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Disfigure   Listen
noun
Disfigure  n.  Disfigurement; deformity. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disfigure" Quotes from Famous Books



... like other young ladies. It resulted that on Monday morning they were nervous and impatient, alternating between fits of giggling delight in the interchange of fond reminiscences, and the crossness which is pretty sure to disfigure human behavior from want of sleep. But ordinarily Bartley got on very well with them. In spite of the assumption of equality between all classes in Equity, they stood in secret awe of his personal splendor, and the tradition of his achievements ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... all talking of the rumoured war between the United States and Mexico and prophesying various results. Neither Pico nor Castro looked amiable. The Governor had arrived in the morning to find that the General had allowed pasquinades representing his Excellency in no complimentary light to disfigure the streets of Monterey. Castro, when taken to task, had replied haughtily that it was the Governor's place to look after his own dignity; he, the Commandante-General of the army of the Californias, had more important matters ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... He saw that his mother understood that Drusilla had gone away. Mr. Bartlett spoke to his wife. "I heard this morning that you had returned to stay for a day. I'm afraid the tents and the children will still disfigure ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... of Morlaas, which, ruined as it is, is said to be rich (!) is about to restore this fine entrance. A new town-hall and market-place are being built, and, when completed, the miserable huts which disfigure the church will be cleared away, and the facade allowed to appear. Above this door is a fine steeple, crested with figures, which we could scarcely distinguish, but which we found were the Cows of Bearn ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... present as dust of the ground. And if we oppose such a pedigree on account of the ugliness and wickedness which exist in the animal world, we have to point to the fact that, on the one hand, mankind also has stains which are uglier than those which disfigure the wildest beast of prey, and that, on the other hand, the animal world shows features which {319} are so noble that no man need be ashamed of them. It is certainly a right feeling to which Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," gives expression, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... is the great American anomaly. Judged by his rights on paper his citizenship is indisputable, but judged by his rights in fact it is full of mutilations and amputations which disfigure it almost beyond recognition. One-half of it appears in the light clothed with fragments of his rights, and the other half is in eclipse, exposed naked to biting cold and bitter wrong. He appeals to good men and true in the South and in the North and in the Government too, ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke

... which a man writes because he cannot help writing; the irrepressible effluence of his secret being on every thing in sympathy with it,—a kind of flowering of the soul amid the warmth and the light of nature. I am no poet, I exclaimed, and I will not disfigure ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... Thus, when cutting peat for fuel, which is often done within the dyke, instead of doing this in parallel lines, leaving a considerable space between them to become a future corn-field, the people cut in every direction, disfigure the ground, and very often form reservoirs for water to accumulate in. The outfield is allowed to remain fallow for one, and sometimes two years in succession, but the infield is generally turned over every year.'** ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... two stages, a lofty lantern story having two transomed two-light windows on each face and a shorter upper one having smaller windows without transoms and a battlemented parapet. Large skeleton clock-dials disfigure the windows of this story. Narrow buttress strips on either side and between the windows run through and serve to connect the stories. The north-east angle has an octagonal stair turret carried up above the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... other and more gentle scenes for the decoration of their homes. Flower-gatherers and dancing-girls, harvest festivals and religious processions, appealed to their minds far more than the endless and monotonous succession of horrors with which the Mesopotamian monarchs delighted to disfigure their walls; and even the dangers of the bull-ring, as seen on the Knossian frescoes, are mild and gentle when compared with the abominations where Teumman has his head sawed off with a short dagger, and other unfortunates are flayed alive, or have ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space should not be filled with any figure whose presence seemed to him historically desirable. One is tempted to suspect even, so clumsy is the figure and so out of scale with its neighbors, that the master refused to disfigure his work himself and left the task to one of his apprentices. If it had been done by one of them, say Giulio Romano, after the picture was entirely completed and at the time of the "Incendio del' Borgo," it could not be more out ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... a certain Amelia Matilda Bunny, whose dirty finery was a torment and a by-word in St. James's Parsonage. Her frock and white jacket had been so nicely ironed out, as to show no traces of the adventure; and she disliked all the more to disfigure herself with such a thing on her head for the present, as well as ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... misfortune, by bowing the head in humble submission to the will of God. He knew well the nature of the dread disease by which he had been attacked, and he shuddered at the thought that, however long he might be spared to live, it would sap his strength, disfigure his person, and ultimately render his face hideous to look upon, while a life of absolute solitude must from that day forward be his portion. No wonder that in the first rush of his dismay, he entertained a wild thought of putting an ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... fault at all, Mr. Bathurst; I put a great deal more on than you said, but I was so anxious to disfigure myself that I was determined to do it thoroughly; but it is nothing to what it was. As you see, my lips are getting all right again, and the sores are a good deal better than they were; I suppose they will leave scars, but that won't ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... meretricious mosaics in St. Mark's are from designs by Palma Giovine and Fumiani. Carlo Ridolfi, who was a painter himself, as well as the painter's chronicler, has an "Adoration of the Magi" in S. Giovanni Elemosinario, poor enough in invention and execution. Two pictures by obscure artists disfigure a corner of the Scuola di San Rocco. The Museo Civico has a large canvas by Vicentino, a "Coronation of a Dogaressa," which once adorned Palazzo Grimani. We hear of a school opened by Antonio Balestra, who was the master of Rosalba Carriera ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... there be no change in the character of business, conducted with a little system and uniformity. The streets themselves have been made so fine that it will require some moral courage—a thing for which Washington is not noted—to disfigure them by the hideous jumbles that accorded so well with the old ways. Such splendid monstrosities as the Treasury—as a whole, the worst public building in the city, although good in parts, so situated that one must go down stairs from Pennsylvania Avenue to get into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... is without them, from the anthropoid apes to the Jockey Club. As to the grosser and ruder shapes taken by the diversions of the pioneers, we will let Mr. Herndon speak—their contemporary annalist and ardent panegyrist: "These men could shave a horse's mane and tail, paint, disfigure, and offer it for sale to the owner. They could hoop up in a hogshead a drunken man, they themselves being drunk, put in and nail fast the head, and roll the man down hill a hundred feet or more. They could run down a lean and hungry wild pig, catch it, heat a ten-plate stove furnace ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... divine no less than his soul, and he vindicates the "flesh" from the attacks made on human character by certain forms of Christianity. The body, according to Nachmanides, is, with all its functions, the work of God, and therefore perfect. "It is only sin and neglect that disfigure God's creatures." In another of his books, "The Law of Man," Nachmanides writes of suffering and death. He offers an antidote to pessimism, for he boldly asserts that pain and suffering in themselves are "a service of God, leading man to ponder ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... to populate a part of the Downs near the sea, a mile or so to the east of