"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incendiaries whose very writings, like the heresies of old, must be consigned to the flames; impracticable enthusiasts, seditious citizens. But lo! the flame of war passed over us and their dream is true; and in the clearer light which shines upon us to-day, we can hardly realize that this great blot upon our civilization could have existed, the time ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the Parganiotes that the indemnity allowed them was irrevocably fixed at 150,000! The transaction is a disgrace to the egotistical and venal nation which thus allowed the life and liberty of a people to be trifled with, a lasting blot on the honour ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... detail rather than grandeur of impression, that it is almost impossible for him to conceive of the great last step in art, by which both become compatible. He has so often to dash the delicacy out of the pupil's work, and to blot the details from his encumbered canvas; so frequently to lament the loss of breadth and unity, and so seldom to reprehend the imperfection of minutiae, that he necessarily looks upon complete parts as the very sign of error, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... PRESS did not exist. No book, pamphlet, or almanac could be printed without permission. In 1685, when a printer in Philadelphia printed something in his almanac which displeased the Council, he was forced to blot it out. Another Philadelphia printer, Bradford, offended the Quakers by putting into his almanac something "too light and airy for one that is a Christian," whereupon the almanac was suppressed; and for later ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... and face the day, and face each succeeding day, realizing that "the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, nor all your tears shall blot a line ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... had to misquote: "Come unto these SILVER sands." It glittered white in a great horse-shoe round the bay, and the bed of the Salt Lake (which is really an overflow from the sea) was a barren patch of this silver-sand, with here and there a dead mule or a sniper's body lying out, a little black blot, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... Heminge and Condell were in Shakespeare's autograph we can neither affirm nor deny, but it is well to be cautious in accepting at its face value the implication contained in their words that they had "scarce received from him a blot ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... their honeymoon—that is to say, the month after their wedding—from which from tradition Levin expected so much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... for Chloe was so deeply rooted in her breast, that even a declaration of love from Sempronius could not blot it one moment from her heart; and on his speaking the words 'false Chloe,' she burst into tears, and said, 'Is it possible that Chloe should act such a part towards her Caelia! You must forgive her, Sempronius: it was her violent ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... no more. Substitute Nature, or even Humanity, for God, and the eternal standard of truth and holiness and goodness being superseded, every moral sentiment will be blighted and obscured. Conscience has a relation to God similar to that which a chronometer bears to the sun. Blot the sun from the sky, and the chronometer is useless; deny God, and conscience is powerless. And the vices which, if not subdued, were yet curbed and restrained by the overawing sense of an unseen omnipresent Power, will ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Meeting her look, the emotion that was the surface stir of shaken depths swept his face. Then, as though to blot out the recollection, she pressed her ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... over where she now paused, Sara was plainly visible to the uncanny figure on its perch. On the contrary, as Amarna sat well in the shadow, her face still hidden behind her veil, she greatly resembled a huge black blot. "You are not the only child in your father's house," continued the high voice. "You have a sister who is your very counterpart. Both saw the light on the same day, March ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the King performing ceremonies and accomplishing sacrifices. Then the darkness closed again. And the fragmentary and short vision seemed to Mrs. Armine like the vision of her little life as a beautiful woman, and the coming of the darkness to blot it out like the coming of the darkness of death to cover her for ever ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the kitchen to the inexorable tasks that death has no power, even for a day, to blot from existence. He can stalk through dwelling after dwelling, leaving despair and desolation behind him, but the table must be laid, the dishes washed, the beds made, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Buckinghamshire. He built Buckingham House, where is now the palace, and there his wife, who was a left-handed descendant of the Stuart king, used to sit dressed in weeds on the anniversary of Charles the First's execution, and thus call attention to the royal blot upon her escutcheon. In the choir aisle another ugly memorial perpetuates her want of taste and the {98} forgotten fame of her pet doctor, one Chamberlain. Near his is a tablet to her other medical friend, the ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... division, which had been imported into the colony, began to spring forth, and, as if brought to a warmer and more fertile soil, to grow so rank as to promise little peace and happiness to the young settlement. No common dangers or difficulties could blot out of their memories the prejudices and animosities contracted in England: the odious terms of distinction were revived and propagated among the people, and while one party were attached to the church of England, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... meant less to him than her mother's dressmaking; and as she sat alone in her room on that afternoon, having gently and firmly sent Mary down to tea with the ominous message that she cared for none, she saw that the shadow between her and Jack loomed close upon them now, the shadow that would blot out all their future, as a future together. And Imogen was frightened, badly frightened, at the prospect ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the saddle, his lips moving with relish, his eyes glued on the minister; the doctrine was clearly to his mind. Charles Stewart, on the other hand, was half-asleep, and looked harassed and pale. As for Simon Fraser, he appeared like a blot, and almost a scandal, in the midst of that attentive congregation, digging his hands in his pockets, shifting his legs, clearing his throat, rolling up his bald eyebrows and shooting out his eyes to right and left, now with a yawn, now with a secret smile. At times too, he would take the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gasped Judy. The strong colors of the red and green made almost a blot upon Hilda's fairness. Her father, who was accompanying her to ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... We gave the bottle a black eye, i.e. drank it almost up. He cannot say black is the white of my eye; he cannot point out a blot in my character. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the long infamy of the State. It is endurable, the having of such a blot as Delaware in our history, when it has once been the home of such a man. I remember well the just pride with which he told me, that after that sale, pro-slavery as Wilmington was, he could have a discount ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... trace him by," said Larry. He looked at the envelope again and saw that there was a small ink blot on the lower left-hand corner, and that the corner where the stamp was affixed was smeared as if ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... that no place could be found to barter to a foreign power but the very birthplace of the champion of Italy's liberty; and the best friend of this fair country cannot but acknowledge this act on the part of Victor Emmanuel to have been unjust to her devoted people, and a blot on her ancient honour and glory; but at the same time, France will share in the condemnation of the world, for exacting so great and unnatural a sacrifice. It is equally iniquitous for a sovereign to barter away the birthright ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... caprice come from? Am I finding fault with your dress? Why, isn't it a dress?—and anybody will say it's a dress. But it isn't becoming to you; it's absolutely not the right thing for your style of beauty—blot out my soul if I lie. For you a gold one would be little enough; let's have one embroidered with seed-pearls. Ah! there you smile, my jewel! You see, I know what I'm ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... candles, multiplied by the mirrors around the walls and the gleams from the gilded furniture? And what—merciful God, what!—was that foul thing hanging from the central chandelier?—hanging there while its shadow, thrown upward past the glass pendants, wavered in a black blot that seemed to expand and contract ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... convinced were strong. Had he insisted on the liberation of Huss, the danger was imminent that the council, for which he had labored so earnestly, would be broken up on the plea that its rightful freedom was denied it. He did not choose to run this risk, preferring to leave an everlasting blot ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... white, or I should go mad! Here is my commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of Letters, Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one of them. I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a careless entry in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this room—is there a chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at me. Am I dusty? am I dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I not? Mind! I take no credit ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... came the sound of racing footsteps, something passed her like a flash, and the white spray flew up in a dense cloud as a tall figure hurled itself headlong into the sea. For an instant Cara could distinguish nothing but a dark blot and the blur of flying spume as it spattered against her face. Then, with a shaking cry of utter thankfulness, she saw Eliot Coventry come striding out from amid the maelstrom of surging waters, bearing Ann's unconscious form in ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the facts as they stand, there is no more pathetic figure in all the history of Spain than this poor, mistreated Juana la Loca, "the mad Juana," and to every diligent student of Spanish history this instance of woman's inhumanity to woman will ever be a blot on the scutcheon of the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... document attentively for a moment. "Yes, sir, that is Mr. Mainwaring's writing, only a bit unsteady, for his hand trembled. McPherson's writing I know, and you mark that blot after his name? I remember his fussing that night because he had blotted ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... motherless daughters. They have no protector but myself. I would rather kill them than leave them in this sinful world if you could blot out from it all the teachings of ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... the cotter so simple and narrow as this? Ah, well, It is hardly so narrow as yours who daub and plaster with dyes The shining mirrors of heaven, the shadowy mirrors of hell, And blot out the dark deep vision, if it seem to be ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... tear up; overturn, overthrow, overwhelm; upset, subvert, put an end to; seal the doom of, do in, do for, dish*, undo; break up, cut up; break