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Deface   Listen
verb
Deface  v. t.  (past & past part. defaced; pres. part. defacing)  
1.
To destroy or mar the face or external appearance of; to disfigure; to injure, spoil, or mar, by effacing or obliterating important features or portions of; as, to deface a monument; to deface an edifice; to deface writing; to deface a note, deed, or bond; to deface a record. "This high face defaced." "So by false learning is good sense defaced."
2.
To destroy; to make null. (Obs.) "(Profane scoffing) doth... deface the reverence of religion." "For all his power was utterly defaste (defaced)."
Synonyms: See Efface.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deface" Quotes from Famous Books



... body's lust man doth resemble but base brute; True virtue gets and keeps a friend, good guide of our pursuit. Whose hearty zeal with ours accords in every case; No term of time, no space of place, no storm can it deface. ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... motion of travelling; but then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever—yea, even to the great Day ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... France. This omission attracted the attention of some demagogue, and there was a little emeute, before the arch of the Carrousel, with threats of destroying these ornaments. Soon after, workmen were employed to deface everything like a fleur-de-lis in Paris. The hotel of the Treasury had many hundreds of them in large stone rosettes, every one of which disappeared before the chisel! The King actually laid down his family arms, causing the brush to be put ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... ancestors retrieve their fate, And see their offspring thus degenerate; How we contend for birth and names unknown, And build on their past actions, not our own; They'd cancel records, and their tombs deface, And openly disown the vile, degenerate race. For fame of families is all a cheat; 'TIS PERSONAL VIRTUE ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... him six thousand and deface the bond, Double six thousand, and then treble that, Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair thro' my Bassanio's fault. ——You shall have gold To pay the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... AMERICA—Carolina is one of these proud States her arms have defended—her best blood has cemented this happy Union! And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse, this happy Union we will dissolve—this picture of peace and prosperity we will deface—this free intercourse we will interrupt—these fertile fields we will deluge with blood—the protection of that glorious flag we renounce—the very name of Americans we discard. And for what, mistaken men! For ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... town on the Loire, where a walk of ten minutes will carry him from the narrow streets into one of the sweetest countries under Heaven. Even the necessary filth of commerce cannot destroy, or scarcely deface the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That Down with Superstition cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? Religion they bawl out, yet know not what Religion is, unless ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... is one of the most interesting. It ought to be read in conjunction with an earlier item in the same will, in which special directions are left to the executors not to pull down or to deface any manner of wainscot or glass in or about the house of Slyfield. For the end of the Slyfield family as a power in Surrey came with bitter suddenness. Henry, the Sheriff's eldest son, succeeded his father in 1590, and died in 1598. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... the statement of Epiphanius? It is a simple blunder, not more egregious than scores of other blunders which deface his pages. He had not seen the Diatessaron: this our author himself says. But he had heard that it was in circulation in certain parts of Syria; and he knew also that the Gospel of the Hebrews was current in these same regions, there or thereabouts. Hence ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... the anger and grief of the great Wahconda when he found the darling of his house numbered with the slain. They sung that, exasperated with the children of earth for the murder of his beloved son, he called upon his earthquakes to deface and lay waste their country. They bade the eye note how well these ministers of his wrath had performed his dread commands. So they sung—"For many a weary day's journey upon the banks of the Mighty River, for many a long encamping in the direction ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... court, which had outlived its age, fell into desuetude, and the last cause heard concerning the right of bearing arms (Blount versus Blunt) was tried in the year 1720 (George I.). In the old arbitrary times the Earl Marshal's men have been known to stop the carriage of a parvenu, and by force deface his illegally assumed arms. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... dramatic or logical, yet single scenes, like that with the peasant and that with the fallen outcast, have firm self-consistency and clearness of conception; and these, as a natural consequence, are comparatively free from those tawdry spangles which deface the greater part of the poem. And, moreover, in the episode of "The Indian and the Lady," there is throughout a "keeping in the tone," as painters say, sultry and languid, yet rich and full of life, like a gorgeous Venetian picture, which augurs even better for Mr. Smith's future ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... "should one fill a white young mind with ugly images which would deface with dark marks and smears, and could only produce unhappiness and, perhaps, morbid broodings? One does not feel it is wise to give a girl an education in crime. One would not permit her to read the Newgate Calendar for choice. She will be protected by those who love her ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... is clear that these difficulties must augment in a corresponding ratio, until at last they will become insurmountable. I therefore come to the conclusion, either that territory must be set apart in America itself for the negro's home, or that the black bar of slavery must deface the escutcheon ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... from out the best edition, Expurgated by learned men, who place, Judiciously, from out the schoolboy's vision, The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface Too much their modest bard by this omission,[k] And pitying sore his mutilated case, They only add them all in an appendix,[43] Which saves, in fact, the trouble ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... to shame us thus, And to confusion bring our Lord the King? Who serves thee well vile guerdon gains from thee!" Despoiled of crown and scepter, by the hands They hang him on a column—neath their feet They roll him down.