Rottingdean, seems gloriously to have failed, but what was intended may be learned from the skeleton roads that, duly fenced in, disfigure the turf. They even have names, these unlovely parallelograms: one is Chatsworth ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... new means of conveyance crowded out the old-fashioned saddle and pillion, and the trotting horse superseded the once fashionable but quickly despised pacer, that the great stretches of horse-sheds were built which now surround and disfigure all our country churches. These sheds protect, of course, both horse and carriage from wind and rain. Few churches had horse-sheds until after the War of the Revolution, and some not until after the War of 1812. In 1796 the Longmeadow Church had "liberty to erect a Horse House in the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... I am sure, and it was very kind in you to take it off their hands; but now it is paid for, it can't make much difference whether you disfigure yourself with ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... (idealism, scepticism, and so on), or anthropological discussions on prejudices, their causes and remedies: this attempt, on the part of these authors, only shows their ignorance of the peculiar nature of logical science. We do not enlarge but disfigure the sciences when we lose sight of their respective limits and allow them to run into one another. Now logic is enclosed within limits which admit of perfectly clear definition; it is a science which has for its object nothing but the exposition and proof of the formal laws of all thought, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... and, crying out, ran to assist Alcibiades. When he began to study, he obeyed all his other masters fairly well, but refused to learn upon the flute, as a thing unbecoming a free citizen; saying that to play upon the lute or the harp does not in any way disfigure a man's body or face, but one is hardly to be known by his most intimate friends, when playing on the flute. Besides, one who plays on the harp may speak or sing at the same time; but the use of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... case. Undoubtedly this liquid is ejected by the moth to enable it to break loose from and leave the case with its delicate down intact. The furry scales of its covering are so loosely set that any violent struggle with dry down would disfigure the moth. ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... be said on this subject; but, to the wise, a word is sufficient. And it would ill become one who is endeavouring to recommend conciseness, to disfigure that ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... of musketry by some watchman's rattle. Then came some good passages, which confounded me only the more. Then, "God save the King," which announced the British victory. Anon followed some marches, with the occasional bang of the bass drum to "disfigure or present" the distant cannon; and then there was a pause, and the people began to get up. I was confounded, looked towards the orchestra, and they were moving away; and I discovered I had heard the whole—alas! the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... mourning with which these people disfigure themselves, such as bloody temples, their heads deprived of most of the hair, and, which was worse, almost all of them with the loss of some of their fingers. Several fine boys, not above six years of age, had lost both their little fingers; and some of the men had parted with the middle finger ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... inflammable material, in order that, when subjected to heat, it might become porous. The whole was then heated until the wax or wood disappeared. The mold was then ready for use. The great advantage of this method was that there were no projecting lines of junction to disfigure the complete implement. This seems to have been the most common method employed. This explains the fact, that we seldom find any two bronze objects exactly similar to one another. Any impression left on the wax model would be faithfully reproduced. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... that by METAPHOR a more masculine Air and Vigour is given to a Subject, than by WIT; But it too often happens, that the METAPHOR is carried so far, as instead of elucidating, to obscure and disfigure, ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris

... advertisements can induce people to buy an article with some familiar name attached, reaps a gigantic fortune, while the man who makes the same article and cannot spend money on advertisement gains a mere pittance. The advertisements which disfigure the country are not taxed, as in other countries, and the issue of advertising circulars has been subsidised by the Post Office, which delivered them at a rate lower than that charged for delivery of the letters, or even the postcards, of the poorest, though the trouble ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... of obtaining nothing that was not fairly his own. But, in truth, the artists have been so much in the habit of painting for us our friends' faces without any of those flaws and blotches with which work and high living are apt to disfigure us, that we turn in disgust from a portrait in which the roughnesses ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... immediate effect, and therefore he proceeds to plant large evergreens, covering his grounds with great unsightly trees. In almost every case of this kind the lower limbs are apt to die, and thus greatly disfigure the symmetry of the trees. Young, healthy plants, when carefully taken up and as properly replanted, are never subject to this disfigurement, and are almost ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... and obstruct the Lord Mayor, sword-bearer, and chaplain; to despise the authority of the sheriffs; and to hold the court of aldermen as nought; but not on any account, in case the fulness of time should bring a general rising of 'prentices, to damage or in any way disfigure Temple Bar, which was strictly constitutional and always to be approached with reverence. Having gone over these several heads with great eloquence and force, and having further informed the novice that this society had its origin in his own ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... have little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines, which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which mark the course of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... connection with the mysteries of the interior, and only concerns itself with the prosaic task of taking in a cargo of oil, used as the ship's fuel. We steam into a wooded bay, beneath a hill covered with the brown atap bungalows of European colonists. Colossal oil-tanks, painted red, disfigure the shore. Each tank holds 4,000 tons of oil, 30,000 tons per month being the usual export. Kerosene taints the air, but is considered to be innocuous, and to drive away the curse of mosquitos. The unimaginable ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... and more famous lyrics, though they are free from the faults and immaturities which disfigure this, yet do not, to my mind at least, show a command over such various sources of imaginative and musical effect, or touch so thrillingly so many chords of the spirit. A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos like that of the best Elizabethan love-songs; ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... history of France, with the costumes and furniture, the houses and their interiors, and domestic life, giving us the spirit of the time instead of a laborious narration of ascertained facts. Then there is further scope for originality. You can remove some of the popular delusions which disfigure the memories of most of our kings. Be bold enough in this first work of yours to rehabilitate the great magnificent figure of Catherine, whom you have sacrificed to the prejudices which still cloud her name. And finally, paint Charles IX. for us as he really was, and not as Protestant ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... the pleasant little artificial graces belonging to high civilization. Some of her evening dresses were elegant, the colors harmonizing, and the style picturesque and becoming. If she had the good taste not to disfigure her classically-shaped head, or to load herself with flashy jewelry, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... them several heads, which they have the art of preparing in their native ovens, so as not to disfigure the countenance nor injure the figure tatoo'd upon them. One of these, the skull of a distinguished chief, seemed to afford them amazing delight. Most of our people had known him well, and several of his near relations were present: but cruel war seemed to have eradicated every feeling of humanity; ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... the same of the charge of Untruthfulness, and select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable but because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, "Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick, but not, will stain. I think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than other dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... Critic, the high church, in fact, steeple Tory journal, tells its readers, "if we strike out the first person of Robert's speeches, ay, out of his whole career, they become a rope untwisted," &c. &c. &c. This excited old lady is evidently anxious to disfigure the head of the government, by scratching Sir Robert ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... not mentioned. There is, furthermore, no attempt in the Origines Islandicae to refute or explain away an opinion on AM. 557 expressed by the same authorities, in 1879,[12-3] to the effect that "it is free from grave errors of fact which disfigure the latter [the Flat Island Book saga]." We are almost forced to the conclusion that a hand less cunning than Vigfusson's has had to do with the ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... my Antony, since, with these hands, I buried thee. Alas! they were then free, but thy Cleopatra is now a prisoner, attended by guard, lest, in the transports of her grief, she should disfigure this captive body, which is reserved to adorn the triumph over thee. These are the last offerings, the last honors she can pay thee; for she is now to be conveyed to a distant country. Nothing could part us while we lived, but in death we are to be divided. Thou, though ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... story was told in few words, and I immediately set to work to "mend" the boys. Jack insisted that Jarvis should receive the first attention, and, indeed, he looked the worse. But after washing the blood off his face, I found that beyond a severe bruise, which would disfigure him for a few days, his face and head were unhurt. His arm was broken and badly contused. After I had attended to it, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... he is interred the same day, or the day after at farthest. The female relations and the friends of the deceased assemble round the corpse, and utter bitter lamentations, tearing their faces and their hair in a most woeful manner; they disfigure their faces with their finger-nails, till they bleed, and during the whole time keep stamping or moving their legs, beating time, as it were, with their feet; these lamentations are continued, with occasional intermission, till the body of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... commonest rut of the vulgar time-beater. Certain of his own compositions, such as the more effective fragments from the Romeo and Juliet Symphony, again made a particular impression on me, it is true; but I was now more consciously awake to the curious weaknesses which disfigure even the finest conceptions of this extraordinary musician than on those earlier occasions, when I only had a sense of general discomfort adequate to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... taking in their canoes their wives and children, cooking-pots, and sleeping-mats. When they reach a good game district, they erect temporary huts on the bank, and there dry the meat they have killed. They are rather a comely-looking race, with very black smooth skins, and never disfigure themselves with the frightful ornaments of some of the other tribes. The chief declined to sell a harpoon, because they could not now get the milola bark from the coast on account of Mariano's war. He expressed some doubts about our being children ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... in your yard and border your masses of shrubbery with flower-beds. Do not disfigure a lawn by placing a bed of flowers in it. Use the flowers rather to decorate the shrubbery, and for borders along walks, and in the corners ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... as a lantern, candle or match near a battery and do not go near the battery with a lighted cigar, cigarette or pipe, especially while the battery is charging. Hydrogen and oxygen gases form a highly explosive mixture. An explosion will not only injure the battery, but will probably disfigure the one carrying the light, or even destroy ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... constitution, a mind trammelled by routine, a violent temper, an abrupt manner, and using language imperious and offensive to all who approached him. Such was the caricature of this unfortunate prince. It was necessary to disfigure him in order to make the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... possession of me. Wasn't it enough to maim and disfigure poor Tamplin, why cook him to death—I'd shut off that cock. I fought with it, but it wouldn't close, and I called Dennis ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... called on to prove his incapacity to illustrate his own work, we will refer the reader to his admirable novel of "Vanity Fair." The time selected for the story is the early part of the present century; and on the plea that he had "not the heart to disfigure his heroes and heroines" by the correct but "hideous" costumes of the period, Thackeray has actually habited these men and women of 1815 in the dress of 1848! Cruikshank, Leech, "Phiz," or Doyle, it is unnecessary to say, would have been guiltless of such an absurdity; and the difficulty in which ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... the idea of "the mathematical infinite" into metaphysical speculation, especially by Kant and Hamilton, with the design, it would seem, of transforming the idea of infinity into a sensuous conception, has generated innumerable paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infinity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet—'Home Secretary and Abbot of Westminster, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.' The first duty of the Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700 coming under its consideration. A small tablet would recall what has been taken away. Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly considered, and, I hope, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... habit of inflicting punishment on their human enemy appears to be common to the whole bear tribe—I mean, the habit of scalping their victims, and endeavouring to disfigure the face. Not only do both the black and brown bears of the Himalayas follow this habit, but also the ursus arctos, the grizzly, and the white. They always aim at the head, but more especially the face; and with a single "rake" of their spread claws, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... down there, in the far distance, near to that silver streak which meanders through the plains, and which is the old Nile, the advent of new times is proclaimed by the chimneys of factories, impudently high, that disfigure everything, and spout forth into the twilight ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... 24, 1801, of the second volume of Lyrical Ballads: "I think 'tis utterly absurd from one end to the other. You tell me 'tis good poetry—if you mean that there is nothing puerile, nothing bombast or conceited, everything else that is so often found to disfigure poetry, I agree, but will you read it over and over again? Answer me that, Master Lamb." The three letters containing the northern ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... sation, age, or travel, been able to effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of modesty, which I have seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly), I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, wife, and children, stand afraid, and start at us. The birds and beasts of the field, that before, in a natural fear, obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath, in a tempest, disposed and left me willing ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... the doctrine of God our Saviour'. I mean the word, 'Saviour'. I am so glad that is there to meet those who say, 'Ah! you talk about adornments, but I am distressed because I see so many things about me that disfigure and discredit the doctrine'. You feel that you need a power which can give deliverance from the worldly spirit, the light and frivolous disposition, bad tempers, resentments, and other selfish and sinful things which hold you more ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... dilapidated, but in picturesque keeping with the building. The gate hung loosely on its hinges, just opposite an old-fashioned porch, that shot over the front door, much after the fashion of that hideous thing called a poke, with which English women disfigure their pretty travelling bonnets and protect themselves from ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... disease of the skin, characterised by the tuberculous eruptions which eat into the skin, particularly of the face, and disfigure it. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... clear eye, and the strong hand. Of certain other achievements it would be going too far to say that he was ashamed of them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty work. He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct, unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation. And certainly, in no man could a want of integrity have been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, ...
