"Blemish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (for I say not, all) of your Hermetick Philosophers present us, together with divers Substantial and noble Experiments, Theories, which either like Peacocks feathers make a great shew, but are neither solid nor useful; or else like Apes, if they have some appearance of being rational, are blemish'd with some absurdity or other, that when they are Attentively consider'd, makes ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... maids, or he is a wandering god, and here is Arcadia, why should that make me grieve? It is true that he is handsome—and yet what of that?—most men are handsome in the eyes of maids. But he appears the paragon of men. Is he indeed not all a man should be? Where were the blemish, the exception; who shall challenge nature, saying, in his form, that here she has given too little, there too much?—Ah, me! I am not happy, yet I should ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... something glitter. What was his surprise to discover in the ashes a gold watch and chain which he had often seen upon the neck of Mary Prescott. A portion of the chain had been melted by the intense heat, but by some singular means, the watch had been so well preserved that there was scarcely a blemish upon it. As he picked it up, Cato exclaimed, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... remarkably well—free from blemish, and of good flavour. I must have had two or three tons, and went through the labour of digging them and picking up all the tiny ones, as if I expected or feared a famine. The pig's winter food was assured, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... edict, by which it was clear that those who believed a mole to be a blemish were quite safe, and those who did not believe it, were in no manner of danger, set everything to rights; the metropolis was again filled with aspirants, the air tortured with the music of the mandolins, and impregnated with the attar of roses. Who can attempt to describe the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... by the head. He will bring you to the house where Kevin Hooban is lying in his trouble. And God grant, Father, that you will be able to reach out a helping hand to him, and to put your strength in holy words between him and them that has a hold of him; he is a fine young man without fault or blemish, and the grandest maker of music that ever put a lip to the fideog. Keep an eye ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... brawny shoulders; then a square, thick-set frame; and Mother Demdike stood before her. A malignant smile played upon her hideous countenance, and gleamed from her eyes—those eyes so strangely placed by nature, as if to intimate her doom, and that of her fated race, to whom the horrible blemish was transmitted. As the old witch leaped heavily upon the ground, the trapdoor ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... spirit, of great compass, and stored with refined ideas. He is a critic of the first rank and, what is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation, malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and are formed by a judgment free and unbiassed by the authority of those who have lazily followed each other in the same beaten track ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... purity, knowing neither blemish nor flaw, becomes an animal with form and features distinctive from all others, with all essential organs, means of locomotion, its appetite, its dislikes, its care of itself, its love for its kind, its inherent malice towards ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Skipper went on the force. Clean of limb and sound of wind he was, with not a blemish from the tip of his black tail to the end of his crinkly forelock. He had been broken to saddle by a Green Mountain boy who knew more of horse nature than of the trashy things writ in books. He gave Skipper kind words and an occasional friendly pat on the flank. So Skipper's disposition was ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... saw a medal without its reverse? a talent that had not some shadow with its brilliancy, some smoke with its flame? Such a blemish can be only the inseparable consequence of such beauty. This rough stroke of the brush, which offends my eye at close range, completes the effect and gives relief to the whole picture. Efface one and you efface the other. Originality ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... is written (Canticles 4:7): "Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!" But the fomes implies a blemish, at any rate in the flesh. Therefore the fomes was not in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... mutual congratulation at their splendid luck ere they stepped out from their ambush to inspect and admire this magnificent and unique addition to their "bag." The animals were all superb specimens, in perfect condition, without a blemish; their coats smooth and glossy as satin, the horns of the males long, straight, tough, and with points as sharp as that of a bayonet. The professor was in a perfect ecstasy of delight; he declared that this was the supreme moment of his life; and then corrected ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... far from a good Character, and that his Death is absolutely necessary towards the Denoueement of the whole Piece. And our Hero had not put him to Death, had not he thought it to have been the Usurper hid behind the Arras; so that upon the Whole, this is no Blemish ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... connotations of Plato's and Aristotle's word, imitation. Even if we hold to the narrower meaning of imitation, there are a few poets who intimate that imitation alone is their aim in writing poetry. Denying that life has an ideal element, they take pains to mirror it, line for line, and blemish for blemish. How can they meet Plato's question as to their usefulness? If life is a hideous, meaningless thing, as they insinuate, it is not clear what merit can abide in a faithful reflection of it. Let us take the case of Robert Service, who prided ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to suggest anything beyond a trifling blemish in this story, replete as it is with edifying illustrations of the frailties of human nature, it would be well to remember that the helmet shell (CASSIS FLAMMEA) is not nacreous and could not therefore produce a true pearl, but merely g porcellaneous concretion, which, however, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a soul shall sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, ... let him bring for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering." Lev. iv. ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... and all-round cussedness, but without malice. Just as soon kill you as not, but in a playful sort of way, you understand, without meaning to at all. Personally, I wouldn't think of riding him. But he's a stayer. Look at them lungs. And look at them legs. Not a blemish. He's never been hurt or worked. Nobody ever succeeded in taking it out of him. Mountain horse, too, trail-broke and all that, being raised in rough country. Sure-footed as a goat, so long as he don't get it into his head to cut up. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... to gainsay this; but he shook his head doubtfully. The gun seemed to him both the surer and the more amusing way, and he was accustomed to picture to himself a tremendous duel, a lingering slaughter from which he would emerge without spot or blemish, forever set free from the wiles of the ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Desdemona, we cannot but feel that the slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the first,—"an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all truth! But, alas! to see her fluttering like a cherub in the talons of a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... blemish of the three missing texts, the book is most enjoyable. There are the usual G M Fenn tight situations, but of course the young men (as these boys would like to be called) manage ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... neuer will be knowne, And to be tauerne guest she euer hates, Shee scornes to be a streete-wife (Idle one,) Or field vvife ranging vvith her vvalking mates: She knows how wise men censure of such dames, And how with blottes they blemish ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... quality of the glass should be noted, and care taken that both glasses (but especially the field-glass) are free from the least speck, scratch, or blemish of any kind, for these defects will be exhibited in a magnified state in the field of view. Hence the eye-pieces require to be as carefully preserved from damp and dust as the object-glass, and to ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... maidens of Athens, walking in rhythmic beauty, and with them their attendants, daughters of resident foreigners. Following upon these was the long line of bleating victims, black bulls with gilded horns and ribbon-decked rams without blemish. And next—but here the people leaned from parapet, house-roof, portico, and shouted ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... this passage?" she said, humming the air with soft modulations; "I have always regarded the monotonous repetition of this strain" (and she indicated it lightly by a few touches of the keys) "as rather a blemish of an otherwise perfect composition. But as you play it, it is anything but monotonous. You put into this single phrase a more intense meaning and a greater variety of thought than I ever suspected it was ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... steadfast nerve that he inherits from his ancestor, and respectable in the symmetry of an intellect which, like a marble masterpiece, leaves nothing to regret except the thought that its perfection excludes the blemish of a soul. John Sherman will figure creditably in history. Mankind soon forgets the sentimental acrimony of the moment, provoked by the suffering of harsh processes, and remembers only the grand results. Thus John Sherman will figure in history as the man who resumed specie payments; and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... by his better habits of thought and action. That he, like most great men, felt keenly the value of health, is evidenced not only by his own practice, but by his oft repeated warnings to his nephew when choosing a wife to see that whatever other qualities she might have she be healthy. The blemish of nearsight he considered a no small defect and sufficient to render a young woman unworthy of entry into the proud family of the Buonarroti. To his own father he wrote: "Look to your life and health, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... there, on June 1, Dr. Le Plongeon had the great satisfaction of discovering a monument, a splendid work of art in all its pristine beauty, fresh as when the artist put the finishing touch to it, without blemish, unharmed by time, and not even looked upon by man since it was concealed, ages ago, where Dr. Le Plongeon discovered it through his interpretations of certain inscriptions. It was probably hidden to save it from destruction, between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... movement of the story is less straightforward. But what a panorama of Paris it is that he unrolls before us in this story of a luckless adventurer in the city of luxury then under the control of the imperial band of brigands! No doubt the Joyeuse family is an obtrusion and an artistic blemish, since they do not logically belong in the scheme of the story; and yet they (and their fellows in other books of Daudet's) testify to his effort to get the truth and the whole truth into his picture of Paris life. Mora and Felicia ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... even the wretched excuse which we have been considering. In this case, the cruelty was equal, the danger, infinitely less. In fact, the danger was created solely by the cruelty. But it is superfluous to press the argument. By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma of persecution, the worst blemish of the English Church, be effaced or patched over. Her doctrines, we well know, do not tend to intolerance. She admits the possibility of salvation out of her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... house out of compassion, he being an orphan, but as the chaise is waiting, I will bid thee farewell.' 'I am afraid I must stop your journey for the present,' said the surgeon; 'that boy has exactly the same blemish in the eye which a boy had who was in company with the man at Horncastle, from whom my friend received the forged notes, and who there passed for his son.' 'I know nothing about that,' said the Quaker, 'but I am determined to be detained ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... his humour and Savarin's wit,—that in the first there was always something earnest, in the last always something mocking. And in criticism Graham seemed ever anxious to bring out a latent beauty, even in writers comparatively neglected; Savarin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never before discovered in writers ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... second blemish, the Semitic religions practised human immolations longer than any other religion, sacrificing children and grown men in order to please sanguinary gods. In spite of Hadrian's prohibition of those murderous offerings,[42] they were maintained in certain clandestine rites and in the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... felt for his siren wife—could have wrought upon him to introduce to the world, as Mrs. Aylett of Ridgeley, one who had been before married, and was ashamed, for any cause whatever, to avow this. The blemish left by the acrid breath of common scandal upon a woman's fame was to him ineffaceable by any process yet discovered by pitying man or angels. The maligned one may not have erred from the straitest road of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... she went to the High School. There, each girl was a lady. There, she was going to walk among free souls, her co-mates and her equals, and all petty things would be put away. Ah, if only she did not bite her nails! If only she had not this blemish! She wanted so much to be perfect—without spot or blemish, living the high, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... eyebrows, which were the only blemish to the handsome Plantagenet face of the Earl, were lowered ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... see that such a view of the atonement does not in the least degree conflict with the justice of God. It merely teaches, that God has provided for the salvation of the world by the sufferings of Jesus Christ, who was without spot or blemish. Surely we cannot find it in our hearts to object, that the sufferings of Christ for such a purpose are not consistent with the justice of God, if we will only read a single page in the great volume of nature and of providence. It has been said by Bishop Butler, that such an objection "concludes ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... length by the unanimous Consent and Advice of all those who had committed their Opinions to Writing, they were made publick who traced more closely therein the Laws of Christ and Christianity, and were judged Persons pure, free from and innocent of that stain and blemish of depriving the Indians of their Treasures by Theft and Rapine, which Riches had contaminated and sullied the Hands, but much more the Souls of those who were enslav'd by those heaps of Wealth and Covetousness, now this obstinate and hot pursuit after Wealth ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;—and that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile taste in a tragedy ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... sometimes alone, sometimes in company, had made sixteen separate attacks upon that peak. He stared from the pages of the volume—Gabriel Strood. Something of his great reach of limb, of his activity, of his endurance, she was able to realize. Moreover he had a particular blemish which gave to him a particular interest in her eyes, for it would have deterred most men altogether from his pursuit and it greatly hampered him. And yet in spite of it, he had apparently for some seasons stood prominent in the Alpine fraternity. Gabriel Strood was afflicted with ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... greatest prince of his time, for wisdom, virtue, and abilities, and the most powerful in extent of dominion of all those that had ever filled the throne of England. His character, in private as well as in public life, is almost without a blemish; and he seems to have possessed every accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a man either estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong and well proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... not true that a wish for reward is unworthy of real virtue, and throws a blemish upon its purity. Such a pretension, on the contrary, helps to sustain virtue, man being himself too weak to consent to be virtuous only for his own 'gratification. I hold as a myth that Amphiaraus who preferred to be good than to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "certainty to a certain intent in every particular," is rejected in law, according to Lord Coke, (5 Rep. 121.) It undoubtedly tends to impose inevitable difficulty upon the administration of criminal justice. Sir Matthew Hale complained strongly of this "strictness, which has grown to be a blemish and inconvenience in the law, and the administration thereof; for that more offenders escape by the over-easy ear given to exceptions in indictments, than by their own innocence."