—They with great clubs deface And beat him; then from Tervagant they snatch His carbuncle; Mohamed in a ditch Throw down—there bitt'n, trampled on, by swine ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... Orange, he was disposed however to prove that the champions of religious liberty were not the patrons of sedition. A riot occurring in the cathedral, where a violent mob were engaged in defacing whatever was left to deface in that church, and in heaping insults on the papists at their worship, the little Count, who, says a Catholic contemporary, "had the courage of a lion," dashed in among them, sword in hand, killed three upon the spot, and, aided by his followers, succeeded ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... in my grass-walks is very curious; with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they deface the walks in some measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their food. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedgehogs, which ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... pale conclusions; yea! Because of this, how fares the Leader dead? What kind of mourners weep for him to-day? What golden shroud is at his funeral spread? Upon his brow what leaves of laurel, say? About his breast is tied a sackcloth grey, And knots of thorns deface ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... sides, and rinse the handles, Rinse thy pitchers to perfection, Spoons, and forks, and knives, and goblets, Rinse with care thy cooking-vessels, Closely watch the food-utensils, That the dogs may not deface them, That the kittens may not mar them, That the eagles may not steal them, That the children may not break them; Many children in the village, Many little heads and fingers, That will need thy careful watching, Lest they steal the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, mutilate. Defect, fault, imperfection, disfigurement, blemish, flaw. Delay, defer, postpone, procrastinate. Demoralize, deprave, debase, corrupt, vitiate. Deportment, demeanor, bearing, port, mien. Deprive, divest, dispossess, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... not questioning now that all who have eternal life dwelling in them will share in the redemption of the body; we are simply entering into the apostle's exhortation against grieving the Spirit. We must fear lest we mar the seal by which we were stamped, lest we deface or obscure the signature by which we are to be recognized in the day ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... careless thoughts are freed of that flame Wherewith her thralls are scorched to the heart: If Love would so, would God the enchanting dart Might once return and burn from whence it came! Not to deface of Beauty's work the frame, But by rebound It might be found What secret smart I suffer ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... instruction for kindness and good-will. For it is not lawful for any one that hath eaten sufficiently to destroy the remainder of the food; nor for him that hath supplied his necessities from the fountain to stop it up; nor for him that hath made use of any marks, either by sea or land, to ruin or deface them; but every one ought to leave those things that may be useful to those persons that afterwards may have need of them. Therefore it is not fit, out of a saving covetous humor, to put out a lamp as soon as we need it not; but we ought to preserve and let ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... gave fame and usefulness to Nassau Hall, are indicated by these rough stones. Nothing modern, nothing polished or magnificent, could suggest the early history of New Jersey. Spare what remains of these broken memorials. Thoughtless young man! why do you break and deface these old monuments? A few fragments carried in your pocket, or placed in your cabinet, will not impart to you the activity and energy of Burr, or the profound and logical intellect of Edwards, or the eloquence of Davies, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... light-minded DILLETANTE, unfitted for the simple austerities of science. But this is itself a light-minded contempt; a deeper insight would change the tone, and help to remove the disgraceful slovenliness and feebleness of composition which deface the majority of grave works, except those written by Frenchmen, who have been taught that composition is an art and that no writer may neglect it. In England and Germany, men who will spare no labour in research, grudge ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... metals from the earth's bosom; how to combine these simple materials, so as to produce with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts of heaven. His earthly passions have prompted him so to wield these instruments of destruction, as to deface God's image in his fellow-men. The power is so divine—the causes that impel him to use that power are so paltry! The intellect that creates these messengers of death is so near akin to divinity—the motives that put them ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... shall willfully or maliciously cut, write upon, injure, deface, tear, or destroy any Book, Newspaper, Plate, Picture, Engraving, or Statue belonging to the Chicago Public Library, shall be liable to a fine of not less than five dollars, nor more than fifty dollars ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... Ministers stay for the Councils; small blame to them, as the Irish