— The American • Henry James

... Bohemian, who was one of those working near the log raft, had instantly recognized Peveril, and at sight of him his hatred blazed up with redoubled fury. To be sure, his broken jaw had healed, but so awry as to disfigure his face and render it more hideous than ever. Now to find the man who had done him this injury again interfering with his ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... Among the new-comers was a man who particularly interested me: his name was Jung, the same who afterwards became known under the name of Stilling. In spite of an antiquated dress, his form had something delicate about it, with a certain sturdiness. A bag-wig did not disfigure his significant and pleasing countenance. His voice was mild, without being soft and weak: it became even melodious and powerful as soon as his ardor was roused, which was very easily done. On becoming better acquainted with him, one ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... bleach her up with sour cream and softening lotions that will not hurt the skin. There, child, go with Patty, who will get thee into something proper. But she is like her mother in this respect, common garb does not disfigure her." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... truly precious wherein you can still lop off useless branches which absorb a portion of the sap, depriving the others of that strength which they need in order to produce an abundance of savory fruit. You should attack not only those gross and manifest defects which disfigure the soul, but also those imperfections which are slight in appearance, but which, if left alone, will in time become pernicious inclinations. You should even watch over certain natural dispositions, which, though good in themselves, and ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... qualifications of the delight which an historian feels while engaged in the details of those grateful episodes which frequently reward his progress through musty chronicles, to find himself suddenly arrested in his narrative by some of those rude interruptions by which violence and injustice disfigure so frequently, in the march of history, the beauty of its portraits. One of these occurs to us in this connection. Our Huguenot settlers on the Santee were not long suffered to pursue a career of unbroken prosperity. The very fact ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour—the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... freedom, to adopt her. We must let her know, in the meantime, that she has still friends in the world, and that she must keep up her spirits. She must also endeavour to make herself of little value in the sight of the Barin, her owner. She must feign sickness or foolishness, and disfigure her countenance, or refuse to work; a woman's wit will advise her best, though, what ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... of industrialism has begun to mortify, and the end is in sight. Within 200 years, it may be—for we must allow for backwashes and cross-currents which will retard the flow of the stream—the hideous new towns which disfigure our landscape may have disappeared, and their sites may have been reclaimed for the plough. Humanitarian legislation, so far from arresting this movement, is more likely to accelerate it, and the same may be said of the insatiate greed of our new masters. It is indeed instructive to observe ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... ideal of Christian life, according to convent rules, was a living and protracted martyrdom, and in some cases even the degradation of our common humanity. Christianity nowhere enjoins the eradication of passions and appetites, but the control of them. It would not mutilate and disfigure the body, for it is a sacred temple, to be made beautiful and attractive. On the other hand the Middle Ages strove to make the body appear repulsive, and the most loathsome forms of misery and disease to be hailed as favorite modes of penance. And as Christ suffered agonies on the cross, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... too well what he was doing, unfastened his hempen suspenders, and hanged himself with them to the top of the door-jamb. So Holdria found him in the morning, and the imbecile's cry of horror soon brought the manager. Huerlin's face was just a little bluer than usual, but it was impossible to disfigure ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... it is with no artful flattery to disfigure it. May I bring it in person? The post-rider's bag ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... the highest degree of passion the jealous man uses violence or resorts to firearms, while the woman scratches, poisons or stabs. Among savages, jealous women bite off their rivals' noses; in civilized countries they throw sulphuric acid in the face. The object is the same in both cases—to disfigure. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... into distant lands, so that many people were drawn together to behold that glorious model of the age. Men sailed no longer to Paphos, to Cnidus or Cythera, to the presence of the goddess Venus: her sacred rites were neglected, her images stood uncrowned, the cold ashes were left to disfigure her forsaken altars. It was to a maiden that men's prayers were offered, to a human countenance they looked, in propitiating so great a godhead: when the girl went forth in the morning they strewed flowers on her way, and the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... birthmark, and if found upon the neck or shoulders where it is likely to disfigure, it may be removed by the high-frequency spark, or by surgery, in the same way as warts. Never tamper with moles. Leave them alone or turn them over to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... Times as "that little villain, Raymond;" and replying to an offensive charge against him by The Evening Post, he began with, "You lie, villain, wilfully, wickedly, basely lie." Other passages at arms like these occasionally enlivened, if they did not disfigure, the editorial columns of The Tribune, over which Greeley exercised a personal censorship which, in later years, he found it necessary to relax. He was sincerely and ardently devoted to the cause of Protection, to the interests of the farmer and the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... wouldn't. The mark would disfigure you much less than the swelling. They would take care to draw the skin together again neatly, and you could easily arrange your hair a little. But you ought to get ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Roussette have had their faces so crushed and wounded by the stones that they have become frightful. I have aroused them from their state of unconsciousness, cured their wounds but left the hideous scars to disfigure them. I have deprived them of all their rich clothing and dressed them like peasants and I married them at once to two brutal ostlers whom I commissioned to beat and maltreat them until their wicked hearts are changed—and this I think ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... declared that "of all works which remain to be undertaken, the most considerable and the most important is the restoration of the lantern, including the decoration of the vault, the substitution of windows of an appropriate character for those which now disfigure it so seriously, and the addition of the outer corona of turrets and pinnacles as originally designed by Alan de Walsingham." But nothing was done towards this during Dean Peacock's lifetime. In the summer before his death he ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting

... sonnets xxx, xxxi, and lii, published to men of letters, taste, and learning in Florence and all Italy, is the strongest vindication of their innocence against editors and scholars who in various ways have attempted to disfigure or ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... who bow themselves quietly under the yoke which they cannot break; move, year after year, through the social circle, without any other object than to fill a place there—to ornament or to disfigure a wall. Peace to such patient souls! There, too, are joyous, fresh, ever youthful natures, who, even to old age, and under all circumstances, bring with them cheerfulness and new life into every circle in which they ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... the increasing demand still manifested for them, has induced the present publishers to collect the entire works of Mr. Tupper, and to stereotype them in a style worthy of their excellence. Each work has been thoroughly revised, and the errors which disfigure some other editions have been carefully corrected—an advantage readily appreciable by those who discriminate in their selections for the library ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... serve as a portico. But nature is not always obedient to man; the vines and palm-trees do not prosper in their new location, and now the long flexible branches of the one, and the broad leaves of the other, droop half withered above the grotto, which they disfigure rather than decorate. ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... their infant settlement; meanwhile the town took care of itself, and, like a sturdy brat which is suffered to run about wild, unshackled by clouts and bandages, and other abominations by which your notable nurses and sage old women cripple and disfigure the children of men, increased so rapidly in strength and magnitude, that before the honest burgomasters had determined upon a plan it was too late to put it in execution—whereupon they ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... the use of his legs.' And the man would bring back word: 'The doctor hopes he may, miss; but his left eye is gone for ever.' It is not everybody that can tumble discreetly. Now you, I fancy, would only disfigure yourself." ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... unkempt hair shading their great black eyes, high cheek-bones, and disfigured mouths and chins, which last are tattooed in blue dye of some sort. The males tattoo the whole face elaborately, but the women disfigure themselves thus only about the mouth and chin. It is most amusing to see them meet one another and rub noses, which is the Maori mode of salutation. This race has some very peculiar habits: they never eat salt; they have no fixed industry, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... dwelt on the defects of an age when civilization was still struggling with the remains of barbarism, it is to foster no spirit of vain exultation: it is rather to turn with increased pleasure from those stains which disfigure the picture, to the contemplation of the more prominent and brilliant figures which occupy the fore-ground. We remember that upon times thus backward in many of the refinements of life, and scarcely yet freed from the dregs of medi-oeval darkness, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... shall make bold for this once to borrow a little of their long-waisted but short skirted patience.... It is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women should have any true grace, or valuable virtue, that have so little wit as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garbes, as not only dismantle their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant-bar-geese, ill shapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphics, or at the best French flirts of the pastery, which a proper ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, THE LADY OF THE LAKE, or that direct, romantic opening - one of the most spirited and poetical in literature - "The stag at eve had drunk his fill." The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, THE PIRATE, the figure of Cleveland - cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness - moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... about goggles and Gladys and Hinpoha declared flatly that they wouldn't disfigure their faces with them, but Nyoda made us all get them whether we wanted to wear them all the time or not. Nyoda is an advocate of Preparedness. It was this spirit that prompted her to make me take an extra note-book along, not the premonition ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey

... comes to the end of Rosemary Lane at an early hour to-morrow morning. I take my wife and my niece out to show them the beauties of the neighborhood. We have a picnic hamper with us, which marks our purpose in the public eye. You disfigure yourself in a shawl, bonnet, and veil of Mrs. Wragge's; we turn our backs on York; and away we drive on a pleasure trip for the day—you and I on the front seat, Mrs. Wragge and the hamper behind. Good ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... Pope, a confused heap of beauties, without order or symmetry, and a plot whereon nothing but seeds, nor nothing perfect or formed is to be found; and a production loaded with many unprofitable things which ought to be retrenched, and which choak and disfigure those which deserve to be preserved? Mr. Pope will pardon me if I here oppose those comparisons, which to me appear very false, and entirely contrary to what the greatest of ancient, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... than the subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of the Sybarite. It seems strange, when thus definitely stated, that such a school should exist. Yet consider a little what gaps and blanks would disfigure our gallery and chamber walls, in places that we have long approached with reverence, if every picture, every statue, were removed from them, of which the subject was either the vice or the misery of mankind, portrayed without any moral purpose: consider the innumerable groups having ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... seek with the gossamer threads that shone through the chink in the half-door! Ah me! it is easy to lecture the poor, and complain of their horrid ways; but the love such as no man hath gilds and enamels most of the crooked and grimy things that disfigure their poor lives in the eyes of the fastidious; and perhaps makes the angels of Him, before whose Face the stars are not spotless, turn from the cold perfection of the mansion and the castle to gaze ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... settles back behind the steering-wheel of his motor-car. Crossing the Hudson by the Forty-second Street Ferry, he climbs the Weehawken slope, and swings westward over one of the uninviting turnpikes that disfigure the marshy land between the Passaic and the Hackensack. Then he finds the real Jersey, the Jerseyman's Jersey, of rolling hills, and historic memories of Washington's Continental troops in ragged blue and buff.—Morristown, with its superb estates, the stiff climb of Schooley's Mountain, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... why I awakened from general anesthetic with two breasts, but I have since supposed that due to my tender age the surgeon was reluctant to disfigure me without at least asking me for permission, or giving me some time to prepare psychologically. When I came out of anesthesia he told me that the lump was malignant, and that he had removed it, and that he needed to do a radical mastectomy to improve my prognosis over the next few years. He asked ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... outcome of that great wrong. "Yet the wound will be healed," wrote Dante; "(though it cannot be otherwise than that the scar and brand of infamy will have burned with fire upon the Apostolic See and will disfigure her for whom heaven and earth had been reserved)—if ye who were the authors of this transgression will all with one accord fight manfully for the Bride of Christ, for the Throne of the Bride which is Rome, for our Italy, and that I may speak more fully, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... he says "who disfigure their bodies with hideous paintings, eat nothing but loam for some three months, when the height of the Orinoco cuts them off from the turtles which form their ordinary food. Some monks say they mix earth with the fat of crocodiles' tails, but this is a very false assertion. We saw provisions ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... shoulder, a style just then new, even in France. His eyes were a deep blue, and his complexion, though browned by exposure, held a tinge of beauty which the sun could not mar and a girl might envy. He wore neither mustachio nor beard, as men now disfigure