down, cut down, pull down, mow down, blow down, beat down; suppress, quash, put down, do a job on; cut short, take off, blot out; dispel, dissipate, dissolve; consume. smash, crash, quell, squash, squelch, crumple up, shatter, shiver; batter to pieces, tear to pieces, crush to pieces, cut to pieces, shake to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces; laniate[obs3]; nip; tear to rags, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Though late repenting him of Man deprav'd, Griev'd at his heart, when looking down he saw The whole Earth fill'd with violence, and all flesh Corrupting each thir way; yet those remoov'd, Such grace shall one just Man find in his sight, That he relents, not to blot out mankind, And makes a Covenant never to destroy The Earth again by flood, nor let the Sea Surpass his bounds, nor Rain to drown the World 890 With Man therein or Beast; but when he brings Over the Earth a Cloud, will therein set His triple-colour'd Bow, whereon to look And ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... seemed to have been blown up into the air with a most terrific noise, while a dense mass of smoke, steam, and ashes was hurled upwards, and seemed to blot out the sky. Twilight, which had been deepening, was converted into blackest night in a moment, and darkness profound would undoubtedly have continued, had it not been for the lurid glare of the fires ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... press, clerical robes and the pro- [1] hibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of the world,—all unmitigated systems of crime; and it requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes. [5] It was the Southern pulpit and press that influenced the people to wrench from man both human and divine rights, in order to subserve the interests of wealth, religious caste, civil and political power. And the pulpit had to be ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... from their stolid elders, and here and there jackets carried the mark of a snowball. Behind the procession a trampled grey line stretched out under the moonlight. Then all passed like some dim, magic pageant of a dream; the distant dark blot of naked woodlands swallowed them up, and the voices grew faint and ceased. Only the endless song of the river sounded, with a new note struck into it by the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Vaines, and of D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Helvetius. The third class is of a social nature exclusively, good breeding and good tone being the essentials; its conspicuous features were the dinners and suppers of Suard, Saurin, the Abbes Raynal and Morellet, of the Palais-Royal of Mme. de Blot, of the Temple of the Prince of Conti, those of Mme. de Beauvau, Mme. de Gramont, M. de La Popeliniere, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... depths profound.' What made the charm of the narrow prospect was, first, the sense it produced in the spectator of hanging dizzily above the lake, with infinite air below him, and, then, the magical effects of dawn and evening, when wreaths of mist would blot out the valley and the lake, and leave the eye of the watcher face to face across the fathomless abyss with the majestic mountain mass, and its attendant retinue of clouds, as though they and he were alone ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seen. He allowed a full hour to pass, and then drawing out the glass, applied it to his eye, sweeping the horizon carefully from dead ahead round to windward. He had not to seek far, for when the tube of the telescope pointed to within about three points of the starboard bow a small dark blot swept into the field of view. Yes, there it was, quite unmistakably this time, and a single moment's observation of it satisfied the anxious watcher that he saw before him the royals and topgallant-sails of a vessel apparently ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... deeply on hearing of the continual levies for the war, and shed tears on receiving the long lists of dead and wounded from the Low Countries. One day, having to sign certain papers relative to the army, her tears were seen to blot the paper, as she exclaimed, "Great God! when will this horrible effusion of blood cease?" The Tories, who, like herself, wished for peace with all their hearts, adroitly fostered her grief. With her, they deplored the butchery of Malplaquet, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... had done what he flattered himself was rather a clever thing. He had made up a second packet of papers identical in outside appearance with the first. The inscription, the blue envelope, the red elastic band, and even a blot in the lower left-hand corner had been exactly reproduced. Inside, of course, were only sheets of blank paper. It was his intention to change the packets and to let Garvey see him put the sham one into the bag. In case of violence the bag ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... performed prodigies of valour. The combined armies of France and Piedmont recoiled from their shock. Their invaders were almost invariably overthrown, sometimes even annihilated; and their sovereigns, the Dukes of Savoy, on whose memory there rests the indelible blot of having pursued this loyal, industrious, and virtuous people with ceaseless and incredible injustice, cruelty, treachery, and perfidy, finding that they could not subdue them, were glad to offer them ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... reader take up any poem, pen in hand, for the purpose of discovering how many words he can strike out of it that give him no requisite ideas, no relevant ones that he cares for, and no reasons for the rhyme beyond its necessity, and he will see what blot and havoc he will make in many an admired production of its day,—what marks of its inevitable fate. Bulky authors in particular, however safe they may think themselves, would do well to consider what parts of their cargo they might dispense with in their proposed voyage down the gulfs ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she was the same good comrade, cool and quick. But as before a change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so Shelton was affected by the inner change in her. He had made a blot upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was left a mark, and it was ineffaceable. Antonia belonged to the most civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose creed is "Let us love and hate, let us work and marry, but let us never give ourselves ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... after he had scanned it, "so I was not mistaken after all! The mystery is deeper than I thought. By Jove! that fellow, Joseph Blot, alias Weirmarsh, alias Detmold, Ponting and half a dozen other names, no doubt, is playing a deep game—a ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... slavery. In a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, will be read ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... battery for his words, the black eyes of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew together black and sharp to a little blot at his feet. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... generation before them, then will they in turn have no reverence for their fathers. Let them be taught that the sins of their ancestors involve their own honour so little that they need not take any trouble to clear the blot off the scutcheon, but may safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, 'Very likely it is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what matter?'—Then those young people are being bred up in a habit of mind which contains in itself all the capabilities of degradation and slavery, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... the expenses of their conquest in the prisoners taken in battle, who were sold to the slave merchants; and this is the real blot on Caesar's career. But the blot was not personally upon Caesar, but upon the age in which he lived. The great Pomponius Atticus himself was a dealer in human chattels. That prisoners of war should be sold as slaves was the law of the time, accepted alike by victors ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... concerning it. There the sands are numbered, and the plants and trees, and their leaves, and the birds, and everything animate; there is thy history, and mine, and all of little and great and good and bad that shall befall us in this life. Death does not blot out the records. Everlastingly writ, they shall be everlastingly read—for the shame of some, for the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... tempestuous rain. A rook, blown impotently backwards, essayed slowly to cross towards the western trees. Her eyes followed him until a great gust blew him in a wider curve, backwards and up, and when again he steadied himself he was no more than a blot on the wet greyness ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she has such a—There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of 'darling,' and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper!... You'd better mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in it ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to my soul for ever she returns; Or rather Lethe could not blot her thence, Such as she was when first she struck my sense, In that bright blushing age when beauty burns: So still I see her, bashful as she turns Retired into herself, as from offence: I cry—"'Tis she! she still has life and sense: Oh, speak to me, my love!"—Sometimes ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Charteris, 'but I'm very glad to hear it. For hist! I have a ger-rudge against the person. Beneath my ban that mystic man shall suffer, coute que coute, Matilda. He sat upon me—publicly, and the resultant blot on my scutcheon can only be wiped out with blood, or broken rules,' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth—closing my eyes in a futile attempt to blot out ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... "The government of the English is such as Pharaoh himself never used the like; for they content not themselves with all temporal prosperity, but by cruelty desire our blood and perpetual destruction to blot out the whole remembrance of our posterity—for that Nero, in his time, was far inferior ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature; and he himself, with his rationality and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident—a blot of black upon a ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... papa. You are always giving me money. These two bright, new quarters you gave me when you looked over my writing-book, and saw it hadn't a blot. How much is there in all?" ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... varies the character of the range, exposed to every vicissitude of temperature and climate. White billows of fog beat upon the mountain tops like a silent sea, and blot out the landscape with an impenetrable veil. Thunder echoes through the rocky caves with incessant reverberations, and rain settles down in a drenching flood. The chill of the wooden Hotel penetrates to the bone; enthusiasm wanes below zero, and even scorching ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... fault or your virtue, Eusebius, that you positively love these errors of human nature? You ever say, you have no sympathy with or for a perfect monster—if such there be—which you deny, and aver that if you detect not the blot, it is but too well covered; and by that very covering, for aught you know to the contrary, may be all blot. You would have catalogued this good lady among your "right estimable and lovely women!" and if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; And worse than all, and most to be deplored, As human nature's broadest, foulest blot, Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart, Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush And hang his head, to ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... pronounced against him in Scotland; that the Divine vengeance will never depart from him or his house until repentance has ensued, and atonement been made in their own race; that his name will remain a blot—a blot of blood, a stain never to be effaced—a thing to be pronounced with a curse by all posterity; and that none proceeding from his loins shall ever enjoy ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... could be effaced by after-happiness, the remainder of this day would have amply sufficed to blot out the past week. Never did Cecil feel more glad than when his mother kissed him, called him her own darling boy, and at his request forgave Jessie's escapade, and gave her and Frances a week's holiday, that he might have as much of their company as he ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... now, first let us have your speech. You see these quadrupeds, your brothers; Comparing, then, yourself with others, Are you well satisfied?" "And wherefore not?" Says Jock. "Haven't I four trotters with the rest? Is not my visage comely as the best? But this my brother Bruin, is a blot On thy creation fair; And sooner than be painted I'd be shot, Were I, great sire, a bear." The bear approaching, doth he make complaint? Not he;—himself he lauds without restraint. The elephant he needs must criticise; ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... hesitation, the men forthwith proceeded to muffle their oars with portions of their clothing; and in another five minutes we were heading for the small, dark blot. When we had been pulling silently for about a quarter of an hour, a small, thin sound came creeping across the water to us, that within another five minutes had resolved itself into the strains of the Marseillaise played upon an accordion and sung by ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... leads to the path of life: it 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 of ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... were my right, hiding the secret of my treachery as long as I could. But how long would that be? How could I be sure that the theft of the treaty had not already been discovered, and that the avalanche of ruin was not on its way to blot us for ever ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... he cried, "here at least we have a foe whom we may conquer. Thou and I, Meriamun, my sister and my queen, are set as far each from each as the sky is set from the temple top, and little of love is there between us. Yet I will wipe away this blot upon thy honour, which also is a blot upon my own. Sleepless shall this Wanderer lie to-night, and sorry shall he go to-morrow, but to-morrow night he ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... any reason why a man should have any license to drag his thoughts through the mud and filth any more than a woman? Is there any sex in principle? Isn't a stain a blot upon a boy's character just as bad as upon a girl's? If purity is so refining and elevating for one sex, why should it not ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Irrevocable faults, and coming fate— Too late the last to shun—the first to mend— To count the hours that struggle to thine end, With not a friend to animate and tell To other ears that Death became thee well; Around thee foes to forge the ready lie, And blot Life's latest scene with calumny; Before thee tortures, which the Soul can dare, 1400 Yet doubts how well the shrinking flesh may bear; But deeply feels a single cry would shame, To Valour's praise thy last and dearest claim; The life thou leav'st below, denied above By kind monopolists ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... valet was waiting outside the door, so I flew to my table and began to write. My hand trembled so I made a blot, and had to tear that sheet up; then I wrote another. Just a little word. I was frightened; I couldn't say loving things in a letter; I had not even ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... is the massacre of the 270 wild bison for their heads and robes, already noted. The second blot is the equally savage slaughter in the early winter of 1911, by some of the people of Gardiner, reinforced by so-called sportsmen from other parts of the state, of all the park elk they could kill,—bulls, cows and calves,—because a large band wandered ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Monsieur the Viscount's attention quickened into eagerness, an eagerness deepened by the tender interest that always hangs round the names of those whom we have known in happier and younger days. The happy memories recalled by hearing of his old tutor seemed to blot out his present misfortunes. With French excitability, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... him. The conversation turned to the Jewish question and to the growth of the anti-Semitic movement in Vienna, the hometown of both Herzl and Beer. It was useless for the Jew to turn artist and to dissociate himself from money, said Herzl. "The blot sticks. We can't break away from the ghetto." A great excitement seized Herzl, and he left the atelier, and on the way home the inspiration came on him like a hammerblow. What was it? The complete outline of a play, "like a block ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... unworthy though I be, I have a great word for my fellow men this day—a word the unfallen angels could not speak. Oh, my brethren, believe me, I have not been leading a double life. I took the eldership at your hands, I know, saying nothing of the dark blot that soiled the past. My humble hope was that in service I might seek to redeem my life and I remembered One who said to a guilty soul like mine:—'Feed My sheep.' Penitence, and not remorse, I thought, was well ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... social importance outweigh all others; and these two questions most emphatically come in the category of those which affect in the most far-reaching way the home life of the Nation. The horrors incident to the employment of young children in factories or at work anywhere are a blot on our civilization. It is true that each. State must ultimately settle the question in its own way; but a thorough official investigation of the matter, with the results published broadcast, would greatly help toward arousing the public conscience and securing unity ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... He 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 in their warlike shape, Which Heavenly Father grant ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... dining-room overlooking Waterloo Street was, as far as I can remember, taken up by private suites. The palm court was built on the roof of the first floor and was a very great improvement to this part of the hotel as it removed from sight what had always been a blot and an eyesore. After the abolition of the shops, tiffin-rooms were established on the Waterloo Street side, which have since been converted into a spacious ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... equal pedigree, for our friendship dates from the same hour. I do not blame the Duchesse de Tarascon for marrying the grandson of a butcher, but for marrying the son of a man made duke by a usurper. She abandoned the faith of her house and the cause of her sovereign. Therefore her marriage is a blot ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peril, and that the very best of his captains had scarcely the will, if they had the power, to restrain the license that soon became barbarity unimaginable, he spoke sadly overnight of his dread of the day of surrender, when it might prove impossible to prevent deeds that would be not merely a blot on his scutcheon, but a shame to human nature; looking back to the exultation with which he had entered Harfleur as a mere effect of boyish ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... jurist and as the author of comments on Littleton's "Tenures," a book commonly known as "Coke Upon Littleton." The great blot on his noble reputation is the brutality with which he prosecuted Sir ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... living, all those which he restored, or those which he merely repaired or inscribed with his cartouches. These are often cut over the name of the original founder, and his usurpations of monuments are so numerous that he might be justly accused of having striven to blot out the memory of his predecessors, and of claiming for himself the entire work of the whole line of Pharaohs. It would seem as if, in his opinion, the glory of Egypt began with him, or at least with his father, and that no victorious ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Oh! blot me from the race of men, Kind, pitying Heaven, by death or worse, If e'er I love ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... his mother could not be called a very well written one; there were several mistakes in the spelling, and here and there, a great blot could tell that a good deal of his heart had gone into it; but whatever it was, it was ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... as though he watched the weapon for hours. As the sleeve drew back, cocking the pistol and throwing a cartridge into the chamber, the trigger moved, and the hammer descended to speed on its way the bullet which was to blot out his life. There was a sharp click as the hammer fell—Seaton was surprised to find himself still alive until a voice spoke, apparently from the muzzle of the pistol, with the harsh ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... had secrets from each other until this affair of Simon Varr. I had discussed him with her and she understood just what a blot on society he was, but I had not confessed to playing Destiny! After the murder, however, she learned of the monk who had been threatening Simon. She knew I detested him, she knew all my points of view, and her old mind began ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... yellow ochre; and through these tints their well-defined muscles, firm as those of some antique torso, stood out in bold relief in the beams of the setting sun. The two made a fine group on which dress would have been quite superfluous, and absolutely a blot on the picture. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... hiatus between the time the Commission would be appointed and the time the Commission could define the areas which would be regarded as white areas and the areas which would be regarded as native areas. That was the one serious blot ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... child, she wanted to get on in life; it was her ambition to build a new dwelling-house, get more land and animals—and be on the same footing with the other women on the small farms round about. The child was a blot on her. Whenever she looked at Ditte, she would think: Because of that brat, all the other women look ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause, —these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self which chiefly impresses ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to her memory; indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had done in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to the fact that France was ashamed, and longed to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored. Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to have justice for ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... In the dry dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal on wax—their trails wound this way and that, and crossed as their quick eyes had led them to turn to find something. For fifty or sixty yards the path was worked with an inextricable design; it was a pity to step on it and blot out the traces of those little feet. Their hearts so happy, their eyes so observant, the earth so bountiful to them with its supply of food, and the late warmth of the autumn sun lighting up their life. They know and feel the different loveliness ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... beginning till that day when the Cross was reared on Calvary, was due to that Cross having been present to the divine mind from the beginning. 'The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted,' or left unpunished. There would be a blot on God's government, not because it was so severe, but because it was so forbearing, unless His justice was vindicated, and the fatal consequences of sin shown in the sacrifice of Christ. God could not have shown Himself just, in view either of age-long forbearance, or of now justifying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... indeed had I left it? It was a new book with scarcely a blot in it. Great heavens! I had forgotten it and left it out of doors at the far end of the garden in the most removed asparagus bed. For my historical studies I had selected the asparagus bed which was like a bit of copse, for the feathery green ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... crudely, Captain Runacles. I believe that our gallant soldiers will act with a single eye to their country's welfare; and I am sure they will do nothing that can be constructed as a blot upon ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the soft soles of my brogues making no sound on the boards, but leaving the impress of my footsteps in a damp blot. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the last touch to Undine's wrath. They knew her extremity, one and all, and it did not move them. At most, they would join in concealing it like a blot on their honour. And the menace grew and mounted, and not a hand ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... nothingness without discovering the cheat? Let us hold most firmly that there has been no cheat; but let us also be reasonable and admit that, if cheat there be, it cannot also be cruel, since everything that would make it a cheat would also blot out completely all chance of discovery, and therefore all ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... imprudence to-day. Convinced that something would occur, I had made my preparations; nor was I deceived. You may add, also, that not until my marriage is invalidated, Anne's offspring illegitimatised, and herself beheaded, shall I consider the foul blot upon my ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I said "Ha!" Here was Jeeves making heavy weather about me wearing a perfectly ordinary white mess jacket, a garment not only tout ce qu'il y a de chic, but absolutely de rigueur, and in the same breath, as you might say, inciting Gussie Fink-Nottle to be a blot on the London scene in scarlet tights. Ironical, what? One looks askance at ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... can but regard the introduction of an institution so entirely alien to every age, form and degree of Aryan civilization and so inconsistent with the tender conjugal love which was the strongest tie to his beloved home, as a serious blot on that beautiful poem and as inconsistent with its whole theory, for no prophet ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... for her?" Miss Roots, B.A., retorted, stung by his undisguised repugnance. If Lucia had got her post merely by interest (which Miss Roots seemed to consider as something of a blot on her career) at the end of her first year she had the pick of the students waiting for her. Unfortunately Lucia had never been strong; and this summer her health ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of eight, sitting alone at a desk near one of the windows, and bending over a slate with an appearance of great industry, "every figure of that example must be correct, your geography lesson recited perfectly, and a page in your copybook written without a blot." ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... cried Mrs Jo, dropping her pen with a blot; for of all the odd requests ever made, this was ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... had slain her husband. She never alluded to his existence, and had always contrived, in her rides and walks, to avoid any point from which she could obtain so much as a distant view of the square, ugly house which formed a blot on the fair landscape. She still spoke of the estate as if it extended to its original boundaries, and ignored absolutely the very existence of Zephaniah Whitefoot, and all that belonged to him. But when her son and Jabez grew to man's estate, at about ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... should be at one and the same time the richest gem in the crown of Spain, and the foulest blot on her escutcheon. Her treaties are violated with worse than Punic faith, and here horrors have been enacted which would make the blood of a Nero curdle in his veins. Do you ask, how are treaties violated? When slaves are brought here by our cruisers, Spain is bound by treaty to apprentice them out ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... black deed threatens to blot out the whole of a good life (in one's own case or in the estimate of the world) she should be brave enough to live it down. One should put her personality into everything she does and "do" things worth while. The world moves on so fast that even the bad is forgotten soon. One may live anything ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... came, and when Paul read it his heart was filled with black rage. It contained only a few words, but they seemed to blot out the sun from his horizon. Without saying so in so many words, Judge Bolitho treated the proposal made in his letter with thinly veiled scorn and contempt. He made him feel, although he did not say so, that what he had said was an impertinence. It was true the letter was couched in terms ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Some true wish, may I say prayer, that Christ may now, now, blot out as a cloud my sins, even on his own terms, which, I am more convinced, do not consist of things required of us to give in exchange for his mercy, but are a part of that mercy, a part of that redemption. Yes, when sin becomes thoroughly a burden, as sin, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... another destiny in thy countenance—I learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a strange sensation. It will seek thee, my dear ELFONZO, it will find thee—thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... family, pointing to each medallion that was filled gloriously with noble, and even 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 the women ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... swerve. 'Par exemple', I swear to you by Saint Jacques to guide Monsieur through the passes of the Pyrenees to Oleron as surely as through these woods, and to defend him against the Devil, if need be, as well as your papers, which we will bring you back without blot or tear. As for recompense, I want none. I always find it in the action itself. Besides, I do not receive money, for I am a gentleman. The Laubardemonts are a very ancient and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... desert or desire. If then you found me worthy of such honour, good your Grace, let not any light fancy or bad counsel of mine enemies withdraw your princely favour from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the infant ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... line creep Across the sky, and widen like a mouth, Until the broken heavens streamed apart, Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires, Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God. I lay there, a black blot upon a shield Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held Until I staggered up and cried aloud, And then it seemed that something far too great For knowledge, and illimitable as God, Rent the dark sky like lightning, and I fell, And, falling, heard a wild ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... century, the main line had, so far as the union of its members was blessed by the Church, expired, and no legitimate offspring were left. Gilbert's spouse, accordingly, must, if a genuine Oliverres, have come into the world with a considerable blot on her 'scutcheon. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... call the servant, who was always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the locusts, a human blot on the face of the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and then, as they did not turn back, and the Boy stood waiting, she took him into the drying-room and into the ironing-room, and then returned to the betubbed apartment first invaded. There was only one blot on the fairness of that model laundry—a heap of torn and dirty canvas in the middle of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... vague realization that it would be long, if ever, before he could hope to pattern his life by the precepts of the man of God who had so stirred him. Happily, he could not foresee how soon mortal passions were to repossess him wholly, to blot out the new spiritual light which ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... indeed! His fate was perhaps as sad as well might be, and as foul a blot to the purism of these very pure times in which we live. Not long after those days, it so happening that some considerable amount of youthful energy and quidnunc ability were required to set litigation afloat at ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... I wish to Heaven I could blot out these two years as though they had never been. The recollection of the horrors one has been through will haunt me for life. I feel like blowing my brains out in sheer disgust. Why ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... more than matched the rival pastors That tute a credulous Fatherland; And we admit that you are proved our masters When there is dirty work in hand; But in your lore I notice one hiatus: Your Kaiser's scutcheon with its hideous blot— You've no corrosive in your apparatus ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven" quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out of the book because there have been bad bishops; nay, in order to understand him, we must understand that verse first; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... twenty-five courses came on and went off, from the ox-tail soup and salmon to the dessert, it would need the tongue or pen of SOYER or PIERRE BLOT to narrate; as it needed the capacity of a FALSTAFF to do justice to them. And then, when the cover was removed, came the time of trial to your correspondent. "The Queen" and "the President" were drunk with all the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... if a citizen is wealthy enough to lend money to the Federal Government, a State cannot tax his scrip to the amount of one cent. But, if the doctrine contended for by some is sound, then it may take the citizen himself, confiscate the whole of his property, blot out his citizenship, and make a chattel of him, and the Federal Government can afford him no protection! Among all the doctrines that Slavery has originated in this country, there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... pleasant, without being liable to a disgusting hint to depart, in order that the men who remained might have an opportunity of disgracing themselves by obscene and loathsome conversation. What a disgrace this to the national character! what a blot upon the very name of polished society! what an everlasting stigma upon British hospitality! what an indelible stain upon English manners! I always found that young men who had been bred at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were the most ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... I would not have them think they can blot out by their liberality the condemnation of the means by which many of them make money. That is what they are doing, and the public is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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! Give ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major |