say, for we are kept about three times as long by this regular, punctual King as by the capricious, irregular Monarch who last ruled over us. This King is a queer fellow. Our Council was principally for a new Great Seal and to deface the old Seal. The Chancellor claims the old one as his perquisite. I had forgotten the hammer, so the King said, 'My Lord, the best thing I can do is to give you the Seal, and tell you to take it and do what ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to Heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of serf and peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... holding or feeding a horse, but of what age and country I shall not pretend to say, leaving that to antiquarians. It is broken off half, and otherwise pecked and mutilated by the people. It is a pious act of religion to deface stones representing figures of any sort, to decapitate heads of statues, and destroy every shape and symbol of the human likeness, not excepting likenesses of animals. An old Ghadamsee doctor, very fond of me, was, however, extremely glad when he saw me in possession of the slab. He kept saying, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... politeness due to your hostess. I also wish that you would consider how very silly you are when you speak as you are now doing. I do not know what your Irish habits are; but if it is considered in Ireland rather a virtue than otherwise to spill a milk jug, and allow the contents to deface the tablecloth, I am sorry for you, ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... He could deface Elsie's copy-book, but Adelaide could testify to the little girl's carefulness and the neatness of her work up to that very day, for she had been in the school-room that morning during the writing hour. But then Adelaide had just left home to pay a visit to a friend living at some distance, ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... they prefer to express themselves and their ambitions. What, then, is tolerable in Chicago? Lincoln Park, which the smoke and fog of the city have not obscured, and the grandiose lake, whose fresh splendour no villainy of man can ever deface. And at one moment of the day, when a dark cloud hung over the lake, and the sun set in a red glory behind the sky-scrapers, each black, and blacker for its encircling smoke, Chicago rose superior to ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... animal life, which winter has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter to be gone, since he, too, is fugitive and cannot keep his place. Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and weather-worn,—the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone; and what was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a disfiguration. Like worn ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... him six thousand, and deface the bond; Double six thousand, and then treble that, Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault. First, go with me to church, and call me wife: And then away to Venice to your friend! For never shall you ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... documents found on the sites of Assyrian and Babylonian cities, they sometimes include curses upon any impious man, who, on finding the inscription after the temple shall have fallen into ruins, should in any way injure the inscription or deface the writer's name. It will be obvious that the writers of these inscriptions intended that they should be intelligible to those who might come across them in the future. If, therefore, they employed the Babylonian as well ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... old Chapter had thought fit to deface the Gothic columns, and to have them colour-washed by a Milanese lime-washer, of a yellowish pink speckled with grey; then they had abandoned to the town-museum some magnificent pieces of Flemish tapestry that screened the inner circuit of the choir aisles, and had put ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... the usefulness of womankind. Tarnish the sacredness of girlhood and you scar the purity of womanhood. Deface the beautiful countenance of chastity, which is found in the bosom of girlhood, and you not only mar the happiness of girlhood, but you deface and obliterate the families of the future, for without that priceless treasure, virtue, the eternal principles ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... assailed, and never to be defended. It is always a detriment, and never an ornament. No excellence can justify it. No occasion can palliate it. But coarseness is of two kinds,—one of the surface, and one in the grain. The latter is pervading and irremediable. It touches nothing which it does not deface. It makes all things common and unclean. It grows more repulsive as the roundness of youth falls away and leaves its harsh features more sharply outlined. But the other coarseness is only the overgrowth of excellence,—the rankness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... will awake no more, oh, never more!— Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 65 The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70 So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change, shall o'er his sleep the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... arrest! Don't you know it's against the regulations to deface any natural object in the park? I'll have to telephone in the number of your car. You must see the commissioner before you leave ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough

... pleasant bowers and palace brave Guyon broke down with rigor pitiless, Ne ought their goodly workmanship might save Them from the tempest of his wrathfulness, But that their bliss he turned to balefulness; Their groves he felled, their gardens did deface, Their arbors spoil, their cabinets suppress, Their banquet-houses burn, their buildings rase, And of the fairest late now ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... exactly as they were made by the animal, without having suffered change. They are usually more or less disturbed or obliterated by the too soft nature of the mud, the coarseness of the materials, and by many other circumstances which we may easily see would deface them, so that although the general form of the foot may be apparent, the minute traces of its appendages are almost invariably lost. In general, except in thick-toed species, we cannot discover the distinct evidences of the structure ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... that turret crest. Still hast thou left the rocks, the floods, And nature is the loveliest then, When first amid her caves and woods She feels the busy tread of men; When every tree, and bush, and flower, Springs wildly in its native grace; Ere art exerts her boasted power, That brightened only to deface. ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... frame a kind of faithful prayer, For all estates within the state of grace, That careful love might never know despair. Nor servile fear might faithful love deface; And this would I both day and night devise To make my humble ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... not uncommon for the envious, after having attempted to deface the fairest character so industriously, that they are afraid you will begin to detect their malice, to endeavour to remove your suspicions effectually, by assuring you, that what they have just related is only the ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... rich will not! They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... the Lord sing praises, All you within this place, And with true love and brotherhood Each other now embrace, This holy tide of Christmas All other doth deface." ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... right in the end. The pieces of the puzzle would have fallen into their true places. Instead, Scott Brenton, in his impatience, was apparently determined to chop the pieces into smaller bits, and then to deface their surfaces almost past recognition. Therefore it had seemed to Doctor Keltridge the one way of escape from the whole pother had been opened by his words, which he now repeated with a fresh emphasis that he hoped would finally impress them upon ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... many public buildings are defaced by persons who desire that their names shall remain when they are gone." "They disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast." Disfigure applies more generally to persons; deface, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... Glories shall deface, Revenging all your cold Disdain, And Silvia shall neglected pass, By every once admiring Swain; And we can only Pity pay, When you in vain too late shall burn: If Love increase, and Youth delay, Ah, Silvia, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... had grown upon him. He resolved to overcome whatever opposed itself to him. Nobili was constantly assured by those ready flatterers who lived upon him—those toadies who, like a mildew, dim and deface the virtues of the rich—that "he could ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... emblems, freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to commercial account,—advertising, in symbols of death and priceless devotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so to speak, dirt-cheap. You could wear it in a hatband or a necktie; you could deface it, or tear it in two, in opening an envelope addressed to ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... about everything; it is quite enough if the devil gets your mind rasped with one little worry, one little thought which destroys your perfect peace. It is like the polish on a mirror, or an exquisite toilet table, one scratch will destroy it; and the finer it is the smaller the scratch that will deface it. And so your rest can be destroyed by a very little thing. Perhaps you have trusted in God about your future salvation; but have you about your present business or earthly cares, your ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... dull gray day dawning without. The walls that had been left with only the first dark coat of plaster, awaiting another season for the final decoration, showed their drapings of cobweb, and the names and pencilled scribblings with which the fancy of transient bushwhackers had chosen to deface them. The locust-trees within the quadrangle drearily tossed their branches to and fro in the wind, the bark very black and distinct against the persistent gray lines of rain and the white walls of the galleried buildings opposite; ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... death-giving wound. The blood bursts forth in continued streams. His hair is clotted with it. That cheek, that lately glowed, is now pale and sallow. All his features are deformed. The fire in his eye is extinguished for ever. Who has done this? What wanton and sacrilegious hand has dared deface the work of God? It could not be his preceptor, the man upon whom he heaped a thousand benefits? It could not be his friend? Oh, Rinaldo, all thy errors lie buried in the damp and chilly tomb, but thy blood shall for ever ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... if thou dost acknowledge that man is formed in God's image, it must be obvious to thee that to deface His image must be contrary to His law and will. The world is large, and God intends it to be peopled; whereas, by wars, the population ceases to increase, and that happy time when hymns of praise shall ascend from all quarters of the globe ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... and kindred spirits abounded. The knowledge of that land's geography . . . "east o' the sun, west o' the moon" . . . is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never deface it or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... If I hunt a usurper and tyrant to death, it shall be by honourable means. If his character deserves no respect, I know what is due to my own. I hold no tenets in common with regicides. Man cannot commit a crime that can so far deface the image of his Maker impressed upon him as to reduce him to the level of a beast of prey. Would that this unnerved arm had strength, and that this sinking frame were again erect with youthful vigour, then, if ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... unshaken base; Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne:[4.B.] Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place. It may not be: nor ev'n can Fancy's eye Restore what Time hath laboured to deface. Yet these proud Pillars claim no passing sigh; Unmoved the Moslem sits, the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... anodyne for cross, peevish, won't-be-comforted little bairns, ought be laid aside for more learned books, such as they could select and publish. Fudge! I tell you that all their batterings can't deface my beauties, nor their wise pratings equal my wiser prattlings; and all imitators of my refreshing songs might as well write another Billy Shakespeare as another Mother Goose—we two great poets were born together, and shall go ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous

... Decoud reflected, that seemed as though he would have preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his egoism. Such a man was safe. In silence he helped the Capataz to get the grapnel on board. Nostromo cleared the shelving shore with one push of the heavy oar, and Decoud found himself solitary ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... should I give consent to flatter sin. You know, my lord, your highness is betroth'd Unto another lady of esteem: How shall we then dispense with that contract, And not deface ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... can any way asswage private Inflammations, or allay publick Ferments, I shall apply my self to it with my utmost Endeavours; but will never let my Heart reproach me with having done any thing towards [encreasing [7]] those Feuds and Animosities that extinguish Religion, deface Government, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... procuring unity; men must beware, that in the procuring, or reuniting, of religious unity, they do not dissolve and deface the laws of charity, and of human society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual and temporal; and both have their due office and place, in the maintenance of religion. But we may not take up the third ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... natives had agreed at the depot camp, now within a day's ride of us. We continued to follow our former track to Camp XXXI, and it may be remarked, to their credit, that the aborigines had not attempted to deface any of these marked trees. It might have occurred, even to them, that such marks were preparatory to the advent of more white men into their country. The fine, deep reaches in the river, looked still full and ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... walk with him in the newness of the Spirit. Others again do shut up the gates against the godly, labouring with might and main to hinder those that labour to enter, that fain would do it unfeignedly (Matt 23:14; 2 Chron 29:7).[11] Others again do labour all that in them lies to deface the gates, to take away their beauty: like him that took the gold from off the doors and gates of the temple (2 Kings 18:16). Rendering Christ a low and carnal business, &c. But at the measuring-day, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the spring, for man had done what he could to deface it. Here is a curious fact: the human being is capable of a certain amount of civilization under the pressure of the necessities of city life. He—or she—will learn to dispose inoffensively of the waste and rubbish that drag after him like a trail wherever he goes. He—and always likewise ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... mark, and thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has evaporated less, a slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is none; and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of man by the returning sea. You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crow-quill—you may course over its dazzling expanse with a troop ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... lying sects of perdition deface the benefits of Christ to this day. They rob Christ of His glory as the Justifier of mankind and cast Him into the role of a minister of sin. They are like the false apostles. There is not a single one among them who knows the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... and meanest legacy of Russia's dark ages, which has lately had a chance of showing itself as absurd as it is hateful under the congenial guidance of General Schidlovski. The rulers of the empire have begun to perceive that it is hardly worth while to hire men at exorbitant prices to deface articles which they cannot read and condemn books which they cannot understand; and the common sense of Russia has long since revolted against a system which is still as uselessly and childishly vexatious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... this rickety bauble, that we did our best to acquiesce in it. After all, we could admire, without any breach of sincerity, the natural beauties of this spot, which very much resembles the more open parts of the glen where Matlock is situated, and which all these abominations could not entirely deface. How to account for this perversion of eye in a people of sensibility and taste, I am rather at a loss; but this last is by no means a singular instance. "Bientot vous allez sortir de ces tristes bois," ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... art, but barely kept alive, And with old Greece unequally did strive: Till Goths, and Vandals, a rude northern race, Did all the matchless monuments deface. Then all the Muses in one ruin be, And rhyme began to enervate poetry. 