their faces—since Francis I took a scar on his chin—and his clear cut profile, dilating nostrils and mobile, though firm-set mouth, gave pleasing assurance of tenderness, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... of railways talk folly, and prove themselves either rich or, more probably, the hangers-on of the rich. A railway is an excellent thing; it takes one quickly through the world for next to nothing, and if in many countries the people it takes are brutes, and disfigure all they visit, that is not the fault of the railway, but of the Government and religion of these people, which, between them, have ruined the citizens of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... lying beyond his grasp, lately against belief founded on religious instinct and on tradition, and now against evidence engendered by realities and by the agency of the testing process. Consequently, obliged to forbid the testing process, to falsify things, to disfigure the reality, to deny the evidence, to lie daily and each day more outrageously,[6266] to accumulate glaring acts so as to impose silence, to arouse by this silence and by these lies[6267] the attention and perspicacity of the public, to transform almost mute whispers into sounding ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... work of sawing up the trunk, and disposing in an orderly manner of the branches. He also took great pains to cut his trees as close to the ground as possible, so as not to sacrifice the good timber at the butt, or leave a tall or ragged stump to disfigure ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... "So many women disfigure themselves through following the fashion!" declared Rose Thevenin. "In dressing every woman should study her ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... points which we have just indicated, three sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of time. Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, "restorations"; this is the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... he had been imbued with the judgments of the party of 1814, on Bonaparte. Now, all the prejudices of the Restoration, all its interests, all its instincts tended to disfigure Napoleon. It execrated him even more than it did Robespierre. It had very cleverly turned to sufficiently good account the fatigue of the nation, and the hatred of mothers. Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster, and in order to paint him to the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... purposes, and the police have full powers over the exhibition of indecent or other objectionable advertisements. The Societe pour la protection des paysages, founded in 1901, has for one of its objects the prevention of advertisements which disfigure the scenery or are ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... curiosity, and that it wants nothing to excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within their reach; she flies from public places; it is on the tops of mountains, in the midst of forests, on desert islands, that she displays her ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... has been graduated from college without the loss of his front teeth or an eye. He has a few scars, which will not permanently disfigure him; and though he halts slightly as the result of a strained tendon in the calf of one of his legs, Dr. Meredith assures us that this is chiefly a nervous symptom, which will pass off presently. He says Fred is a little run down, and he advises raw eggs and milk between meals. I assume that ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... thrill with their grandeur and glow with their condescension. Yes, they condescend; and although their tall white flanks climb in the distance, they seem to sink on nearer approach, and amiably decline to disfigure the line of progress, or to dwarf the adjacent edifices. Down-town, in the heart of New York, poor old Trinity looks driven into the ground by the surrounding heights and bulks; but along my sublime upper Fifth Avenue there is spire after spire that does not unduly dwindle, but looks as ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... seldom takes time to display high intelligence. Naturally we dislike men, women, children or wild animals who are always ready to make fools of themselves, stampede, and disfigure the landscape. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... be accepted gratefully: the penitence of sinners ought not to be mixed with questions of worldly interest; the returning prodigal, when asking pardon at his father's feet, had made no conditions; the English nation must not disfigure their obedience by alluding, in the terms of it, to ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... her first impulse was to cry, but knowing that would disfigure her still more, she bathed her burning face and neck, brushed out her curls, threw on a simple muslin dress, and started for the parlor, of which Durward and Carrie were at that moment the only occupants. As she was passing the outer door, she observed upon one of the piazza pillars a half-blown ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... for all the colours which they brought to sell in bladders, were in very small quantities. Upon the whole, I have no where seen savages who take more pains than these people do, to ornament, or rather to disfigure, their persons. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... phrases, but represent the very matter itself to the soul, as that which in itself is worthy of all acceptation, and needs no human eloquence to commend it. Painting doth spoil native beauty. External ornaments would disfigure some things that are of themselves proportioned and lovely, therefore the Lord chooses a plain and simple style which is foolishness to the world, but in these swaddling clothes of the scriptures, and this poor cottage the child Jesus, the Lord of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... the Normans. The phenomenon of the organs of speech yielding to social or moral influences, and losing the power of repeating certain sounds, was prominently observable amongst the Normans. No modern French gazette-writer could disfigure English names more whimsically than the Domesday Commissioners. To the last, the Normans never could learn to say 'Lincoln,'—they never could get nearer than 'Nincol,' or 'Nicole.'" The "chivalry" of Virginia and the Carolinas—our Southern Northmen—might cite this last fact ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... can only be kept alive by these neglected attentions; yet if men and women took half as much pains to dress habitually neat, as they do to ornament, or rather to disfigure their persons, much would be done towards the attainment of purity of mind. But women only dress to gratify men of gallantry; for the lover is always best pleased with the simple garb that sits close to the shape. There ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... ears; The whiche vice he hid, as best he might, Full subtlely from every man's sight, That, save his wife, there knew of it no mo'; He lov'd her most, and trusted her also; He prayed her, that to no creature She woulde tellen of his disfigure. She swore him, nay, for all the world to win, She would not do that villainy or sin, To make her husband have so foul a name: She would not tell it for her owen shame. But natheless her thoughte that she died, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... thought so?" asked Mrs. Allen; "for my part, I lived Mrs. Williams' nearest neighbor for ten years or more, and always considered her a very kind-hearted, unassuming woman, wholly untainted with the pride and haughtiness which too often disfigure the characters of those who possess large store of this world's goods and move in ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... will be to lengthen the bulb into a uniform cylinder, as shown in b, Fig. 10. Otherwise the result will be a series of bulbs, as in c, Fig. 10, separated by thickened ridges which will be almost impossible of removal later and will disfigure the final bulb. This operation of heating, blowing and pushing together is repeated several times, until the cylinder becomes as long as can be conveniently handled (about 1-1/4 inches to 1-1/2 inches). If more glass is needed ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary

... old man was aware what his son had done on his return from Godalming, whither he had betaken himself to a fair, then he was furious. He stormed at Iver for daring to disfigure the sign-board, and at his wife for suffering ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... softly, not caring to disturb his musings. He sat still, looking over his own broad fields, not thinking of them as his, however, not calculating the expense of the new saw-mill, with which he had been threatening to disfigure Carson's brook, just at the point where its waters fell into the pond. He was looking far-away to the distant hills, where the dim haze was deepening into purple, hiding the mountain tops beyond. But it could not be hills, nor haze, nor hidden mountain tops, that had brought that wistful longing ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... me is the critic whose humility keeps pace with his acuteness, who leads me gently where he has himself trodden patiently and observantly, and does not attempt to disfigure and ravage the regions which he has not been able to desire to explore. The man who will show me unsuspected connections, secret paths of thought, who will teach me how to extend my view, how I may pass quietly from the known ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... memory of the many happy days they had spent together; and though the friendship, of course, could never again be what it had been, there was something of it left, at least on Prosper's side. To struggle with this man, strike at his face, try to maim and disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground with him, like two dogs tearing each other,—the thought was hateful. His gorge rose at it. He would never do it, unless to save his life. Then? Well, then, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... deserves not to have lived at all. Nor does he any more deserve to live who looks contentedly upon abuses that disgrace, and cruelties that dishonor, and scenes of misery and destitution and brutalization that disfigure his country; or sordid meanness and ignoble revenges that make her a by-word and a scoff among all generous nations; and does not endeavor to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... would be made for him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to disfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more completely, and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was afraid. The ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... very few (Johnson's fair friend, Sophy Streatfield, was one), whom weeping does not disfigure. Their eyelids do not get red or swollen; only the iris softens for a moment; and the drops do not streak or blot the polished cheeks, but glitter there, singly, like dew on marble; their sobs are well regulated, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... have now. It is cruel. I never thought you were like that. I took you as a pattern of what a woman of your age should be. I looked up to you. I would have come to you for counsel, for advice. You were my book of wisdom. I thought you were far above all the pettinesses that disfigure other women, the women who hate us girls, who want to snatch everything from us. And now you are trying to do me more harm than any other woman has ever tried ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while as that. And, besides, if I understand her appearance, my niece has still something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a want ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in both tunnels gave excellent results, as far as smoothness of finish was concerned, but, owing to the imperviousness of the steel, small air holes were formed in the surface, though not in sufficient numbers or size to cause trouble or disfigure the work in ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis

... 2-1/2 miles to the village of Marenga, a very large one, situated at the eastern edge of the bottom of the heel of the Lake. The chief is ill of a loathsome disease derived direct from the Arabs. Raised patches of scab of circular form disfigure the face and neck as well as other parts. His brother begged me to see him and administer some remedy for the same complaint. He is at a village a little way off, and though sent for, was too ill to come or to be carried. The tribe is ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that glorious state would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round off the "After" of Death, for no word of man, strictly limited within the narrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to explain what Nirvana is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe. What it is not may be roughly, baldly stated—it is not "annihilation", it is not destruction of consciousness. Mr. A.P. Sinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of many of the ideas current in the West about Nirvana. He has ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... over the sluice, looking in at one of the things human industry has failed to disfigure, nearly as beautiful to-day as long ago on Pactolus' banks when Lydian shepherds, with great stones, fastened fleeces in the river that they might catch and gather for King Croesus the golden sands of Tmolus. Improving, not in beauty, but economy, quite in the modern spirit, the Greeks ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... appeared to Boxtel of no great consequence. Van Baerle was but a painter, a sort of fool who tried to reproduce and disfigure on canvas the wonders of nature. The painter, he thought, had raised his studio by a story to get better light, and thus far he had only been in the right. Mynheer van Baerle was a painter, as Mynheer Boxtel was a tulip-grower; he wanted somewhat more sun for his paintings, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... entangled fast together. Nothing was left but to bring out the scissors and cut the beard, whereby a small part of it was lost. When the dwarf saw that he screamed out, "Is that civil, you toadstool, to disfigure one's face? Was it not enough to clip off the end of my beard? Now you have cut off the best part of it. I cannot let myself be seen by my people. I wish you had been made to run the soles off your shoes!" Then he took out a sack of pearls ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... scornfully, thus. This exasperates the savages, and they attack us with volleys of sucked oranges and half-eaten pippins." "And you retire?" "Without doubt, if I am sober; for orange will stain silk, and an apple may disfigure a feature." ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... opening a portion of the flesh with a knife, injecting an irritating juice into the wound, and allowing the place to swell. The effect is to raise a lump or weal. Some of these excrescences are tiny bumps and others develop into large welts that disfigure the anatomy. Extraordinary designs are literally carved on the faces and bodies of the men and women. Although it is an intensely painful operation,—some of the wounds must be opened many times—the native submits to it with pleasure because ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance; for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to fast. Verily I say to you, they have in full their reward. (17)But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face; (18)that thou appear not to men to fast, but to thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... cases very regular and pleasing. His expression is habitually melancholy and strikingly wary and timid. In spite of his homeless nomadic life he generally appears well nourished and clean, and he seems less subject to sores and to the skin diseases which so often disfigure the other peoples, especially the Muruts, Kayans, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... their men; but like all the race, they made slaves of their women, imposing every burden from the cultivation of their fields to the duties of the household—the carrying of heavy burdens and the securing of fuel for winter. These labors served to disfigure and make their women to appear prematurely aged and worn, and they seemed an inferior race when ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... pincered by the ear], and a Jeweller Jew, these are, of a surety, names which in no sort of business ought to appear by the side of yours. I write this Letter with the rough common-sense of a German, who speaks what he thinks, without employing equivocal terms, and loose assuagements which disfigure the truth: it is for you to profit by it.