—12 Hal. P. C. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... related only to the Jews, and the great body of slaves, who were the property of Christian or Pagan masters, could not improve their temporal condition by changing their religion. I am ignorant by what guides the Abbe Raynal was deceived; as the total absence of quotations is the unpardonable blemish of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... feelings, continued to pour forth his words of fire hour after hour, no one wearying even by the length of his discourse. Once again there rose a hymn of praise such as had never before been heard within those walls—not to Mary, not to any of the saints, but to the Lamb without spot or blemish, slain for the sins of the whole world, that all who believe on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. No thoughts can be more pure and simple and holy, more full of Gospel truth than are those found in the hymns of Marot. Although we had been standing so ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... eyes could not endure that beauty's wreck; You should not blemish it if I stood by: As all the world is cheered by the sun, So I by that; it ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... endowed with the superior force which the vain name of man supposes, and could accomplish the basest purpose of your heart, I would falsely take guilt to myself; or imagine I had received the smallest blemish, from impurity which never reached my mind? That I would lament, or shun the world, or walk in open day oppressed by shame I did not merit? No!—For you perhaps I might weep, but for myself I would ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of God, etc. Forasmuch as we have been given to understand, that many persons, as well of the city aforesaid, as others coming to the said city, being smitten with the blemish of leprosy, do publicly dwell among the other citizens and sound persons, and there continually abide; and do not hesitate to communicate with them, as well in public places as in private; and that some of them, endeavouring ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... slightly curved and pleasingly so, a fine little maple stands out rather interestingly on the side lawn, the flower garden has a good mass effect, the screen of poplar trees at the back acts as a stately rear guard, and the vines over the outbuilding hide what was once a blemish. ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Weigh 106 English pounds, without clothes. My hands and feet are small and well-shaped. Head of normal size. Features small. Eyes green. Have worn glasses since I was 7 years old. Complexion fair. Appearance not Jewish. The skin of my body is very white, without blemish. Very little hair on my face. Hair on head and abdomen luxuriant. No hair whatever on stomach and chest. Color of hair auburn everywhere except below navel, that black. (My father's, mother's, and brother's hair was brown. My sister has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... condemns a work of art for not conforming to one or another of a series of fixed types. That Comus lies, so to speak, midway between the drama and the masque, and partakes of the nature of either, is not, by any inherent law of literary aesthetics, a blemish; what in my view is a blemish, and that a serions one, is that the means employed are not calculated to the demands of the situation. The struggle of the Lady against the subtle enchanter, the search of the brothers for their lost sister, the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... many, as it doth; for they are these talkative fools whose religion is only in word, and are debauched and vain in their conversation, that (being so much admitted into the fellowship of the godly) do puzzle the world, blemish Christianity, and grieve the sincere. I wish that all men would deal with such as you have done: then should they either be made more conformable to religion, or the company of saints would be too hot for them. Then ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... Lady, her bed turns out not to have been well made; they have had to put her in a new place to-day. Observe, she made that bed herself, no servants being up, and had found a blemish or DEFAUT of"—word wanting: who knows what?—"in the mattresses; which I believe hurt her exact mind, more than her not very delicate body. She has got, in the interim, an apartment promised to somebody else; and she will have to leave it again on Friday or ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... of the nave; so that at night the moon, rising above the southern aisle, shines through its topmost window, and casts the shadow of its tracery upon the pavement of the square. This is a constructive blemish to which the Italians in no part of the peninsula were sensitive. They seem to have regarded their church fronts as independent of the edifice, capable of separate treatment, and worthy in themselves of being made the subject of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Homer is offensive to religious feeling because he fully shares the sensuality which we account one of the great defects of humanity. From that blemish the Hebrew idea of God is always free. The hostility between Yahveh and the heathen gods has its deep ethical significance in the struggle of chastity against licentiousness, to which the religious sanction brings reinforcement. But the Hebrew ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the name has been a failure. I took great pains, in constructing it, to secure a pleasant impression. It is not a mere invention, but a compound of the words smile and eyelash. A smile suggests good humor; eyelashes soften the expression and are the only features that never blemish a face. Hence Smilash is a sound that should cheer and propitiate. Yet it exasperates. It is really very odd that it should have that effect, unless it is that it raises expectations which I ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... doubt that 'stirred for a bird' was an added excellence to the poet's ear; to our sense it is a serious blemish on lines which have 'the roll, the rise, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... at least not find me among the number of those who prefer her favor to her safety, and abuse to their own profit that over-tenderness and mercifulness of heart which is the only blemish (and yet, rather like a mole on a fair cheek, but a new beauty) in her ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... again, as we have seen, has fixed another intellectual blemish upon them by the imputation of superstition. But how does superstition enter, but where there is a want of knowledge? Does not all history bear testimony, that in proportion as men have been more or less enlightened, they have been less or more liable to this charge? It is knowledge ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... falling through a bridge or culvert; large loosely built draft horses are prone to this blemish. Bog Spavin is hereditary, and you should, therefore, select a good type of animal for ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... of Claverhouse goes far beyond that entertained by Sir Walter Scott. On the other side, there is the party, equally sentimental, which musters under the banner