50 Thus, in a stupid military state, The pen and pencil find an equal fate. Flat faces, such as would disgrace a screen, Such as in Bantam's embassy were seen, Unraised, unrounded, were the rude delight ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... were once vaulted with bronze, and massive beams or slabs of the same metal stretched across the whole structure; but this was removed by Urban VIII., and melted into a baldachino to deface St. Peter's, and cannon to defend the castle of St. Angelo; and, not content with this, he has added insult to injury, and commemorated his robbery in a Latin inscription, in which he claims to be commended as for a praiseworthy act. But even this ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... offence for any one wantonly to injure or deface a shade tree, shrub, rose, or other plant or fixture of ornament or utility in a street, road, square, court, park, or public garden, or carelessly to suffer a horse or other beast driven by or for him, or a beast belonging to him and lawfully on the highway, to break down or injure a tree, ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... very favourable agreement with the generals of the Parliamentarian forces, by the terms of which, consisting of thirteen clauses, they undertook to protect the property and persons of all in the city, not plunder or deface any churches or other buildings, and to give a safe conduct to officers and men—who were to march out with what were practically the honours of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... would have it. This was what for ages he had been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to deface and defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes of benevolence and love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and leads them to throw back the blame of his work upon God, as if ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... with his conspire to grace The Gentiles' great apostle, and deface Those state-obscuring sheds, that, like a chain, Seem'd to confine, and fetter ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... thing, so God my soule save, *Like to* you, that may displease me: *be pleasing* Nor I desire nothing for to have, Nor dreade for to lose, save only ye: This will is in mine heart, and aye shall be, No length of time, nor death, may this deface, Nor change my corage* to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... scourges sent to torment men in every shape! They inflict hard lessons in childhood, teach asperity in youth, and make us superstitious and silly in age. I do not wonder that my brave compatriots drove them from France; they did nothing but devour like locusts, and deface the beauties ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... shall be unlawful to cut, destroy, injure, deface or break any ornamental, nut bearing, food producing or shade tree upon any public highway or place, except where such trees shall interfere with the proper construction or maintenance of such highways. It shall be unlawful to affix to any such tree any picture, announcement, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... proofe thereof) and of thy fidelitie I am nothing at all in doubt. But, alas! the loue that I beare vnto my wife, and her former vertue, which maketh me to loue and esteeme her so much, doth throughlye pearce my hart, and much adoe I haue to liue hearing this reporte: which doth deface and blotte all the honestie and vertue that euer remaiued in mee." "And that was it my Lord, (answeared the traitour) which did deceiue you. For the shewe of that painted vertue did so delude you, that you be almoste bewitched ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... take them letters 't Major Henry's jest brought in, and deface the stamps on 'em? Turn the ink enter them pictur's o' George Washin'ton so 't his own mother's son wouldn't know him. I don't calk'late to have no stamps 't 's sent out from the Basin post-office washed out an' used over ag'in. The defacement they gets here ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... against the sharp corner of a table; others are made to lean against that, till the pressure of the whole forces the corner of the table through the canvas of the first. The frame and glass of a fine print are to be cleaned; the spirit and oil used on this occasion are suffered to leak through and deface the engraving—no matter. If the glass is clean and the frame shines, it is sufficient—the rest is not worthy of consideration. An able arithmetician hath made a calculation, founded on long experience, and proved that the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... New York than in London and other European cities seems to me utterly groundless. The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, for instance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c., painted all over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches to Paris; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminated advertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the august spectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of "Castoria" have occupied nearly every ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... great a voice here as they have almost as much credit, the more it is to be lamented. I have not, since I came last over, come in any company where almost the greater part have not in reasoning defended papistry, allowed the Guisians' proceedings, and seemed to deface the prince's quarrel and design. How dangerous this is your lordship doth see."[123] The Swiss Protestant cantons were reluctant to appear to countenance rebellion. Berne sent a few ensigns to Lyons at the request of the Protestants of that city, but wished to limit them strictly ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... and chipped off small pieces of the freestone for relics. This modern habit of chipping monumental stones for relics is inexcusable; for it is not done by ignorant or otherwise lawless persons, but too often by the educated, who carry their mawkish sentiment to such an extreme as to deface and sometimes, as in the present case, entirely to ruin a monument. It is in vain to urge that this was only a stranger's stone, and that there were none to care. It was all the more an outrage, if there were no friends ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... favour strong, Your tresses comb, and for your dames divide On peaceful lyre the several parts of song; Vainly in chamber hide From spears and Gnossian arrows, barb'd with fate, And battle's din, and Ajax in the chase Unconquer'd; those adulterous locks, though late, Shall gory dust deface. Hark! 'tis the death-cry of your race! look back! Ulysses comes, and Pylian Nestor grey; See! Salaminian Teucer on your track, And Sthenelus, in the fray Versed, or with whip and rein, should need require, No laggard. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... lamps; a crowd of tourists of many nationalities—all waiting to enter the Grottoes of Han. Presently the guide arrives, and delivers a brief speech as to the possible consequences should visitors deface or purloin the treasures of the cave, demanding silence during his explanations, and declaring that one light-bearer would accompany every four persons. He ceases, and away we go. Down, down, down, apparently into the very heart of the earth, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... ashamed to mutilate the statues of Greece and Rome in our museums. Let them realize that these monuments in our cathedrals and churches are just as valuable, as they are the best of English art, and then no sacrilegious hand would dare to injure them or deface them by scratching names upon them or by carrying away broken chips as souvenirs. Playful boys in churchyards sometimes do much mischief. In Shrivenham churchyard there is an ancient full-sized effigy, and two village urchins were recently seen amusing ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... that other names deface, And fix their own, with labor, in their place. 440 POPE: Temple of ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... the by-paths of the forests which fringe the mission towns, and set them, so to speak, in the hard tropical enamel of green foliage, on which time has no lien, and but the arts of all-destroying man are able to deface, I may have chanced upon some petty detail which may serve to pass an ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... generosorum. No man might come in to studdie but graduats and thoes of 8 years contynuance in the Universitie, except noblemen. All that come in must firste sweare to use the bookes well, and not to deface theim, and everye one after at his proceedings must take the licke othe. Howers apoynted when they shuld come in to studdie, viz. betwene ix and xi aforenoone, and one and four afternoone, the keper geving attendaunce: yet a prerogative was graunted the chancelour MR. RICHARD COURTNEY ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... less— The "Ethics": 'tis a treatise I find hard To read aright now that my hair is grey, And I can manage the original. At five years old—how ill had fared its leaves! Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite, At least I soil no page with bread and milk, Nor crumple, dogsear and deface—boys' way. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... and calls back the April of her prime; asks him why he abuses the bounteous largess given him to give; calls him a profitless usurer; tells him that the hours that have made him fair will unfair him; that he should not let winter's rugged hand deface ere he has begotten a child, though it were a greater happiness should he beget ten. He asks if his failure to marry is because he might wet a widow's eye, and then in successive Sonnets cries shame on his friend for being so improvident. He tells him that ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... sones, one kepes his name, And dowghters fyve for home he carde, y't lyve in honest fame. What booteth more, as he be kynde dyd come of Jentyll race, So Rouland Monoux good Desertes this grave can not Deface." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... was then rubbing the spits, scouring the kettles, and making clean the dressers, and told him he must come to his Master presently into the parlor. The poor man excused himself, that his shooes were dirty and the room was rubb'd, and if he should but touch any thing there he should spoyl and deface those things in the room. But still the master of the House called for Master Whittington, sending one servant after another till he was brought before him; and having scraped some few legs, instantly his ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.

... one age after another. Each generation has used it for its own purpose: for war, for trade, for learning, for religion; and war, trade, religion, and learning have left on Oxford their peculiar marks. No set of its occupants, before the last two centuries began, was very eager to deface or destroy the buildings of its predecessors. Old things were turned to new uses, or altered to suit new tastes; they were not overthrown and carted away. Thus, in walking through Oxford, you see everywhere, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... capital until 1767 when it was laid in ruins by the Burmese who, though Buddhists, did not scruple to destroy or deface the temples and statues with which it was ornamented. But the collapse of the Siamese was only local and temporary. A leader of Chinese origin named Phaya Tak Sin rallied their forces, cleared the Burmese out of the country and made Bangkok, officially described as ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... had produced a deep effect in the mind of the worthy Burgomaster. 'If a Christian minister,' said he to himself, 'sees it his duty on this special occasion to encourage the weak, that they may make a valorous deface, surely I, who rule over strong men, should be the last to think of surrendering into an enemy's hands the city entrusted ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... exclaimed the Grand Master, "it were time then to throw off our belts and spurs, Sir Conrade, deface our armorial bearings, and renounce our burgonets, if the highest honour of Christianity were conferred on ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... God for eye confounde and pluck thee from thy place. Thy seed and root from out the grounde and so shall thee deface; ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelsea made unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare's Walks, and Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been trying to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the same censure, when he speaks of beautiful women as "tortures to the eye,"[6] though here there is some excuse, as the speakers in this passage are drunken barbarians. Still, even from dramatic motives, such errors in taste should not be permitted to deface the pages of an ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus



Words linked to "Deface" :   mangle, defacement, impair, pit, mark, pock, blemish



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