—F." [—OEuvres de ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... think that any irreverence could be charged against an editor who had the courage to put a moist pen through those expressions of egotism and naive self-satisfaction and vanity which do occasionally disfigure his pages. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... own genius, not my skill, That produces this effect; For, without it, I suspect, Would my voice sound harsh and shrill, And my lute's strings should be broken With a just and wholesome rigour, For presuming to disfigure What thy words so well have spoken. ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... was now no pitiful straining to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth a moment's thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards at things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... for a clear vision of things as they are—for justice and fairness; his effort is to get free from himself, so that he may in no way disfigure that which he wishes to understand or reproduce. His superiority to the common herd lies in this effort, even when its success is only partial. He distrusts his own senses, he sifts his own impressions, by returning ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... no doubt that the Irish take better care of their children than the parents of similar position in either England or Scotland. Cases of cruelty, which so constantly disfigure the police courts in both the latter countries, are very rarely heard in ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... we come to the later members of the Ennead, there is a change in the character and in the form of these tales. Doubtless Osiris and Sit did not escape unscathed out of the hands of the theologians; but even if sacerdotal interference spoiled the legend concerning them, it did not altogether disfigure it. Here and there in it is still noticeable a sincerity of feeling and liveliness of imagination such as are never found in those of Shu and of Sibu. This arises from the fact that the functions of these ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... most dangerous maladies are they that disfigure the countenance), with a roaring and terrible voice, very often against those that are but newly come from nurse, and there they are lamed and spoiled with blows, whilst our justice takes no cognisance of it, as if these maims and dislocations ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... do you make yourself so picturesque? Why not disguise yourself, disfigure yourself, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... part is heavy and over-sensuous. Now, not only does this, in my opinion, entirely disfigure a woman's looks, but it suggests unpleasant ideas of her character. A man may have that ponderous chin and voluptuous mouth, without their disturbing the harmony of an otherwise handsome face. I do not think a woman can; and as in the physical so in the moral. A man can stand a much greater amount ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... of the arch, clambered up with difficulty only to slide headlong on the other side. The bridges of these parts are very picturesque, giving an added charm to the landscape, in glaring contrast to the hideous, shed-like structures that disfigure many a beautiful stream of ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... overridden your will and obliterated your true self. It is inconceivable that this can be your real, your abiding determination. You cannot have thrown aside all shame, all love, all fidelity, all truth. If you did, you would dishonour and disfigure humanity. There can be no truth left in the world if you are false, if you are capable of descending to this depth of abandonment, of breaking such holy oaths, of crushing my heart. Then there is nothing more under the sun in which a man can ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... a volley of peculiarly southern oaths, with which we cannot disfigure our page, even in deference to the necessity of painting a correct picture of the scene we have described. Tom had a vein of humor in his composition, which has already displayed itself in some of the rough experiences ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... Don Japhet of Armenia, have till within these few years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot of the Jodelle, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent; the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste, belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by a spirit of tenderness. The burlesque tone, which in many languages may be tolerated, has ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the commonest civilities nothing has passed! You talk of admiration. What am I to do? If people are so silly as to indulge the sentiment, is it my fault? What am I to do, I ask you? Would you wish me to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I dare say you would, Peggotty. I dare say ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... I think, justly been called a Scripture style. One of their most striking characteristics, by the way, is a severely simple taste; a uniform freedom from the vulgarities of conception, the exaggerated sentiment, the mawkish nonsense and twaddle, which disfigure such an infinitude of volumes of religious biography and fiction which have been written since. Could such men attain this uniform elevation? Could such men have invented those extraordinary fictions,—the miracles and the parables? Could they, in spite of their gross ignorance, have so interwoven ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... of Aksakoff, instead of leading forward with the great liberal movement that came after the Crimean War, resulting finally in the emancipation of the serfs, would lead backward to the stagnant hours of medieval Russia. Then there were no German words to disfigure the Russian language! Then there were no German divisions of rank among the officials to strangle life by their formality. No, none of these, nor the disturbing importations of Peter; in Aksakoff's variation of the gospel, the Russians are the "beyond men" and need them not. Thus before Peter's ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... say, they aimed at, they found, proportion, Pythagorean symmetry or music, and bold as they could be in their exercises (it was a Lacedaemonian who, at Olympia, for the first time threw aside the heavy girdle and ran naked to the goal) forbade all that was likely to disfigure the body. Though we must not suppose all ties of nature rent asunder, nor all connexion between parents and children in those genial, retired houses at an end in very early life, it was yet a strictly public education which began with them ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... into my room in a rage— 'Hilton and Wilton have clear'd me out quite; A run of ill luck at every stage— Fifty pounds lost since you left us to-night! I'll have my revenge on the rogues I vow!' Marks of strange anger disfigure his face, A dry parch'd lip and a thundery brow, And a sharp bright eye that has ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart

... Bateese may use his fists, but I shall use those, so that I shall not disfigure him permanently. His face is none ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... look of fear disfigure his face," he continued, "and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman's wriggle forward from beneath the wall of ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason



Words linked to "Disfigure" :   blemish, mar, disfigurement, mark, impair, disfiguration, scar, deflower, deface, mangle, vitiate, pit, maul, pock, spoil



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