of the Covenant, and sees scarcely a blemish in Knox. A pretty sample of the sentiment of this party appears in a biography (1905) of the Reformer by a minister of the Gospel. Knox summoned the organised brethren, in 1563, to overawe justice, when some men were to be tried on ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... is undoubtedly equal, but not necessarily fair. Fair means 'free from blemish,' 'pure,' in other words, right. Two thieves may make a perfectly fair division of spoil; but the fairness of the division does not make their conduct fair or right. Neither of them is entitled to divide ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... any man, no matter how noble or gifted, having given birth to striking ideas, coddles and pets them until they become the full-grown, spoiled children of his brain. He can at last see neither spot nor blemish in them, and comes virtually to believe himself infallible. This characteristic I found in several other Russians of marked ability. Each had developed his theories for himself until he had become infatuated with them, and despised everything ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... pigeons will commonly sell at Rome for two hundred nummi, if they are well made, of good colour, without blemish, and of good breed: some times they even bring a thousand nummi, and there is a report that recently L. Axius, a Roman of the equestrian order, declined that sum, refusing to sell for less than ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Modernism. "I must," she said, "have the same religion as my washerwoman, and Father Tyrrell's is not the religion for my washerwoman." We sat on the terrace in the sunshine and Lady Blennerhassett asked suddenly whether the soles of our boots were, like hers, without hole or blemish. We all looked very odd as we stuck our feet out and tried to see the soles. Gilbert, offered a wicker chair, preferred the grass because, he said, there was grave danger he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... me to weep when I think of my beautiful sisters—the one with her laughing rosy cheeks, the other pale as ivory, save for one little black spot, which no man surely could call a blemish. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... and Angle; but Thorbiorn Angle showed forth his weapons first; and he had the short-sword, Grettir's-loom; but when he showed it many praised it and said that it was an exceeding good weapon, but that it was a great blemish, that notch in the edge thereof; and asked him withal what had ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... thrust himselfe among the formost into the maine battell. The other most honorable L. Generall (whose singular vertues in all respects are of such an excellencie and perfection as neither can my praise in any part increase them, nor any mans enuy any whit blemish or diminish them) vnderstanding, the most noble Earle to be in fight among them, and perceiuing by the M. of his ship, the Arke Royall, that lacke of water, it was not possible, that he might put any neerer, without farther delay, called presently for his Pynnesse, and in the same ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... following once every six weeks for three times will stop the side-bones from growing. Side-bones on a draft horse are not considered an unsoundness; in light fast drivers it is an incurable blemish causing lameness. Side-bones cannot be removed. Use this blister: Simple cerate, 4 ounces; cantharides, 3 drachms; bin iodide mercury, 2 drachms. Mix thoroughly ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... The angel answered, 'We are all the servants of God: and know that my eating would be invisible, and my drinking could not be seen by all the men in the world; but of all that thou wouldest give to me, do thou make sacrifice to God.' Then Joachim took a lamb without spot or blemish ...; and when he had made sacrifice of it, the angel of the Lord disappeared and ascended into heaven; and Joachim fell upon the earth in great fear, and lay from the sixth ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... mild as the autumn gale That fans the temples o' toil, An' the sweets o' a thousand summers cam' On her breath an' sunny smile: An' spotless she gaed on the tainted earth, O' a mortal blemish free, While my heart forgot, in its feast o' joy, That my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... who will one moment take offence at a salutation, and at another make an honorary dress the return for an act of rudeness; and they have said, That to be over much facetious is the accomplishment of courtiers and blemish of the wise.—Be wary, and preserve the state of thine own character, and leave sport and buffoonery ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... knowingly mentioning anything which may revive in any person the remembrance of some past accident, or raise an uneasy reflection on a present misfortune or corporal blemish. To maintain this rule nicely, perhaps, requires great delicacy; but it is absolutely necessary to a well-bred man. I have observed numberless breaches of it; many, I believe, proceeding from negligence and inadvertency; yet I am afraid some may be too justly ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... previously translated Schleiermacher's "Essay on St. Luke," and was thus the first to introduce German theology into England; wrote a "History of Greece," which, though superior in some important respects, was superseded by Grote's as wanting in realistic power, a fatal blemish in a history; was a liberal man, and bishop of St. David's for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... been in an agony of impatience to be alone with his beloved, commanded his feelings admirably. He signified his approbation of the poem by saying that the lines were smooth and the rhymes absolutely without blemish. The stanzas reminded him forcibly of one of the greatest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the most perfect type of all these physical perfections, a survival of those wondrous Marquesan women who addled the wits of the whites a century ago. There was no blemish on her, nor any ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Star may know," I says. "I don't. By what I could make out of him in the moonlight, he's without brand or blemish. I'll answer for it that he's born on the far side of Cold Iron, for he was born under a shaw on Terrible Down, and I've wronged neither man, woman, nor child in taking him, for he is the son of ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... objectionable points about our ideal of the negro are not very prominent in him. His lips are not thicker than the lips of many a roast-beef-loving John Bull. His nose is not flat, and his heels do not protrude unnecessarily. True, his hair is woolly, but that is scarcely a blemish. It might almost be regarded as the crisp and curly hair that surrounds a manly skull. His skin is black—no doubt about that, but then it is intensely black and glossy, suggestive of black satin, and having no savour of that dirtiness which is ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... that there was not a stain upon his character. He has performed his duty here below, and has taken his flight to realms above, as unspotted as an angel. What a lesson he has given us! How delightful to dwell upon the idea that he has walked in the paths of virtue during his whole life, without a blemish on his character, and that all his friends may recount his acts with pride and pleasure!' The younger brother is still living in the paternal mansion, and was a member of the last Legislature of Tennessee. The mother of these children afterwards married Mr. James ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... a daring romance-writer ventures, during the earlier chapters of his story, to represent a heroine without beauty and without wealth, or a hero with some mortal blemish. But after a time his resolution fails;—each new chapter gives a new charm to the ordinary face; the eyes grow "liquid" and "lustrous," always having been "large"; the nose, "naturally delicate," exhibits its "fine-cut lines"; the mouth acquires an indescribable expression of loveliness; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... misunderstood; we well know that the humorous, the grotesque, the sublime may use ugliness to serve their own legitimate purposes, but then that ugliness must be humorous, grotesque, or sublime, and not flat, prosy, or revolting. A blemish is by no means necessarily an ugliness. A leaf nibbled by insects and consequently discolored, a lad with ragged jacket and soiled trowsers, a peasant girl with bent hat and tattered gown, are often more picturesque ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... side to the other of him marvelling. Not a defect, not even a blemish could I discover. The animal was fairly a perfect specimen of horseflesh. And I could not help speculating as to its use. Old Man Hooper had certainly never appeared with it in public; the fame of such a beast would have spread the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Wordsworths which he knew merely by their kindness. He wrote papers, which were eagerly read, and, of course, duly paid for, in which Wordsworth's personal foibles were malignantly exhibited with ingenious aggravations. The infirmities of one member of the family, the personal blemish of another, and the human weaknesses of all, were displayed, and all for the purpose of deepening the dislike against Wordsworth himself, which the receiver of his money, the eater of his dinners, and the dreary provoker of his ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the fruit to be preserved be quite dry, and without blemish. Take a bottle that is perfectly clean and dry within, and put in the fruit in layers, sprinkling sugar between each layer, put in the bung, and tie bladder over, setting the bottles, bung downwards, in a large stewpan of cold water, with hay between to prevent breaking. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... cannot help being noticed is the number of persons whose eyes are not on the same level. When this does not amount to an actual disfigurement, it is still a blemish which prevents many a young girl from being classed as a beauty. This and the peculiar notched or cleft teeth seem to point to an hereditary taint. Also unmistakable signs of a greater or lesser admixture of black blood ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... appropriate only to the church triumphant. We see and deplore the vices and errors of each other; and after that acknowledgment, do not, worthy Barton, call us uncandid if I add, we also discover yours. I will go further, and own, that we record that as a blemish which you produce as a beauty; I mean your zeal to promote separation, so plainly contradictory, not merely to a dubious text, a difficult chapter, or even an epistle hard to be understood, but to the whole tenor of the New Testament, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... so merciless and dark spirit must be used the deeper devices of the mind. And thou, who hadst been better employed in lamenting thine own disgrace, know it is superfluity to bewail my witlessness; thou shouldst weep for the blemish in thine own mind, not for that in another's. On the rest see thou keep silence." With such reproaches he rent the heart of his mother and redeemed her to walk in the ways of virtue; teaching her to set the fires of the past above the seductions ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in the chain, from which every later one, in a direct line or a lateral, depends. We may proceed in this investigation, certain that we shall find such, or at least that such there is to be found. For nothing can be more certain than this (and the non-recognition of it is a serious blemish in Johnson's Dictionary), that a word has originally but one meaning, that all other uses, however widely they may diverge from one another and recede from this one, may yet be affiliated to it, brought back to the one ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... put your commands, my lord," said Amy, "in balance with those of honour and conscience. I will NOT, in this instance, obey you. You may achieve your own dishonour, to which these crooked policies naturally tend, but I will do nought that can blemish mine. How could you again, my lord, acknowledge me as a pure and chaste matron, worthy to share your fortunes, when, holding that high character, I had strolled the country the acknowledged wife of such a profligate ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... This blemish is lacking in "The Farewell of Hiawatha," which is written for men's voices. Though it, too, is of a sad tone, its sombre hues are rich and varied as a tapestry. Its effects, though potent, seem more sincere and less labored. It ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... sayest thou? This mark upon the fairness of thy arm which I have thought a blemish, and therefore have not questioned thee thereon—sayest thou it is a dakkh, what thou callest a tattoo mark? And if so what has it to do with the man whose name is unceasingly ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and were to be so much the more prized, from the circumstance, that Grace had once worn them. It is true, they contained a little, though very little of my hair; for on this Grace had insisted; but this hair was rather a blemish, and might easily be removed. I said as ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... achieved a great deal by your work, for yourself as well as for others. You are the richest and most influential man in the town; nobody in it dares do otherwise than defer to your will, because you are looked upon as a man without spot or blemish; your home is regarded as a model home, and your conduct as a model of conduct. But all this grandeur, and you with it, is founded on a treacherous morass. A moment may come and a word may be spoken, when you and all your ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... death hanging over him, he hath such food for thought that, should he survive and live to be grey-headed, his whole life will be marked and altered by those solemn hours, as a stream is changed in its course by some rough bank against which it hath struck. Every little fault and blemish stands out clear in the presence of death, as the dust specks appear when the sunbeam shines into the darkened room. I noted them then, and I have, I trust, noted ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the most perfect as well as the most beautiful of all fibers. It is nearly faultless, fine and continuous, often measuring from 1000 to 4000 feet long, without a scale, joint, or a blemish, though not of the same diameter or fineness throughout its entire length, as it becomes finer as the interior of the cocoon is approached. Silk differs from all other vegetable or animal fibers by being ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... who was a princess. I cry a price, seignior, for red lips and bright eyes and a fair woman's tender body without any blemish. I cry a price for youth and happiness and honour. These you may have for playthings, seignior, with everything which I possess, except my heart, for that ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... foreigner. His ambassador made frequent appeals to the Secretary of State, but the Secretary was powerless, as the Constitution does not empower the Federal Government to interfere in state matters. This seems a blemish in the administration of foreign affairs in the United States of America. Suppose a foreigner should be ill-treated or murdered in a state, and no proper redress be given, the Federal Government cannot send its officers to arrest the culprit. All it can do is to ask the Governor of that state ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... before us like veritable human beings, and what they are we learn from what they do. The transformation of one of the characters from a gay, debonnair bachelor past middle age into a penurious miser of the Blueberry-Jones type is bold, and in less skilful hands would be a blemish, but Mr. Synge has amply justified it, and admirably uses it to cement the structure of his plot. There is no weakness in any chapter, and as we read so secure do we feel in the author's strength that, had he chosen to end the story in sorrow and not in joy, we should submit as though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... exasperation. Were all women at heart, then, no better than Indian squaws? A string of beads outweighed the sacrifices of friends and the chance of a crown! There was a blemish in his idol, since at all costs she must glitter. Wogan, however, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... and objects in the far distance were but indistinctly seen through a humid atmosphere. At about half an hour before mid-day the air became more rarified, and, the murky clouds gradually disappearing, left the blue autumnal sky without spot or blemish. Presently, as the bells of the fort struck twelve, a yell as of a legion of devils rent the air; and, riveting their gaze in that direction, all beheld the bridge, hitherto deserted, suddenly covered with a multitude of savages, among whom were several individuals attired in the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... during my visit at my friend's house that I first witnessed the peculiar manner in which the markets in Mizora are conducted. Everything, as usual, was fastidiously neat and clean. The fruit and vegetables were fresh and perfect. I examined quantities of them to satisfy myself, and not a blemish or imperfection could be found on any. None but buyers were attending market. Baskets of fruit, bunches of vegetables and, in fact, everything exhibited for sale, had the quality and the price labeled ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... imaginary; these are things the proof of which must not be pushed to extreme lengths. I have not begotten nor given birth to my lady, though I behold her as she needs must be, a lady who contains in herself all the qualities to make her famous throughout the world, beautiful without blemish, dignified without haughtiness, tender and yet modest, gracious from courtesy and courteous from good breeding, and lastly, of exalted lineage, because beauty shines forth and excels with a higher degree of perfection upon good blood than in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... parents, out of devotion to St. Nicholas, gave her the name of Colette, the diminutive of Nicholas. She was brought up in the love of humiliations and austerities. Her desire to preserve her purity without the least blemish made her avoid as much as possible all company, even of persons of her own sex, unless it was sometimes to draw them from the love of the world by her moving discourses, which were attended with a singular blessing from almighty God. Humility was her darling virtue; and her greatest delight seemed ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... discretion. It was still more creditable to him, that in such venal and corrupt days he maintained his integrity perfectly unsullied. Thus severely tested, the true worth of his character was proved, and he came from the ordeal without a blemish. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... inexplicable a discrepancy between their deeds as men and the artistic thoughts for which they seem to be the unconscious media, that it is inspiring to come into touch with one who rings true as a man whatever demands are made upon him; whose music is free from morbidity or carnal blemish, as pure as the winter wind, as elemental as the ocean, as uplifting as the stars. In Bach let us always remember the noble human traits; for the universal regard in which his work is held could never have come merely from profound ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... and affectation of the latter, would take from the dignity of Raffaelle; and yet Rubens had great harmony, and Rembrant understood light and shadow: but what may be an excellence in a lower class of painting, becomes a blemish in a higher; as the quick, sprightly turn, which is the life and beauty of epigrammatick compositions, would but ill suit with the majesty of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... can but regret this perversity, for the old Roman and other authors have unpleasantnesses enough without accentuating them. Thus in reading some sweet poem of Catullus, spoilt by perhaps a single objectionable line, we do not want our attention drawn particularly to the blemish. Unfortunately, Sir Richard now made this kind of work his speciality, and it would be idle—or rather it would be untrue—to deny that he now chose certain books for translation, not on account of their beautiful poetry and noble thoughts, but because they lent themselves ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... and invent pretexts for delay? Is it to win my poor patron's money? Be generous, my lord, and spare his weakness for the sake of his wife and children. Is it to practise upon the simple heart of a virtuous lady? You might as well storm the Tower single-handed. But you may blemish her name by light comments on it, or by lawless pursuits—and I don't deny that 'tis in your power to make her unhappy. Spare these innocent people, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... second mode employed by speculative reason of demonstrating the existence of a Supreme Being, is not only, like the first, illusory and inadequate, but possesses the additional blemish of an ignoratio elenchi—professing to conduct us by a new road to the desired goal, but bringing us back, after a short circuit, to the old path which we ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... determining the Periods of Tides, and other circumstances concerning them. And though it be manifest enough, that Galilaeo, as to some particulars, was mistaken in the account which there he gives of it; yet that may be very well allowed, without any blemish to so deserving a person, or prejudice to the main Hypothesis: For that Discourse is to be looked upon onely as an Essay of the general Hypothesis; which as to particulars was to afterwards adjusted, from a good General History of Tides; which it's ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... quality and disposition, and espying that hen for which she was accused, to sit vpon the hatch of her shoppe doore, went to her, and mooued with the indignity of that slaunder, and vniust imputation, told her in some passion and angry manner, that it was a dishonest part thus to blemish the good name of her neighbors with so vntrue aspersions: whereupon, breaking foorth in some violence, she wished the pox to light vpon her, and named her prowde Iinny, prowde flurts, and shaking the hand, bade her go in, for she should repent it; and the same night, within three ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... victim [to sacrifice it upon the altar; for we deduce from the repetition of the word "man" (in Lev. xvii.) that the non-Jews can offer voluntary sacrifices, like the Israelites]; thou wilt see if they sacrifice it." Caesar sent a calf without a blemish, but in transit a blemish appeared on the large lip [the upper lip], others say on the lid of the eye (dokin (Dalet Vav Qof Yod FinalNun)) ["tela,"[112] as in Is. xl. 22 Dok (Dalet Vav Qof)], which constitutes a ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... high priest is not to come near to one that is dead, although the rest are not prohibited from coming near to their brethren, or parents, or children, when they are dead; but they are to be unblemished in all respects. He ordered that the priest who had any blemish, should have his portion indeed among the priests, but he forbade him to ascend the altar, or to enter into the holy house. He also enjoined them, not only to observe purity in their sacred ministrations, but in their daily conversation, that it might be unblamable also. And on this account ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to believe there was any trouble with Seward but a surface blemish. Though in '61 he advocated a foreign war as a means for bringing together North and South, and desired to shelve practically Lincoln while he himself stood at the front to manage the turmoil, he made no more mistakes than statesmen in general. He had been powerful for good before the war, and during ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... bed. Being curious to know from whence it came, I mounted the steps, and lifting up my head, I saw a diamond, as big as the egg of an ostrich, lying upon a low stool; it was so pure that I could not find the least blemish in it, and it sparkled so brightly that I could not endure the lustre of it when I saw it ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... satisfyingly accounting for them, our late driver alarmed me by appearing at the door and beckoning me to the outside. The occasion was nothing worse than the presence of a man who, he said, was his brother, with a horse which, upon the same authority, was without moral blame or physical blemish. If anything, it preferred a mountain to a plain country, and could be warranted to balk at nothing. The man, who was almost as exemplary as the horse, would assume the unfulfilled contract of the other man and horse with a slight increase of pay; and yet I had ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... and then had followed, in unswerving sequence, a round dozen of girls. The blend of the race was excellent. Not alone fruitful did it prove, for the progeny, without exception, was healthy and without blemish. But the most amazing thing about the family was its beauty. All the girls were beautiful—delicately, ethereally beautiful. Mamma Ah Chun's rotund lines seemed to modify papa Ah Chun's lean angles, so that the daughters were ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... contempt on his imaginary subjects by an act of the greatest disdain. To brighten this distressful scene, and draw a smile from him whose rigid reasoning might condemn the bringing into public view this blemish of humanity, are two women introduced, walking in the gallery, as curious spectators of this melancholy sight; one of whom is supposed, in a whisper, to bid the other observe the naked man, which she takes an opportunity of doing by a leer through ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... close colouring; but they want that effect which the proper application of light and shade never fails to produce. The coloured prints of Europe that are carried out to Canton are copied there with wonderful fidelity. But in doing this, they exercise no judgment of their own. Every defect and blemish, original or accidental, they are sure to copy, being mere servile imitators, and not in the least feeling the force or the beauty of any specimen of the arts that may come before them; for the same person who is one day employed in copying a beautiful European print, will sit down the next to ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... is also the first choice of our men. Were it not a wise arrangement that only the strongest males should continue the breed, one could hardly help pitying the solitary buffalo expelled from the herd for some physical blemish, or on account of the weakness of approaching old age. Banished from female society, he naturally becomes morose and savage; the necessary watchfulness against enemies is now never shared by others; disgusted, he passes into a state of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... guilt—Oh! the comfortable sound! It is a good name in the history of these corrupt days. There it will exist, when the wealth of your and their country's enemies will be wasted, or will be an indelible blemish ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... see the blemish in the distant neighbor's style, You can point to all his errors and may sneer at him the while, And your prejudices fatten and your hates more violent grow As you talk about the failures of the man you do not know, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... puzzling question as to these Arians and other Christian heretics. I cannot be hard on them so long as they cling faithfully to the One Lord who is necessary to all. If we are in the right—and I firmly believe that we are—and the Son is of one substance of the Father, he is without spot or blemish; and what can be more divine than to overlook the error of another if it concerns ourselves, or what more meanly human than to take such an error amiss and indulge in a cruel or sanguinary revenge on the erring soul? Do not misunderstand me. I, unfortunately—or rather, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... accounts are over, to retire into the country. That he do give over the kingdom for wholly lost. This day I got a little rent in my new fine camlett cloak with the latch of Sir G. Carteret's door; but it is darned up at my tailor's, that it will be no great blemish to it; but it troubled me. I could not but observe that Sir Philip Carteret [Sir G. Carteret's eldest son, mentioned before, who had been knighted.] would fain have given me my going into a play; but yet when he came to the door he had no money to pay for himself I having refused ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... circumstances in concealment, he was fain to bear all these miseries, humiliations, and distresses, in full daylight, under the pitiless sun of royalty; or an elevation so flooded with light, where every stain appears a miserable blemish, and every glory a stain. The king has suffered; it rankles in his mind: and he will avenge himself. He will be a bad king. I say not that he will pour out blood, like Louis XI., or Charles IX.; for he has no mortal injuries to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Senators, when, at your desire, at the call of the entire French people, I placed upon my head the imperial crown, I received from you, and from all citizens, the promise to maintain it pure and without blemish. All the promises I have made to you I have kept; the French people in their turn have made no engagement with me which they have not even surpassed. Frenchmen, your emperor will do his duty; my soldiers will do theirs; you will ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... was ill. In such cases I always went directly to the Princess, and she took me to see the sick one. As we entered the room there was a nurse standing with a child in her arms, and the Princess called my attention to a blemish on its face. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... was like a cannon-ball painted white. Across the top of it (a blemish that would undoubtedly have spoiled the tune) was a long scar,—a relic of one of the gentleman's many personal difficulties. He who made the sear, Honora reflected, must have been a strong man. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... are seated in a row along an extended board table before two divisions with partitions ten or twelve inches high, affording spaces for the sheets before and after sorting. The work of inspection is performed by women, who detect almost instantly any blemish or imperfection in the finished product as it passes through their hands. If the paper is to be ruled for writing purposes, it is then taken to the ruling machines, where it is passed under revolving discs or pens, set at regular intervals. These convey the ruling ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... others do excel); And ye likewise, which keep the rushy lake, Where none do fishes take; Bind up the locks the which hang scattered light, And in his waters, which your mirror make, Behold your faces as the crystal bright, That when you come whereas my love doth lie, No blemish she may spy. And eke, ye lightfoot maids, which keep the deer, That on the hoary mountain used to tower; And the wild wolves, which seek them to devour, With your steel darts do chase from coming near; Be also present here, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... too ripe; pick off the stalks, and put them into wide-mouthed glass bottles, taking care not to put in any but what are whole, and without blemish; shake them well down (otherwise the bottles will not be half full when done); stop the bottles with new soft corks, not too tight; set them into a very slow oven (nearly cold) four or five hours; ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... agitating certainty that the misfortune was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. . . . And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes; children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. . . . Now among ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... How could a waiter understand the charms of Saunders' historical nose? Evidently she had selected him from the whole corps on account of his exploits as an object of hazing. Sam almost wished that Saunders' nose was a blemish, for it would help his chances, but candor obliged him to admit that it was, on the contrary, one of his rival's strong points, and he sighed once again to think that he bore no marks on his own person ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... him upon the bed, near her side. They spake together of many things, for each found much to say. The maiden looked closely upon the knight, his face and semblance; to her heart she said that never before had she beheld so comely a man. Her eyes might find no blemish in his person, and Love knocked upon her heart, requiring her to love, since her time had come. She sighed, and her face lost its fair colour; but she cared only to hide her trouble from the knight, lest he should think her the less maidenly therefore. When ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone not give him actual pain. It may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to mention, that one day he took in his fingers a half-bloomed rose, without blemish, and, smiling with an infinite joy, remarked, "This is perfect. On earth a flower ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had been disposed of, but nothing seemed to suit Hil, whose practised eye could pick out a blemish ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... reminiscences, and composed from various earlier documents.[168] The Firbolgs, defeated in the first battle, join the Fomorians, after great losses. Meanwhile Nuada, leader of the Tuatha De Danann, lost his hand, and as no king with a blemish could sit on the throne, the crown was given to Bres, son of the Fomorian Elatha and his sister Eri, a woman of the Tuatha De Danann. One day Eri espied a silver boat speeding to her across the sea. From it stepped ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Thank Heaven, I've made her spine permanently straight and her head is screwed properly to her neck. There's not a slump to her from crown to heel—I know, you know. She's had specialists to forestall every blemish. I made up my mind to do it; I'm doing it for my own babies. That's what a mother is for—to turn out her offspring to the world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it!—physically and mentally sound—or a woman betrays her stewardship. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... what if one is misjudged, or it may be too pitilessly judged, and one's co-operation despised and the help one brought becomes a source of weakness? Or suppose that the fine scheme one made lies shattered or wrecked by one's own act, or through some hidden blemish one's offering is rejected and flung back and one ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... on this subject have supposed this defect to proceed from a disease of, or want of proper correspondence in, the muscles of the eyes, which not acting in proper concert with one another, as in persons free from this blemish, are not able to point both eyes to the same object. But this, I think, is very seldom the cause, for when the other eye is shut, the distorted eye can be moved by the action of its muscles, in all possible directions, as ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... consider it a very great defect, and slight as this blemish appears in Miss Lovel, her money could never blind me to the fact if I knew ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... than is commonly deemed consistent with a correct estimate of the interest which mankind take in the cares of one another. But he lived to feel and to rue the consequences: to repent he could not, for the cause was in the very element of his nature. It was a blemish as incurable as ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... needed to be wiped out. What if there were a flaw in the offering? What if the priest were not acceptable, and she were to go back with the debt uncanceled—with reconciliation not effected? Her mind leaped forward before the speaker could reach the point to the Lamb without spot or blemish and the High Priest who "ever liveth to make intercession" for His people. Was that what it meant? And was it already accomplished? The speaker ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... Moses, that the priests were to be "without blemish," as to all the parts of their bodies, is ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... girl set out. Soon she saw a fine-looking stick close at hand; but it had a slight blemish near one end, so she said: "No; I can do better than that." Then she saw another that was perfect but for a little curve in the middle, so she passed ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... merit of "Perigrine Pickle," but at the same time added to its dissolute character and its immediate popularity by the forced insertion of the licentious "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality." Now a serious blemish, these memoirs formed at the time an added attraction to the book. They were eagerly read as the authentic account of Lady Vane, a notorious woman of rank, and were furnished to Smollett by herself, in the hope, fully ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... a prosaic level as fitter for didactic purposes; but besides this we here and there come upon phrases which are not only elliptical and slovenly, but defy all grammatical construction. This was a blemish to which Pope was always strangely liable. It was perhaps due in part to over-correction, when the context was forgotten and the subject had lost its freshness. Critics, again, have remarked upon the poverty of the rhymes, and observed that he makes ten rhymes ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... three-years-day these eyes, though clear To outward view, of blemish and of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot: Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... a seaport. Come, come, have bowels. Let epic swearing be treated with the same courtesy shown to epic poetry, that is, if both are the production of a rare genius. I maintain, that when Paddy commits a blemish he is too harshly admonished for it. When he soars out of sight here, as occasionally happens, does he not frequently alight somewhere about Sydney Bay, much against his own inclination? And if he puts forth ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... generally sour and spiteful) of a man combining brilliant wit and repartee with the most perfect good-nature. His manner, above all, was irresistible; and the slight lisp, which might have been considered as a blemish, only added piquancy and zest to ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... light, exultant feeling in his middle-aged heart as he scampered along the deck. The girl had wonderful dark auburn hair and brown eyes, with a milk-white skin that sun and wind had sought in vain to blemish. And for all her girlhood she was a woman—bred from a race (his own people) to whom danger and despair merely furnished a tonic for their courage. What a mate for a man! And she had ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... dedication of a man by himself to the poetical office cannot be imagined. Everything about him became, as it were, pontifical, almost sacramental. A poet's soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise, and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, his thoughts high, his studies intense. There was no drinking at the 'Mermaid' for John Milton. His thoughts, like his joys, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... His page in the war record of this country is without blot or blemish. His commanders unite in pronouncing him admirable for courage in the field, commendable for obedience in camp. That he should exhibit such excellent fighting qualities as a soldier, and yet exercise the forbearance that characterizes him as a ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... Man says not in vain: "Happy is the rich man, who is found without blemish, who does not run after gold, and has not set his confidence in the treasures of money. Who is he? We will praise him, that he has done wondrous things in his life." As if he would say: "None such is found, or very few indeed." Yea, ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... Siegemund, (1) his mother Siegelind), (2) in a mighty castle, known far and wide, in the lowlands of the Rhine: Xanten, (3) men called it. Of this hero I sing, how fair he grew. Free he was of every blemish. Strong and famous he later became, this valiant man. Ho! What great worship he won in this world! Siegfried hight this good and doughty knight. Full many kingdoms did he put to the test through his warlike mood. Through his strength of body he rode into many ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Ephesians 5:25-27). ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry |
