"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the picture. Then, as if to force into the scene an incongruity of some sort, a grand piano was pushed out of the darkness in the rear of the stage, to a place in the garden, where it stood, seemingly the one blot on the landscape. ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... and see it; and from the street might now and then, at rare times, be beheld a dappling and streaking, a mottling and massing of clouds on the blue. The fog of the London valley, and the smoke of the London chimneys, did not always, any more than the cares and sorrows and sins of its souls, blot out its heaven as if it had never looked on the earth. But he had learned much since he went to the country; he had gone nearer to Nature, and seen that in her lap she carried many more things than he knew of; and now that Barbara ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... may not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... heart, were the same fierce and turbulent passions—the same dark thoughts and bad feelings—the same willful and perverse nature that dwelt there, when I left him, ten years ago, forsaking home and happiness; time had only served to deepen the impressions, and crime almost entirely to blot out the few remaining influences of a religious education, while the vicious impulses strengthened. But, in person, he was greatly changed. From the stripling he had become the man. A half sneer was on his countenance as in boyhood; and the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... could not blot out Jack Ramsey from his memory. There was a "reason," he would say, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... good. The thought of his sorrow in any moral break-down of ours will often nerve us to stand firm. What would my friend think of me, if I did this, or consented to this meanness? Could I look him in the face again, and meet the calm pure gaze of his eye? Would it not be a blot on our friendship, and draw a veil over our intercourse? No friendship is worth the name which does not elevate, and does not help to nobility of conduct and to strength of character. It should give a new zest to duty, and a new inspiration ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... adieu should in utterance die, Or, if written, should faintly appear— Should be heard in the sob of a sigh, Or be seen in the blot of a teal." ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Cannable, and thereby hangs a tale. It would appear, from all the current but unpublished records of social Louisiana, that Agatha had gone about shattering hearts in a most unintentional but effective fashion up to the time Mr. Jimmy Cannable refused to be routed. Certainly it is no blot upon this fair young coquette's fame to admit that she had plighted herself to at least four ardent suitors in days gone by, and it was equally her own affair if she took every woman's privilege of shifting her fancy before she ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Semiramis) A boon, your majesty! 'T would blot our honor To send him from us thus! We shall be plunged Anew in wars, for Husak will avenge it! I am thy most unhappy subject, and Thou'lt ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... Paul's language becomes exceedingly suggestive of things that it is worth our while to forget, and the way in which we should forget them. Like him, we are not required to blot out the remembrance of the past. There could be no improvement if we did not remember past mistakes and profit by them. It is often our sweetest joy and highest pride to think of the days that are ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... insurrectionary movement. Alvarado himself declared that he had information that the Mexicans intended to rise, but he gave no proofs, whatever, to justify his suspicions. The affair, indeed, seems to have been utterly indefensible, and must ever remain a foul blot ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... There is no undoing a sin, no making amends. All sins, from such as those which men call the smallest to the greatest, are registered, to be brought up in judgment against the sinner, and the all-cleansing blood of Jesus can alone blot them out. Man, as a proof of his living faith in Christ's atonement,—of his sorrow for sins committed,—of his hatred of sin, of his repentance,— will, of necessity, do all he can to make amends to his fellow-man for the wrong he has done him; ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston
... tear away the leaf Wherein it's writ; or, if fate won't allow So large a gap within its journal-book, I'll blot ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... didna just die. They were killed. Their hearts were broken by the one they loved best in the world. That cannot be changed. Even the Lord himself cannot blot out that and make it as if it ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... really meant rushed over her—self-denial, self-abnegation, the noble courage which comes to those who think of others, not themselves. "I cannot write," she said, passionately. She said the words aloud, dashing down her pen and making a blot on the fair sheet of manuscript paper. At that moment the door was opened and Bertha ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... ungenerously forget The Friend that hitherto hath helped me—and shall help me yet? Shall unbelief, all unabashed, proclaim that God is Not,— Nor faith with honest zeal be quick this hideous lie to blot? ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... children wrote so slowly that time had hung heavy on his hands; and, instead of copying the figures in a row, he had made a drawing of the clock-face, with the figures on it; but instead of the hands, he had put eyes, nose, and mouth, and below the mouth a round gray blot, which William instantly recognized for a portrait of the mole on Dame Datchett's chin. This brilliant caricature so tickled him, that he had a fit of choking from suppressed laughter; and he and Jan, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... her, and asked her gently whether she would think it right to turn the fertilizing Nile from its bed and leave its shores dry, because, from time to time, it destroyed fields and villages in the excess of its overflow? "This day and its deeds of shame," he went on sadly, "are a blot on the pure and sublime book of the History of our Faith, and every true Christian must bitterly bewail the excesses of a frenzied mob. The Church must no less condemn Caesar's sanguinary vengeance; it casts a shade on his honor and his fair name, and his conscience ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and honourable feelings of an Austin or a Houston, followed the bent of their dispositions, and were guilty of acts of barbarism and cruelty which, had they, at the time, been properly represented to the civilised people of Europe, would have caused them to blot the name of Texas out of the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of Servetus, the Parisian doctor, at Geneva (October 27th, 1553), because his opinions on the Trinity did not agree with Calvin's, is of course the greatest blot on the memory of Calvin. All his books or manuscripts were burnt with him or elsewhere, so that his works are among the rarest of bibliographical treasures, and his Christianismi Restitutio (1553) is said to be the rarest book in the world. But apart from their rarity, I should hardly imagine ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the Prince returned with a great cavalcade, and finding a cask of caviar where he had left a pan of milk, he stood for awhile beside himself with amazement. At length he said, "Who has made this great blot of ink on the fine paper upon which I thought to write the brightest days of my life? Who has hung with mourning this newly white-washed house, where I thought to spend a happy life? How comes it that I find this touchstone, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... sententious phraseology instinctively, as men do when they are nervous, as well as when they justify the cynic's definition of the uses of speech. 'The signorina is, in my opinion, right. If she draws back, she publicly accepts the blot upon her name. I speak against my own feelings and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... This microscopic blot on the Duke's escutcheon, as well as other more commendable details of his life, were duly noted down by the zealous Mr. Eames who, in addition, had the good fortune to receive as a gift from his kindly but unassuming friend Count Caloveglia a quaint portrait of the prince, hitherto ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... seat,"—ever presenting the same aspect, the same order and disposition, through all the changes of this changing and mutable world. The scene was peculiarly inviting—so calm, so placid, the whole wide and visible hemisphere was without a blot. Nature, like a deceitful mistress, looked so hypocritically serene, that her face might never have been darkened with a cloud or furrowed by a frown. So winning was she withal, that, though the veriest shrew, and all untamed and ungovernable ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... unearthly noise!" he exclaimed vehemently. "The thing seems to be gloating; it's indecent! When I think of that call it will bring back the long portage and this ghostly river! I wish I'd never made the journey, or that I could blot the ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... men." From the text it would seem that the influence of the wives was not elevating and inspiring, and that the sin and misery resulting from their marriages, all attributed to the women. 'This condition of things so discouraged the Creator that he determined to blot out both man and beast, the fowls of the air and the creeping things on the earth. How very human this sounds. It shows what a low ideal the Jews had of the great first cause, from which the moral and material world of thought and action ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... just a pair of minutes longer. Now I see it all clearly; now I have a purpose in my life. It is to make you look upon me with r-respect,—with so much r-respect that you will for-rget that on one of those turned-over pages of my life there is a blot." ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... might or might not have had visions of an appointment to the Court of St. James at that time. It is at least certain that his disappointment was keen, taking a form of vindictiveness which will survive as a distinct blot upon his career. In the preconvention campaign he aligned himself with the Champ Clark forces, but it was too late to undo the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... can be little danger of sinking into barren formulae, into glib aesthetic prattle about Renascence, in a movement of which one expression is the purification of those plaguy, if picturesque, Closes, which are the foul blot upon the beautiful Athens of the North. Those sunless courts, entered by needles' eyes of apertures, congested with hellish, heaven-scaling barracks, reeking with refuse and evil odours, inhabited promiscuously by poverty and prostitution, worse ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... as promulgated by Calhoun and his followers and maintained by Jefferson Davis and the civil and military powers of the would-be Confederacy, and human slavery, a growth of the ages, fostered by avarice, and a blot on our civilization for two hundred and fifty years—were likewise overthrown or destroyed; and the integrity of the Union of the States and the majesty of the Constitution as a charter of organized liberty were vindicated, and the American Republic, full-orbed, was perpetuated, under one flag, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... they are great; and with all his services to them, and they are not small; is both an immoral and an unbelieving writer. Whereas, Sir Thomas Browne never wrote a single line, even in his greenest studies, that on his deathbed he desired to blot out. A purer, a humbler, a more devout and detached hand never put English pen to paper than was the hand of Sir Thomas Browne. And, if ever in his greener days he had a doubt about any truth of natural or of revealed religion, he tells us that ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... absolutely incapable of lending himself to any mean trick in order to remain in power. When Sir Gordon became acquainted with the demands of the League he refused absolutely to take a part in what he maintained would have been an everlasting blot on the reputation of ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... her two sons were living, such would be his name, and his age twenty-two years. This inclined Currado to think that Giannotto and Giusfredi were indeed one and the same; and it occurred to him, that, if so it were, he might at once shew himself most merciful and blot out his daughter's shame and his own by giving her to him in marriage; wherefore he sent for Giannotto privily, and questioned him in detail touching his past life. And finding by indubitable evidence that he was indeed Giusfredi, son of Arrighetto Capece, he ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... lack a little polish; and, lastly, that they are in reality no worse off than many other women in high life who are married to boors, to eccentric persons, or, alas! too often to those who, with many admirable virtues, may blot them all by the indulgence in a bosom sin or ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the night, In a halt of the hurrying flight, There came a Scribe of the King Wearing his signet ring, And said in a voice severe: "This is the first dark blot On thy name, George Castriot! Alas why art thou here, And the army of Amurath slain, And left on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... under the Great Ovens said, and still maintains, though cats have probably forgotten the facts, and so, when stroked, hump up their backs and purr as if these actions were a matter of pride instead of being a blot ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... reached us, and we may say more than a report, which makes it our duty to ask this question. Were those expenses paid out of the private pocket of the present Prime Minister? If so, we maintain that we have discovered a blot in that nobleman's character which it is our duty to the public to expose. We will go farther and say that if it be so,—if these expenses were paid out of the private pocket of the Duke of Omnium, it is not fit that that nobleman ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... turn And struggle? Sprang there from thy father's blood Thy little soul a11 lonely? Or the god That rules thee, is he other than our gods? Nay, yield thee to men's ways, and kiss their rods! How many, deem'st thou, of men good and wise Know their own home's blot, and avert their eyes? How many fathers, when a son has strayed And toiled beneath the Cyprian, bring him aid, Not chiding? And man's wisdom e'er hath been To keep what is not good to see, unseen! A straight and perfect life is not for man; ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... the payment of a tithe or tax upon them, may all the great gods whose names are commemorated, or whose arms are portrayed, or whose dwelling-places are represented, on this stone, curse him with an evil curse and blot ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... had been the key that turned in the lock of his heart and opened up to reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped out by ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... play and several fine dramatic compositions; but throughout Shelley's poetry the dramatic spirit is deficient, while in Browning's it reveals itself so powerfully that one wonders how he has escaped writing many good plays besides the "Blot on the Scutcheon" and that fine fragmentary succession ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... had we, chirruping in the chimney-tops, Twirling out a sooty broom, a blot against the blue. Ah, but when we called to him, and when he saw and ran to her, All our winter ended, and our ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... the genuineness, are the following arguments: The words have not only, as is conceded by Ewald, "a true old-Hebrew colouring," but in their emphatic and solemn brevity ("he shall be broken from [being] a people") they do not at all bear the character of an interpolation. If we blot them out, then the Prophet says less than from present circumstances, from ver. 4, where he calls the kings "ends of smoking firebrands," in opposition to ver. 6, and from the analogy of ver. 9, where the threatening is much more severe, he was bound to say. His saying merely ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... company with the gentleman who had introduced him, and was so impatient to see the corrections, that he stopped under the first gateway they came to, when to his utter astonishment and confusion, he saw that the dean had taken the pains to blot out every second line throughout the whole play, so carefully as ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of Africans ought to be left to the States—and the President. He thinks that as Cuba is the only spot in the civilized world where the African slave-trade is permitted, its cession to us would put an end to that blot on civilization. An end to it, indeed! Think of it!" His voice rose as he spoke. "End slavery and you end that accursed trade. And to think that a woman like Ann Penhallow should think it right!" Neither John nor Leila were willing to discuss ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... blot out the smaller shadow of the guard. Then both figures disappeared. A moment later a silhouette cut across the lines of the grille. Unoiled hinges screeched; the bars lifted. A rope uncoiled from above to fall at Rastignac's feet. He seized ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... poor town—when we reached it, along a road ploughed with fresh obus-holes, I didn't want to stop the motor; I wanted to hurry on and blot the picture from my memory! It was doubly sad to look at because of the fact that it wasn't quite dead; faint spasms of life still quivered through it. A few children played in the ravaged streets; a few pale mothers watched them from cellar doorways. "They oughtn't to be here," ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... The blot was now near enough for him to distinguish its outline. As Meta said, no one was visible. It was drifting. Against his wish his gaze fastened on the approaching boat. It hesitated, appeared to swing away, and then resumed ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a monster who could wish to blot this blessed doctrine out and rob earth's wretched children of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... who lit our morning star's pure light Will never blot it from the nation's sight; That He will banish those portentous clouds Which from so many its effulgence shrouds— Which none will deem me Hamlet-mad when I Say hang like banners on the darkened sky, Suggesting perils ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... longer hangs overhead, but rolls beneath us, while the eternal Reason from above permeates its gloom, and irradiates its depths. We now behold the reason, and absolutely rejoice in the contemplation, of that which once seemed like a dark blot on the world's design. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... at a point on the Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in defiance of Government and its troops. Now, forty-eight hours after these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a wound? Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's feeling? The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated. Redmond ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... soldier. I am a weak, loving woman. I love you with my whole heart and soul, and if you should not recover you will blot the sun out of my sky. I now know what you are to me. I knew it the moment I saw your unconscious face. Roger, I love you now with a love like your own—only it must be greater, stronger, deeper; I love you as a woman only can love. In mercy to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... as he paused, wondering which would be the wisest plan to pursue, there was a wave ready to rise up and completely blot out the faint daylight which ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... rising]. Ah! Well, Martha!—No, no, no, if you please! [He restrains her approach.] Observe the retribution of an unchastened will. You have never seen my face for sixteen years! However, like a cloud, I blot out your transgressions from ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... not go. I would not if I could. I wish to remember him as he lived, and one, glance at his dead face would blot ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... flaming sword came back to guard the gates of thought, and conscience still was king. He would do all that lay in his human power, with every moment and every muscle that he had, to fulfil the stern command of duty, and then if he should fail, it would be with no shame in his heart, no blot upon ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... not go further, it is not right to paint too faithfully the features of the very aged, which are repellent in spite of themselves; I mean, they cannot help their faces, their sentiments and actions are another matter; therefore I will leave Father Iden's face as a dim blot on the mirror; you look in it and it ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' Shakspeare ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... stealthily drew nearer the dark blot against the background. When they were within twenty feet they saw it was not a cabin, but one end of a long, narrow, shed-like structure, perhaps twenty feet wide and running far back into the darkness. They approached it cautiously and began feeling carefully along the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... so pure, that he was never accused of any vice, to leave a blot on his memory. His noble sentiments respecting religious toleration did not, indeed, accord with the sentiments of the age in which he lived, and exposed him to trouble; but at the present time they are almost universally embraced. His exertions to promote the civil prosperity ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... and sounds and odors blended in the influence which Jeff's spirit felt more and more. He realized that he was a blot on the loveliness of the morning. He had a longing to make atonement and to win forgiveness. His heart was humbled toward Cynthia, and he went wondering how his mother would make it out with her, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... glowing ashes—there he seemed to see in ruins the whole fabric of his dreams—but if there was a law which brought thoughts back, and back again at the same hour each day, then Moravia was right: he must blot out the old pictures and conjure up new ones—but what ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... the face? How, without falsehood, to disentangle his relations with Missy? How to get out of the inconsistency of considering the private holding of land unjust and keeping his inheritance? How to blot out his sin against Katiousha? "I cannot abandon the woman whom I have loved and content myself with paying money to the lawyer to save her from penal servitude, which she does not even deserve." To blot out the sin, as he did then, when he thought that he was ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... proper fear lest they should be secretly accused of ostentation by other parents, Samuel and Constance did not go near that map. For the rest, they had lived with it for weeks, and Samuel (who, after all, was determined not to be dirt under his son's feet) had scratched a blot from it with a completeness that ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... are stronger in their hearts than the laws of their cruel and perfidious Church. No consideration, not even the fear of eternal damnation, can persuade them to declare to a sinful man sins which God alone has the right to know, for He alone can blot them out with the blood of His Son shed ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... for a little to look at Lord Mark's conviction as if it were a blot on the face of nature. "Do you mean because you had appeared to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... swiftness was a serious detriment since the direction taken was usually wrong. Porter acted on impulses, and they seemed destined forever to be senseless. A swift inspiration came to him, he made a slash with his heavily inked pen, there was a blot, a figure with heavy lines drawn crookedly through it, an exclamation of despair—and then the blank look. The vacant expression seemed to be behind all his woes, and an empty mind was undoubtedly ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... thermometer spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... gather, and any doubt that Belgium would have gone hungry if she had not received provisions from the outside was dispelled. Whenever I think of a bread-line again I shall see the faces of a Belgian bread-line. They blot out the memory of those at home, where men are free to go and come; where war has not robbed the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... is in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the tramps, or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities, rough, slovenly, has slumbering within the rags possibilities which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and ugly scar, had he only been fortunate enough early in life to have enjoyed the benefits of efficient and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... from my secret stand Dost note the follies of each mortal here, Oh, if Eliza's steps employ thy hand, Blot the sad legend with a mortal tear. Nor when she errs, through passion's wild extreme, Mark then her course, nor heed each trifling wrong; Nor, when her sad attachment is her theme, Note down the transports of her erring tongue. But, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... my father's menials had worn. I had been begging my bread from Robert Beaufort's lackey! I said nothing; the man went on his business on tiptoe, that the mud might not splash above the soles of his shoes. Then, thoughts so black that they seemed to blot out every star from the sky—thoughts I had often wrestled against, but to which I now gave myself up with a sort of mad joy—seized me: and I remembered you. I had still preserved the address you gave me; I went straight ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that in us that time can never tame; And life will always seem a careless game; And they'd better far forget— Those who say they love us yet— Forget, blot out ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... standing and State influence shall so pronounce, this hideous blot upon the national escutcheon will disappear. It is manly and necessary to protest when wronged. But a subject class or race does but little for their amelioration when content with its denouncement. Injustice can be more ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... as they conversed with all the ease of cordial and guileless friendship, how did Valerie rejoice in secret that upon that friendship there rested no blot of shame! and that she had not forfeited those consolations for a home without love, which had at last settled into cheerful nor unhallowed resignation,—consolations only to be found in ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to pour out my inward lamentations, I could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling from the roll ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... which ended in the destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan court which led to the only blot on Nelson's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... his eyes and ears open. It is not the first time he has shown his devotion to our cause. You say he has not signed it; true he has not written his name, not even the initials, yet his signature is upon the sheet,—the insignificant ink-blot. It would not be accepted as testimony in a court-martial, but it is sufficient for ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... of an Indian-summer landscape compared with the beauty of budding summer in that face? But he answered her in the same quiet way in which she had spoken: "Yes, it's hard to have faith that winter can sweep over all this and not blot it ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... you!' shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword in an outburst of rage. 'But,' he continued, with cold disdain, 'if I searched your whole being with this blade, should I find there any sentiment to blot out, anything with which to satisfy my thirst for vengeance? You are nothing! If you were a man or a woman, I would ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... Christian Indians was utterly abhorrent, and will ever be a subject of just reproach and condemnation; and at first sight it seems incredible that the perpetrators of so vile a deed should have gone unpunished and almost unblamed. It is a dark blot on the character of a people that otherwise had many fine and manly qualities to its credit. But the extraordinary conditions of life on the frontier must be kept in mind before passing too severe a judgment. In the turmoil of the harassing and long-continued Indian war, and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... delinquents whom we can denominate by no other title than that of homicides, while the simple affirmation of others has been admitted (in default of testimony) who are themselves the authors of the deed, for which they stand in judgment. The indiscriminate system of accepting bail is a blot on our criminal legislation, and is one great reason why so many violators of the law avoid its penalties. To this doubtless must be ascribed the non-interference of the Attorney General. The law of habeas ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven May scatter thy delusions, and the blot Upon my fame vanish in idle thought, Even as flame dies in the envious air, And as the flow'ret wanes at morning frost, And thou shouldst never—But alas! to whom Do I still speak?—Did not a man but now Stand here before ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines, and make the notes run into each other; and when I try to blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which, turned into sound by good father Louis the Dominican, will tell you, if you can only hear it aright, what is not to be told in any human speech; not ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... home," continued Katherine, "and tackle the housekeeping the way I used to go at my lessons. I'm going to make that old shack that was always a blot on the landscape such a marvel of beauty that it won't know itself. I'm going to begin right there to seek beauty and give service and pursue knowledge and be trustworthy and glorify work, and above all, I'm going ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... thole the wind and rain, Or wander friendless far frae hame; Cheer, cheer your heart, some other swain Will soon blot out ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... write what is worthy to be read more than once, blot frequently: and take no-pains to make the multitude admire you, content with a few [judicious] readers. What, would you be such a fool as to be ambitious that your verses should be taught in petty schools? That is not my case. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... bound to come sooner or later. What alone could have stopped it would have been England's stepping out of the conspiracy. That she did not do so, in fact became its really directing power, will forever remain a blot ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... loudest in its praise are now loudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite! What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this Expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... kisses you, takes from you a spark of life and gives you none in return; you exhaust yourself on fantoms; wherever falls a drop of our sweat, there springs up one of those sinister weeds that grow in graveyards. Die! You are the enemy of all, who love; blot yourself from the face of the earth, do not wait for old age; do not leave a child behind you, do not fecundate a drop of your corrupted blood; vanish as does the smoke, do not deprive a single blade of living grass of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... us by the way, and smote the hindmost of us, even all that were feeble, when we were faint and weary; and it had been said to our fathers that when we had rest from our enemies round about us, we were to blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven—"Thou shalt not forget it" was the word delivered to us. I had the record of the battle in Rephidim when Joshua discomfited Amalek, not in his own strength, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... eyes swept the range of vision. Out of an orchard into the stubble of a wheat-field broke a panicky mass; a score or more of men who had lost their officer and their heads presumably. They were the nail under the hammer, a brown blot, a target. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... you may find it advantageous to make preliminary outlines of what you wish to say. But above all, you must be willing to blot, to revise, to take infinite pains. You should remember the old admonition that easy ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the same whom, after having utterly defeated at the lake Regillus, they kept in peaceable subjection for one hundred years; that the place being distinguished by the memory of their defeat, would rather stimulate them to blot out the remembrance of their disgrace, than raise a fear that any land should be unfavourable to their success. Were even the Gauls themselves presented to them in that place, that they would fight just as ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... of Christ and his apostles in all its perfections, and as long as infidels stop short of the New Testament itself, and short of Christ and his apostles, in their warfare, we may well believe that all their efforts to blot out Christianity will be vain. Protestants themselves have demurred as much as infidels against the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, and fully as much against the errors of each other as denominations. "Truth stands true to her God, ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... an instant. It was too late. The water circled us about and was running toward the coast at tremendous speed. No, it did not run, it glided, crept, spread like an immense, limitless blot. The water was barely a few centimeters deep, but the rising flood had gone so far that we no longer saw the vanishing ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is what I would say:—"Upon my country do not visit my sins. Upon my country's fame let me fasten no blot. Wherever I am wrong, inelegant, inaccurate, provincial, visit all your reprobation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... you shall not touch it," cried Yolanda, snatching the parchment from the countess and holding it behind her. "If I would let you, you could not make the alteration; see, your hand trembles! You would blot the parchment and spoil all this fine plan of mine. Give me the quill, mother! ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Fredrikstad, soon followed by a severe mauling at Bothaville, from which he broke out as a fugitive, he placidly and confidently trekked southwards unopposed for 150 miles, magnetically attracting to himself a force sufficient to blot out Dewetsdorp in the presence of a bewildered enemy, who, though in overwhelming numbers, was feebly strung out in lengths without breadth. The British Army had still to learn, not only in the Free State, but also ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... been many times invaded, the Welsh have never been conquered. Powerful tribes, like the Romans, Saxons and Normans, have tried to overwhelm them. Even when English and German kings attempted to crush their spirit and blot out their language and literature, the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... at the motionless figure lying in its shrouding black like an ineffaceable blot on the office floor, then at the securities showing above the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... out, bought supplies, saddled his horse, and slipped into the wilderness. He was still writhing with self- contempt. There was a futile longing in his soul for oblivion to blot out ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... with royal names, till at last she stopped short, and covering one medallion with her finger, she said, "Pass over that, dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great uncle John's: what could he expect by marrying into that family, where, you know, all the men were not sans peur, and none of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... taken that the ink lies between the points only and not on the outside, for in the latter case the ink will flow down too freely and make a broad, ragged line, perhaps getting on the edge of the square blade or triangle, and causing a blot of ink on ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... lacking; the energy necessary for the companion of a man whose career destines him to the storms of political life; she is clever and perceptive. If your lives are united she will be happier than her mother. By acquiring the right to continue my work at Clochegourde you will blot out the faults I have not sufficiently expiated, though they are pardoned in heaven and also on earth, for he is generous and will forgive me. You see I am ever selfish; is it not the proof of a despotic love? I wish you to still ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... roll of bills in her hand, kissed her and was gone, and Anna turned her tottering steps homeward, sick at heart. She must tell her mother, and the shock of it might kill her. She pressed her hands over her burning eyes to blot out the hideous picture. Could cruel fate offer bitterer dregs ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... lgue chacun d'eux cent mille francs.'' The paper upon which the will was written was folded up before the ink was dry, and therefore many of the letters were blotted. The legatees asserted that the apostrophe was a blot, and therefore claimed two instead of one hundred ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... score-play competitions. If the hole is guarded by a bunker, and you have reason to fear that you cannot carry that bunker, it is in these circumstances a thousand times better to play short than to take the risk of putting your ball into it and making a serious blot upon your card. Similarly, when on the putting green, and there is a long distance between your ball and the hole, bring your mind to realise that it is really of less importance that you should hole out in one stroke than that you should ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... the weird waking nightmare that I had suffered after her visit. The horror of the night could not endure the strong sun and wind of the March morning that followed. Like Scrooge, I analyzed my ghost as a bit of undigested beef or a blot of mustard. Certainly the thing had been actual enough while it lasted, but my reason had thrust it away. That was over, I reflected, as I laid the braid back in the drawer. But surely the lady was not vanished ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of popes and bishops in our day is just the same. They are not satisfied with having excommunicated us again and again, and with having shed our blood, but they wish to blot out our memory from the land of the living, according to the description in the Psalm, "Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof," Ps 137, 7. Such hatred is not human but satanic. For all human hatred becomes mellow ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... to find expression. She was paralysed by the memory of the recent interview she had had with her employers—the great financial head of her house included—wherein she had learned all that the coming war meant personally to herself. She would have given worlds at that moment to have been able to blot out that memory. But she had no power to do so. It loomed almost tragically in its significance in ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... of these convictions was a profound religious faith. No one of the early American statesmen, for instance, has left on record a more clear and just statement of his views of slavery;—that foul blot on the escutcheon of the republic was ever before the eyes and conscience of Jay; he sought not to evade, but to make apparent its inevitable present shame and future consequences, and argued for a prospective abolition clause ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... blot, defacement, disgrace, injury, spot, blur, defect, dishonor, reproach, stain, brand, deformity, fault, smirch, stigma, crack, dent, flaw, soil, taint, daub, disfigurement, imperfection, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... hired mountaineers to dig into the little hill that the old man pointed out, on which there was, however, no sign of a grave, and, at last, they uncovered the skeleton of an old gentleman in a wig and peruke! There was little doubt now that the boy, no matter what the blot on his 'scutcheon, was of his own flesh and blood, and the Major was tempted to go back at once for him, but it was a long way, and he was ill and anxious to get back home. So he took the Wilderness Road for the Bluegrass, and wrote old Joel the facts ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... a domestic institution was another blot, and slaves could be treated with the grossest cruelty and injustice without redress. But here the Romans were not sinners beyond all other nations, and our modern ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... all who would be thought heroic poets, but I think it touches Virgil less than any; he is too great a master of his art to make a blot which may so easily be hit. Similitudes (as I have said) are not for tragedy, which is all violent, and where the passions are in a perpetual ferment; for there they deaden, where they should animate; they ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... if in future years One wretch should turn and fly, Let weeping Fame Blot out his name From Freedom's hallowed sky; Or should our sons e'er prove A coward, traitor race,— Just heaven! frown In thunder down, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... of the flag of France, not quite so white as in time of peace since thousands of her sons had taken it in their hands and pressed it to their lips before they went forward to die for it, yet without stain, since in all the record of the war there is no blot on the escutcheon of France. And the blue of the flag of France, true blue, torn and tattered with the marks of the bullets and the shrapnel, yet unfurling proudly in the breeze whilst the very holes were patched by the blue of the ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... first considerable landscape, a tract of moorland on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. This was his native ground. At Sowerby Bridge, a manufacturing town, which, like many others in the same part of England, makes a blot of ugliness on country in itself sternly beautiful, his father had settled as the manager of certain rope-works. Mr. Mallard's state was not unprosperous, for he had invented a process put in use by his employers, and derived benefit from ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... and water, which produced a black syrup similar in appearance to the original medicine, but minus the bad taste and the stigma of "patent medicine," a thing which the Winnebagos had promised their Guardian they would not take. As this was deceiving her aunt she felt obliged to put a blot on her head 'scutcheon, in the form of a black record, but she was so inwardly amused at it that her appetite improved of its own accord, and Aunt Phoebe remarked in a gratified way that she had never known the equal of Mullin's Modifier as ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey |
