cage from a tree, and pecked at by crows, it is certain that the traveller justly regarded slavery as the one conspicuous blot on the new country's shield. Crevecoeur was not an active abolitionist, like that other naturalised Frenchman, Benezet of Philadelphia; he had his own slaves to work his northern farms; he was, however, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... forehead show her seal impressed, Perhaps they mourn, in bleak Misfortune's shade, Their age and cares with penury repaid; 150 Their errors deeply scanned, their worth forgot, Or marked by hard injustice with a blot. If high they soar, and keep their distant way, And spread their ample pinions to the day, Malignant Faction hears with hate their name, And all her tongues are busy with their fame. But 'tis enough to hold, as best we may, Our destined track, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... me your inner mind, Where conscience in the robes of Justice shoots Light so serenely keen that in such light Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,' As your friend Osier says, might show some blot. Seraphs might! More to love? Oh! these dear faults Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls With garlands. All the fear is, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sentences. He looked into the glowing ashes—there he seemed to see in ruins the whole fabric of his dreams—but if there was a law which brought thoughts back, and back again at the same hour each day, then Moravia was right: he must blot out the old pictures and conjure up new ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... depraves morals and corrupts the family, and as long as it exists, it carries the brand of barbarism. China has great men, who for the honour of their country would not be afraid to take the matter in hand. They would, if necessary, imitate Lincoln and the Czar Alexander to effect the removal of such a blot. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... melancholy grandeur, the same character of romance, the same fantastical display. Nor were the secret passages, peculiar to the one, wanting to the history of the other. Both had their mysteries. One blot there was in the otherwise proud escutcheon of the Rookwoods, that dimmed its splendor, and made pale its pretensions: their sun was eclipsed in blood from its rising to its meridian; and so it seemed would be its setting. This foul reproach attached ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... voters in the District; and third, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners. With these three conditions, I confess I would be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep from our Capital that foul blot ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... the side and the little penthouses 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 was added by the inlaying ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... cottages, 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 poor ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of women, bewildered and intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the inrunning of a little brook, Sat by the river in a cove and watch'd The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes And saw the barge that brought her moving down, Far off, a blot upon the stream, and said, Low in himself, 'Ah, simple heart and sweet, You loved me, damsel, surely with a love ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... got Bugsey's and Patsey's bed paid fer now. Now I'll do Teddy's and Jimmy's. This ain't a blot it's the liniment Mrs. McGuire gave me. I ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... 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
... His robed form seemed to hang the whole room with classic draperies; his epic gesture seemed to extend it into grander perspectives, till the little black figure of the modern cleric seemed to be a fault and an intrusion, a round, black blot upon some ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... March, Brutus, you 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, but both of whom dreaded peace ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... optimism. We see that it has a marvellous and unexampled adaptation for its peculiar vocation; that it must be judged, not in the abstract, but under the fore-ordered laws of its existence; that it has purged away the blot with which we brought it into the world; that it gravely and vigorously grapples with the problem of making a continent into a state; and that it treasures with fondness the traditions of British antiquity, which are in truth unconditionally its own, as well, and as much as they ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... wing is so stylish. I think you are very sensible to wear colours and not to stick to black as Susie Chamberlain does. It makes her look as old as the hills, and I believe she does it just to depress people. Life is too short, as I said when I left off mourning, to be an ink blot wherever you go. And it doesn't mean that she grieves a bit more for her husband than anybody else does. Everybody knows they led a cat and dog's life together, and I've even heard, though I can't remember who told me, that she was on the point of getting a divorce ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... 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, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... place where appeared an article on the coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the place had its own dismal significance. The ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... old there were,— Whose hints showed meaning, whose allusions care, By one brave stroke to mark all human kind, Called clear blank paper every infant mind! Then still, as opening sense her dictates wrote, Fair virtue put a seal, or vice a blot. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... that he might be able to look them in the face? How, without falsehood, to disentangle his relations with Missy? How to get out of the inconsistency of considering the private holding of land unjust and keeping his inheritance? How to blot out his sin against Katiousha? "I cannot abandon the woman whom I have loved and content myself with paying money to the lawyer to save her from penal servitude, which she does not even deserve." To blot out the sin, as he ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... The darkest blot upon the character of Yoritomo is his treatment of his youngest brother Yoshitsune. It was he who had by his generalship and gallantry brought these terrible wars to a triumphant conclusion. He had crushed in the decisive battle of Dan-no-ura ...
— Japan • David Murray
... felt sure of himself. Did the lover look back, regretting the broken word, the wrong done to another? We do not know. His life was throughout upright, austere, free from blot; born and bred a Catholic, he had doubtless Huguenot blood in his veins, many of his most striking characteristics pointed ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the day is the wine thereof," said Conrad Kurzbold, rising to his feet. "Wine, blessed liquor as it is, possesses nevertheless one defect, which blot on its escutcheon is that it cannot carry over till next day, except in so far as a headache is concerned, and a certain dryness of the mouth. It is futile to bid us lay in a supply to-night that will be of any use to-morrow ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... him, he let Fuller slip from his shoulders and lowered him 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 form of his ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... blindfolded, was led over against a wall, where a Belgian squad leveled their rifles at me. I assured him that the sensation was by no means terrible; but he would not be comforted. Death itself he wouldn't mind so much, if he could have found it in the open fighting gladly for his country; but it seemed a blot on his good name to be shot for just snooping around ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... jolly fellows, apparently, yet somehow conveying to me the suspicion that in a saloon shindy they might prove themselves my superiors. (I was told in New York, and by the best people in New York, that Tammany was a blot on the social system of the city. But I would not have it so. I would call it a part of the social system, just as much a part of the social system, and just as expressive of the national character, as the fine ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Egypt" (Deut. 7:7, 8); "For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great" (Psa. 25:11); "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions" (Psa. 51:1); "I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen whither ye went" (Ezek. 36:22); "We do not present our supplications before thee for ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... and press, clerical robes and the pro- [1] hibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of the world,—all unmitigated systems of crime; and it requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes. [5] It was the Southern pulpit and press that influenced the people to wrench from man both human and divine rights, in order to subserve the interests of wealth, religious ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... thee! Imperious honour;—surely I may pity him. Yet, wherefore pity? no, I envy thee: For thou hast still the liberty to weep, In thee 'twill be no crime: thy tears are guiltless, For they infringe no duty, stain no honour, And blot no vow; but mine are criminal, Are drops of shame which wash the cheek of guilt, And every tear ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... 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, while ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "all will not be well; nothing will ever be well with me again," and she returns to the room which she has left a few hours before as a bright and happy girl, now broken hearted and on the verge of despair, with a blot upon her young life which nothing on earth can efface. To be sure, he who has brought all this upon her has promised to right the wrong by marriage, but poor consolation it seems to her to have to marry ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... stand agape and dumb, And monarchs with terror shake! Over the walls of majesty, "Upharsin" is writ in words of fire, And the eyes of the bondmen, wherever they be, Are lit with their wild desire. (<) Soon, soon shall the thrones that blot the world, Like the Orleans, into the dust be hurl'd, And the world roll on, like a hurricane's breath, Till the farthest nation hears what it saith.— (ff.) "ARISE! ARISE! BE ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... never had been. This in the face of the assertion of Pliny, who said, eighteen hundred years before, that one of the things even God could not do, was to obliterate the past; and of Omar's words, "Nor all your tears shall blot a line of it." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... look back with calm thankfulness on that long period of trial and exertion—with thankfulness that the dark clouds that hung over us, threatening to blot us from existence, when they did burst upon us, were full of blessings. When our situation appeared perfectly desperate, then were we on the threshold of a new state of things, which was born out of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... if in future years One wretch should turn and fly, Let weeping Fame Blot out his name From Freedom's hallowed sky; Or should our sons e'er prove A coward, traitor race,— Just heaven! frown In thunder down, T' avenge ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... being modernised, and many an interesting old building is doomed to destruction; whilst cotton-mills and steam-engines, and little white villas amongst the trees, black coats and parisian bonnets, all tend to blot out the memories of mediaeval days. Let us make the most of the place whilst there is time—and let us, before we pass on to Lisieux, add one picture of Pont Audemer in the early morning—a picture which every year will seem ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... 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 ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... up (contained in one page), with the estimates bracketed, the captions in a running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm, in spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the lad of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it his glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a noble undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great imprudence of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of copying, a ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... following the dictates of political necessity, he may have acted with no more real anti-slavery sentiment than that which makes many avowed pro-slavery men emancipationists among ourselves, yet he certainly has achieved a noble glory, which even his monstrous reign in Poland may not entirely blot out from the pages of history. The same friendly disposition toward the United States was, however, ostentatiously evinced by Nicholas, who lived and died the true representative and guardian of unmitigated tyranny; it was as ostentatiously shown by Alexander at the time when Fremont's proclamation ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... every political parlour, beer-shop, news-room, and secret or open place of assembly, frequented by the discontented working-men; and that no milk-and-water weakness on the part of the executive can ever blot them out. Great things like that, are caught up, and stored up, in these times, and are not forgotten, Mr. Hood. The public at large (especially those who wish for peace and conciliation) are universally obliged to ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... and immediately carried to the court gazette by Tonto; and the three doctors rose, bowed to the minister and the king, shook hands with one another, and went down-stairs quarreling or laughing, I know not which; the chronicle is almost illegible, owing to a large blot ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... those who approve of this resolution can afford to give way, and allow that part of it which is objectionable to be stricken out. The negroes have suffered more than the women, and the women, perhaps, can afford to give them the preference. Let it stand as regards them, and blot out the word "woman." It may possibly be woman's place to suffer. At any rate, let her suffer, if, by that means, mankind ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... my right, hiding the secret of my treachery as long as I could. But how long would that be? How could I be sure that the theft of the treaty had not already been discovered, and that the avalanche of ruin was not on its way to blot us for ever ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... dropped the sheet of pigs upon the desk, but at that unfortunate moment, the paint-brush slipped from her grasp and spilled a great, scarlet blot on the teacher's fresh white waist. Dismayed, Peace could only stare at the ruin she had wrought, having forgotten all about her drawing in wondering what punishment would follow this second calamity; and Miss Peyton had to speak twice before she came to her senses ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... few, some isolate few remembered that time of chaos a season ago—but it was fleeting recall at best, as somatic responses rose to blot it out. ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... are, Sweetie," says I; "but some day your hand is going to joggle, and there'll be a blot on them pages, and then you'll die of ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... guilty of departing therefrom. He who should give breath stifleth him that could breathe. The land that ought to give repose driveth repose away. He who should divide in fairness hath become a robber. He who should blot out the oppressor giveth him the command to turn the town into a waste of water. He who should drive away evil himself committeth acts ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... especially cruel in this, that he had so treated her that she could not look forward to future joy without alloy. She could forgive him;—yes. But she could not endure that he should think that she would forgive him. She was willing to blot out the offence, as a thing by itself, in an island of her life,—of which no one should ever think again. Was she to lose her lover for ever because she did not forgive him! If they could only come to some agreement that the offence should be acknowledged to be heinous, unpardonable, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... day-light that makes Sin Which these dun shades will ne're report. Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame 130 That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr, Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair, Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend Us thy vow'd Priests, til utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out, Ere the blabbing Eastern scout, The nice Morn on th' Indian steep From ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I wasn't so stupid," cried Armine, with a violent effort against his exhaustion. "Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we've done, and ask Him to blot it out. I've been trying-trying-only I'm so dull; and let us give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in her heart. How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root! O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush! Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me 105 Such an immodest raiment, if shame live In a disguise of love: It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, Women to change their shapes ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... pale shaft of 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 of ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... blot upon his noble nature,' uttered Basil, with a sigh. 'His one weakness. How,' he cried scornfully, 'can the conqueror of half the world ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when my father had found this young savage lying in the forest, plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to bring some of the Fernalds over here to see the place," observed he. "For some time Mr. Clarence has been complaining that this shack was a blot on the estate and threatening to pull it down. He'd better have a peep at it now. You may find he'll be taking ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... seriously contemplate divorcing your wife. You must know that you have not the accepted grounds for doing so. As for the law you quote which allows divorce in cases of two years' so-called desertion, I can only say that I consider it a blot on Leichardt's Land legislation. Divorce should be for one cause only—the cause to which Our Lord gave a qualified approval; and Bridget has never been unfaithful—in act or desire, to her husband. I would maintain this in spite of the most damning ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... run after some one else. It is a point of honour with a boy not to be left with "last tag" against him, but he must try to run some one else down, when he is then immune and can watch the game in safety, or can leave for home with no blot on his escutcheon. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... birth having been removed by the Cardinals Pallavicini and Orsini, who had been charged with legitimating him. February 25, 1493, Gianandrea Boccaccio wrote to Ferrara regarding the legitimating of Caesar, ironically saying, "They wish to remove the blot of being a natural son, and very rightly; because he is legitimate, having been born in the house while the woman's husband was living. This much is certain: the husband was sometimes in the city and at others traveling about in the territory of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... Florida not long ago took action which is a disgrace to itself and a blot on the fair fame of our republic. Let our people squarely face this issue. While we are protesting against the treatment of missionaries in Turkey and calling upon the Government to use all its power in their protection, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... most capacious chair. In the pulpit he delivered everything with the pompous cadence of the elder New England clergy, and a sly joke is told at the expense of his even temper, that on one occasion, when loftily reading the hymn, he encountered a blot upon the page quite obliterating the word; but without losing the cadence, although in a very vindictive tone at the truant word, or the culprit who erased it, he finished the reading ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... utterly beaten infantry, the Constable Montmorency and several generals taken prisoner, the Duke d'Enghien mortally wounded, the flower of the nobility cut down like grass,—such were the terrible results of a battle which plunged France into mourning, and which would have been a blot on the reign of Henry II, had not the Duke of Guise obtained a brilliant revenge the ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger
... absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together. And what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our prouince, who onely gather his works, and giue them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your diuers capacities, you will finde enough, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... recognition of the race have taken place? I do not think so. The Atlanta officials went as far as they did because they felt it to be a pleasure, as well as a duty, to reward what they considered merit in the Negro race. Say what we will, there is something in human nature which we cannot blot out, which makes one man, in the end, recognize and reward merit in another, regardless of colour ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... guard thee, Hovering near thee night and day, For all thy good deeds God reward thee, The rest forgive and blot away. ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... end; stifling any audible expression of his re-awakened indignation, he whispered to the baronet, "My dear father! recent happy events have made us almost forget that villain's baseness; but I pray, let him not remain another week a blot upon our ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... speed her rapid course The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, Well pleas'd to leave so cruel sea behind; And of that second region will I sing, In which the human spirit from sinful blot Is purg'd, and for ascent to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... our hearts, and instill Justice as our guide. We could eradicate poverty from our midst and bring happiness to sorrowing mankind. We could blot out tyranny among men and exchange it for the priceless legacy of freedom and make the relation between man and man bear ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... you should though. How much more If I drew higher things with the same truth! That were to take the prior's pulpit-place— Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh! It makes me mad to see what men shall do, And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us, Nor blank: it means intensely, and means good. To find its meaning is my meat ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... game both of love and of himself, with a dozen women at a time, and, if you would believe his words, raving after every one of them; but ere a week passes over his head they are all sponged out of it together, and not even a blot of them remains.' ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... at his side and held his head a little higher. "What we offer you is a chance—a chance that a gentleman should appreciate. A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon the memory of a man who certainly had his faults, but who, personally, had done ...
— The American • Henry James
... at all displeased, I could see that something had come up that might blot out the past unfortunate misunderstanding, "there simply must be something wrong here. Leave this handkerchief with me. I'll do ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... overwhelm; upset, subvert, put an end to; seal the doom of, do in, do for, dish*, undo; break up, cut up; break down, cut down, pull down, mow down, blow down, beat down; suppress, quash, put down, do a job on; cut short, take off, blot out; dispel, dissipate, dissolve; consume. smash, crash, quell, squash, squelch, crumple up, shatter, shiver; batter to pieces, tear to pieces, crush to pieces, cut to pieces, shake to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces; laniate[obs3]; nip; tear ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... enhance its beauty by forming a crystal-clear lake." Landscape gardens, places of recreation and worship, are never made beautiful by destroying and burying them. The beautiful sham lake, forsooth, should be only an eyesore, a dismal blot on the landscape, like many others to be seen in the Sierra. For, instead of keeping it at the same level all the year, allowing Nature centuries of time to make new shores, it would, of course, be full only a month or two in the spring, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... your existence, without 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
... sincerely concerned and grieved by the occurrence. It is always a blot on a school to be obliged to expel a pupil. She talked the matter over carefully with some of the teachers. Marjorie's record at Brackenfield had unfortunately been already marred by several incidents which prejudiced her in the eyes of the mistresses. They had been done innocently ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... for speech. His canteen was already half empty. Carmena gave him a sip from her own and dragged him around until his head lay in the small blot of shade made by a cactus stem. Half an hour passed before he was able to get back into the saddle. But the rest appeared to have fully restored the girl's strength. She set off at a pace that again forced the pony ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... revealed to the Inquisitors a plot which they well knew to be feigned: and, lastly, that when the ambitious plans of d'Ossuna, partially discovered before their time by the Spanish government, might have compromised Venice also if they had been fully elucidated; in order to blot out each syllable of evidence which could bear, even indirectly, upon the transaction, so far as she was concerned, it was thought expedient to remove every individual who had been even unwittingly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... whitening 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... at the provisions made by the criminal law for protecting women. The offence that most closely touches women is rape. The punishment of this in Blackstone's day was death[407]; but in the next century the death penalty was repealed and transportation for life substituted.[408] The saddest blot on a presumably Christian civilisation connected with this matter is the so-called "age of legal consent." Under the older Common Law this was ten or twelve; in 1885 it was thirteen, at which period a girl was supposed to be at an age to know what she was doing. But in the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... succeed at all events in exposing one crying evil—the absurdity of meddling with what one does not understand. We who know better may afford to smile at once at their spite and their ignorance. But he who lifts his voice against the mother that bore him, can fix no darker blot upon her fame than the disgrace of having given birth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... and the desire 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
... worst of all. The vapours of his discontent had almost passed away—that bright pernicious dream was being rapidly forgotten—the morning's ill-got coin, "thank the Lord, it was lost as soon as found," and penitence had washed away that blot upon his soul; but here, an honest pound, liberally bestowed by his hereditary landlord—his own bright bit of gold—the only bit but one he ever had (and how different in innocence from that one!)—a seeming sugar-drop of kindness, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... But Pan recovered first. The girl swayed with naked arms outstretched against the wall. On her white wrist showed a crimson blot. Pan looked no more. Snatching a blanket off the bed he threw it round her, wrapped it tight, and ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... without this. Do not let an hour of grief for me mar your peace, my dearest; think of me with no pain, Beatrice; only with some memory of our past love. I have not strength yet to say—forget me; and yet,—if it be for your happiness,—blot out from your remembrance all thought of what we have been to one another; all thought of me and of my life, save to remember now and then that I ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... minister still gives way to his old feelings; he receives or visits his friends privately; he shuts himself up with them, and talks of the times when they could be open friends. By dint of precautions they have hitherto succeeded in concealing this blot of friendship against policy; but sooner or later the newspapers will be informed of it, and will denounce him to the country ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... at her word and ordered by the emperor for execution. It was the darkest deed of Vespasian's life, a blot upon his character which all his record for clemency cannot remove, and which has ever since lain as a dark stain upon ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... me." For the first time he turns his head and regards her with a steady gaze. "I particularly object to your doing anything of the kind. It would be a disgrace, a blot upon our name forever. None of our family has ever been forced to work for daily bread. And I would have you remember ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... it was inserted. The 'Chancellor,' or whoever else transcribed those laws in Latin, was, of course, a cleric, priest or monk. From his hand comes the first hint of arbitrary power; the first small blot of a long dark stain of absolutism, which was to darken and deepen through centuries ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Platform. It shall be my earnest effort to write in the same christian manner, and my prayer is that the Spirit of our Divine Master may direct my pen, that it may record "No line, which dying, I could wish to blot." ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... Hastings, touched, and in a whisper, "what pity that so gallant a gentleman should leave a rebel's blot upon his scutcheon!" ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speaks of the "testimony of" his own "conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God," he had his conversation in the world and towards his disciples. Let us pray God to give us this great and precious gift; that we may blot out from our memory all that offends Him; unlearn all that knowledge which sin has taught us; rid ourselves of selfish motives, self-conceit, and vanity, littlenesses, envying, grudgings, meannesses; turn from all cowardly, low, miserable ways; and escape from servile fears, the fear of man, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... subdued with happiness that seemed to blot out the troublous past, to be the beginning of new life. New ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... of defense. "If war comes," he cried, "let it come. We may regret the necessity which produced it, but when it does come, I would administer to our citizens Hannibal's oath of eternal enmity. I would blot out the lines on the map which now mark our territorial boundaries on this continent, and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself." He even broke with the Polk administration when it retreated from the advanced position which the party had taken during the campaign, and was one ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... had widened with a certain horror, for the blot in the moonlight was beyond question moving, elongating, quivering, subtly changing ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... spark of life and gives you none in return; you exhaust yourself on fantoms; wherever falls a drop of our sweat, there springs up one of those sinister weeds that grow in graveyards. Die! You are the enemy of all, who love; blot yourself from the face of the earth, do not wait for old age; do not leave a child behind you, do not fecundate a drop of your corrupted blood; vanish as does the smoke, do not deprive a single blade of living grass of a ray ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset |
