"Smirch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greedy, desperate and powerful, would dare approach that man with an improper proposal—and you quite forgot in real affairs the crude improper proposal is never the method of approach. When Davy, with grave emotion, referred to the "pitiful efforts to smirch the personal character of candidates," you could not but burn with scorn of the Victor Dorn tactics. What if Hull did own gas and water and ice and traction and railway stocks? Mustn't a rich man invest his money somehow? And how could he more creditably invest it than ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... dwell Very high; And with glorious go I swing to and fro; I swing swift or slow, I swing as I please, With summons or knell; I swing at my ease, Said the Bell: Not the tallest of men Can reach up to touch me, To smirch me or smutch me, Or make me do what I would not be at! And, then, The weather can't cause me to shrink or increase: I chose to be made in ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... yearning eyes, smiling in his grim way to himself when there was no chance of being seen as he felt again the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyes which held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years in those silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow to smirch its purity. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... that on the floor beside his chair lay the life or death of yet another man; that by taking this confession he had taken into his own hands the fate of the vagabond lying under sentence of death; that he could not give him back his life without incurring the smirch of this disgrace, without even endangering himself. If he let this confession reach the authorities, he could never escape the gravest suspicion that he had known of the whole affair during these two months. He would have to attend the inquest, be recognised ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
