"Blighting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men, but women suffer most. Bad health and idleness are two prolific causes of jealousy. It has probably broken up more homes than any other one thing. It is blighting to all ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... of the larger family of the State that has been almost wholly eliminated from our architecture, our statues, our paintings, our music, and much of our literature. The arts have withered and lost their vitality in our narrow and blighting commercial society. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friendship or affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting of its hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow. We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age, ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... immediately, and is liable at any moment to the ravages of many kinds of doubt. The philosopher does not do so till unity has been reached, and is warranted against the inroads of those considerations, but only practically, not essentially, secure from the blighting breath of the ultimate Why? If he cannot exorcise this question, he must ignore or blink it, and, assuming the data of his system as something given, and the gift as ultimate, simply proceed to a life of contemplation or of action based on it. There is no doubt that this acting on an opaque ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person to whom they had surrendered their entire affections. That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting, in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of at once overthrowing the balance of life or of reason. Instances I have known of both; and such afflictions are the less open to any alleviation, that sometimes they are of a nature so delicate as to preclude all confidential ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... them to become upright citizens? Or, will it fall upon the crushing, cruel, vindictive course, the process of making them more debased, sordid, revengeful? Do you prefer manhood-producing with its benign effects, or money-making attended with the blighting of the higher aspirations of the soul? This subject has been taken up in the narrative form, that the writer could the more easily, by incidents, and in the briefest way, bring out the peculiarities of the two systems in their workings and the animus impelling ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... recorded standard of guiding principles of government, it matters not by what name it may be called—Empire, Republic, Oligarchy, or Democracy—it may fall under the blighting influence of the tyranny of a single individual, or a wealthy ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... of evil repute in Plymouth in the last century. It was said that she had taken pay for luring a girl into her old farm-house, where a man lay dead of small-pox, with intent to harm her beauty; she was accused of blighting land and driving ships ashore with spells; in brief, she was called a witch, and people, even those who affected to ignore the craft of wizardry, were content to keep away from her. When the Revolution ended, Southward Howland demanded Dame Crewe's house and acre, claiming under law ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... would die the death, yet wake up to life anew; The sun would be all ablaze on the waste, and the sky a blighting blue, And the tears would rise in my snow-blind eyes and ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the Village or the Borough; and he describes his neighbours as more uncomfortable and discontented than himself. All this while he dedicates successive volumes to rising generations of noble patrons; and while he desolates a line of coast with sterile, blighting lines, the only leaf of his books where honour, beauty, worth, or pleasure bloom, is that inscribed to the Rutland family! We might adduce instances of what we have said from every page of his works: let ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the reaper Takes the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper Wails manhood in glory. The autumn winds rushing Waft the leaves that are searest, But our flower was in flushing, When blighting was nearest. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance near high hedges, or under trees; sometimes portions of a field would be greatly affected with it before other parts were touched at all; and I have sometimes observed the very first symptoms of the disease opposite an open gateway, as if a blighting wind had rushed in, making for some distance a sort of avenue of discoloured leaves and stalks, about the width of the gateway at first, but becoming wider onwards. When the decomposition produced by the blight was in a somewhat advanced stage, the odour from the potato field, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... plumes in imitation of the tassel of the maize. On the other hand, at the festival of the Goddess of the White Maize the Mexicans sacrificed lepers. The Romans sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring to avert the supposed blighting influence of the Dog-star, believing that the crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy. The heathen of Harran offered to the sun, moon, and planets human victims who were chosen on the ground of their supposed resemblance to the heavenly bodies to which they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... damaged coffee, as found in "skimmings." "Black jack" is a term applied to coffee that has turned black during the process of curing, or in the hold of a ship during transportation; or it may be due to a blighting disease. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... destiny of all on earth! So flourishes and fades majestic Man. Fair is the bud his vernal morn brings forth, And fostering gales awhile the nursling fan. Oh, smile, ye heavens serene! ye mildews wan, Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime, Nor lessen of his life the little span! Borne on the swift, though silent wings of Time, Old age comes on apace to ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... ah! song of wo! For never more our joys uniting, With Sorrow's sigh no more to glow; No more shall Pity's tear together flow, Our love, our hopes, our joys forever blighting. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... would next discover 'much talkee' (as John Chinaman would say) anent a certain, or rather uncertain, 'blighting influence' which arrested the progress of some of the works, and to get to the bottom of which a 'committee of investigation' was appointed. He would open his eyes when he saw the revelations made by that committee, and would wonder how in the name of fortune—or misfortune—the ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... barren days, in which I did nothing, knew nothing except that I suffered. My brain seemed blank, empty, like a quarry of black slate. The power that seemed to dwell there at times was gone now; crushed all that impersonal emotion of the writer's mind by the blighting personal ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... course, should have made of them allies, and "let loose those horrible hell-hounds of war against their countrymen in America, endeared to them by every tie which should sanctify human nature," was a most lamentable circumstance—in its consequences, blighting and desolating the fairest portions of the country, and covering the face of [157] its border settlements, with the gloomy ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... genius of liberty continued to inspire the sons of Britain—the holy flame that punished two kings for trespassing on the rights of their people, was not entirely extinguished—the deadly paralysis of the Septennial Act had not then produced its blighting effects on the whole body politic. But London ceased to be influenced by the lost voice of Barber, and the Excise system triumphed—the barriers of freedom were passed—trial by jury was, in certain cases, either dispensed with, or nullified by well-trained ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... an insidious poison, sapping the vitality of our civilization, blighting woman, and, through her, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... him, no polite words were needed to justify its pillage. Within three months Wallenstein had nearly fifty thousand men under his standard, drawn to him by the tempting offers of plunder that his agents held out. If the war had been terrible before, imagine the awful phase it now assumed, and the blighting curse that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... sake of my American friends, it will be very long before these healthful hours are changed to those which custom has made fashionable in England; hours that soon fade the roses even on their most genial soil, the cheeks of the fair girls of Britain, blighting the healthful and the young, and withering ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... help her in her fight against the gods. Nothing is known of the origin or attributes of UMMU-KHUBUR, but some think she was a form of TIMAT. Her brood probably consisted of personifications of mist, fog, cloud, storm, whirlwinds and the blighting and destroying powers which primitive man associated with the desert. An exact parallel of this brood of devils is found in Egyptian mythology where the allies of Set and Aapep are called "Mesu betshet" i.e., "spawn of impotent revolt." They ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... at a distance, at the end of the garden or in the nearest grove, where from their perches they suspiciously watch our movements, always waiting to be encouraged, waiting to feed on the crumbs that fall from our table and are wasted, and on the blighting insects that ring us round with their ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... made to be the mate of these, Nor bound between Distraction and Disease. Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here? Who have debased me in the minds of men, Debarring me the usage of my own, Blighting my life in best of its career, Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear? Would I not pay them back these pangs again, 100 And teach them inward Sorrow's stifled groan? The struggle to be calm, and cold distress, Which undermines ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... time, drowned in deep and abstracted meditation. But three or four times—and it was when the assumed airs and affected importance of the musician and their hostess rose to the most extravagant excess—he observed that Fenella dealt askance on them some of those bitter and almost blighting elfin looks, which in the Isle of Man were held to imply contemptuous execration. There was something in all her manner so extraordinary, joined to her sudden appearance, and her demeanour in the King's presence, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... thrown them away; she had found a grouse's nest among the dead fern, and, contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg; and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blighting wind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed her insensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and coolly walked across ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ever.' Nowhere—even on the high ranges about Newry, where the population is far too dense, where the patchwork cultivation creeps up the mountain side, and the hand of industry snatches a precarious return from a poor, cold, ungrateful soil, amidst desolating tempests and blighting fogs—not even there did I notice the least trace of evictions or clearances. No black remnant of a wall tells that where sheep now browze and lambs frisk there was once a fireside, where the family affections were cherished, and a home ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... her by her father at the period of her marriage—so that notwithstanding the dissipated habits of the husband and father they still possessed a home, although many of the comforts of former days had disappeared before the blighting influence of the demon of intemperance. After being dismissed by his employers Mr. Harland seemed to lose all respect for himself, as well as for his wife and children, and, but for the unceasing toil of ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... requirements of the country will admit; reductions of taxation and tariff, to be so arranged as to afford the greatest relief to the greatest number; honest and fair dealings with all other peoples, to the end that war, with all its blighting consequences, may be avoided, but without surrendering any right or obligation due to us; a reform in the treatment of Indians and in the whole civil service of the country; and, finally, in securing a pure, untrammeled ballot, where every man entitled to cast a vote ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... those awful songs of joy. In all the nightmares that men have ever dreamed, there has never been anything so blighting and horrible as the faces of those five men, looking out of their poke-bonnets; the figures of district visitors with the faces of devils. I cannot think there is anything ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... in, on the sea, built with, on the land, carved by Donatello, painted on by Fra Angelico. And it is not the wood's fault, but the fault of Florence in not taking proper care of it, that the panel of Sandro Botticelli's loveliest picture has cracked, (not with heat, I believe, but blighting frost), a quarter of an inch wide through the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Queen Victoria reached the fiftieth year of her reign, there were none of these causes for sorrow in her realm. England was in the height of prosperity, free from the results of blighting pestilence, disastrous wars, desolating famine, or any of the horrors that steep great nations in heart-breaking sorrow. The empire was immense in extent, prosperous in all its parts, and the queen was beloved throughout her wide dominions as no monarch of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with blighting incredulity. Ann had been guiltily careless, and yet she expressed no grief over the trouble she had made. It ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... been so indignant the morning before, was true, was justified. That day Priscilla tore the last shreds of self-satisfaction from her soul and sat staring at it with horrified eyes as at a thing wholly repulsive, dangerous, blighting. What was to become of her, and of poor Fritzing, dragged down by her to an equal misery? About one o'clock she heard Mrs. Morrison's voice below, in altercation apparently with him. At this time ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... arise?— 45 Yes! one more sharp there is that deeper lies, Which fond Esteem but mocks when he would heal. Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise, But sad compassion and atoning zeal! One pang more blighting-keen than hope betray'd! 50 And this it is my woeful hap to feel, When, at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid With face averted and unsteady eyes, Her truant playmate's faded robe puts on; And inly shrinking from her own disguise 55 Enacts the faery Boy that's lost and gone. O worse ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... come at the right time; I have been looking for you everywhere, and I find you in the hour of your deepest sorrow. When I knew your aunt last she was a cheerful, happy woman. From what I hear now she is suffering, you are all suffering, under some blighting grief." ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... current system of education may do to the child, there is one thing which it cannot fail to do to him,—to blight his mental growth. What particular form or forms this blighting influence may take will depend in each particular case on a variety of circumstances. Experience tells us that what happens in most cases is that Western education strangles some faculties, arrests the growth of others, stunts the growth ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... and murder, and retain them by the terror of the scimeter and the rifle ball; which reduce mankind to the most abject servitude, and womanhood to the most debasing concubinage; which have turned the fairest regions of the earth to a wilderness, and under whose blighting influence commerce, arts, science, industry, comfort, and the human race itself, have withered away—he simply insults our common sense, by ignoring the difference between backgoing vice and ongoing virtue; or acknowledges that he knows as little about Mohammedanism, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... higher average of the ordinary novelist, but he ought always to be very much better, for he began better, and he is of that race which has, first of all, to get rid of the cakewalk, if it will not suffer from a smile far more blighting than any frown. He is fighting a battle, and it is not for him to pick up the cheap graces and poses of the jouster. He does, indeed, cast them all from him when he gets down to his work, and in the dramatic climaxes and closes of his story he shortens his weapons ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stream and my road lead down a rocky defile between towering hills of rock and slaty formation, whose precipitous slopes vegetable nature seems to shun, and everything looks black and desolate, as though some blighting curse had fallen upon the place. Up this same rocky passage-way, eight summers ago, swarmed thousands of wretched refugees from the seat of war in Eastern Armenia; small oblong mounds of loose rocks and bowlders are frequently ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... cognizance of the understanding; and retained and recited, under the same circumstances, by any irrational, as well and better, than by any rational being, if, to recite well, mean to repeat without missing a syllable. How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets, Gray, Goldsmith, Thomson, Pope, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... and ignoble man, Spreading these rumours! sending into exile All those their blighting influence injured most: And whom? thy daughter and adopted son, The chieftains of thy laws and of thy faith. Call any witnesses, proclaim the truth, And set, at last, thy ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... scuttling through the parched bushes, or lizards vanishing in the clefts of the rock. By night the jackals prowled and barked in the distance, and the lion made the black ravines echo with his hollow roaring, while a bitter, blighting chill followed the fever of the day. Through heat and cold, ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... hand of Ailsa drawing him back as though to keep him from the blighting touch of the ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... much," said Caspar Goodwood gloomily; not as if to provoke her to compassion for a man conscious of this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so that he might endeavour to act with his eyes ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... fortress from its buttresses of stone; lingering under the bell-tower of the Puerta del Perdon because Pilar "felt as if something would happen there." But nothing did happen; and we went to face the blighting of renewed hopes in the Court of Oranges, whose melancholy charm and sensuous perfume was sad as the song of a nightingale ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, they did not soften the austere nature of the bleak and blighting criticism which was then ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... husband returned, her heart had fearful forebodings of a second blighting of all its dearest hopes. Not the less painful, were those anticipations, because she had ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... many of his works, though he was apt to hint, as in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," that the magic of his symbol might have a practical explanation. In this story the lady's gorgeous mantle is a symbol of pride; its blighting influence may be due to the fact that,—but to tell the secret is to spoil the story, and that is not fair ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... wonderful things by the aid of a devil to whom he had sold himself. He described at great length the saturnalia of the fiends, the sacrifices which they offered up, the debaucheries they committed with the young and handsome witches, and the various modes of preparing the infernal unguent for blighting cattle. He said he had upwards of twelve hundred accomplices in the crime of witchcraft in various parts of France, whom he named to the king, and many of whom were ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... is impossible not to observe, that, in proportion as we approximate to the poisonous jaws of anarchy, the fascination grows irresistible. In proportion as we are attracted towards the focus of illegality, irreligion, and desperate enterprise, all the venomous and blighting insects of the state are awakened into life. The promise of the year is blasted, and shrivelled and burned up before them. Our most salutary and most beautiful institutions yield nothing but dust and smut; the harvest of our law is no more ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... relations and my fascinating self; but you needn't be so blighting. I enjoyed every moment, and they were angelically kind. Janet was like an ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... brought forth from their resting places in their Sarka-Belts their Ray Directors and their Atom-Disintegrators, and turned the blighting rays of them against the gleaming, ice-colored sides of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... here held empire long— A blighting curse, a cruel reign; By mimic scenes, and mirth and song Alluring souls ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... though a merciless, blighting sun beat down on the great stone ledge that spread in front of the opening, smothering him with heat waves that eddied in and out, and though the interior of the low-ceilinged chamber pulsed with the fetid heat sucked in from the plains generations before. The adobe walls, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... veritable fairyland of flower gardens and fertile fields dotted with hundreds of thousands of beautiful pecan trees that lift their majestic heads towards the sky as though proud of their royal lineage. Here it is that the Mexican boll weevil before whose blighting breath our snowy fields of cotton melted over night brought no terror for King Cotton no longer reigns supreme. The king is dead but the people rejoice as the scepter falls from his nerveless hand and a new monarch ascends the throne. Millions ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... Nance ain't so bad as whut they make her out. She's got her faults. I ain't claimin' she ain't. But she ain't got a drop of meanness in her, an' that's more than I can say for some grown folks present." Mrs. Snawdor favored Mr. Mason with such a sudden and blighting glance that the ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... couldn't be left up there—we wanted him for morning parades. Then I happened to see the little field-piece stranded among the chaparral. It was a cursed nice little cannon. It would have been a blighting shame to have ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Points like the pilot-flower, magnetically, To Heaven, where beauty is accomplish'd. Earth Is but the reproduction of one form, Whose perfectness is heaven, and thus the mind, Unblinded by the blighting mist of sin, Sees emblems of its everlasting hope In Nature's loveliness. This quiet hour When the calm'd heart cries truce unto itself, And lays the weapons of resentment down, And bitterness ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... between two courses, whether he should hurl himself upon him in righteous indignation and demand physical satisfaction, or whether he should rise in a calm and manly attitude and wither him with blighting sarcasm. And while the decision was pending, he still sat with his hands in his pockets, and his feet stretched forth, and blinked indignantly at ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Fearfully had it laid this country waste separating bridegroom and bride—and tearing asunder even the holy bonds of marriage. Here it had destroyed the tranquil happiness of a whole family—there the blighting pest had seized on a young and inexperienced heart, and expiring victims called down bitter imprecations on the heads of the undoers. It was then that I stepped forth between the lamb and the tiger, and, in a moment of dalliance, extorted from the duke his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed—how many sublime conquests effected during that pause, when the lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! When some of those cutting, sharp, blighting words have been spoken which send the hot indignant blood to the face and head, if those to whom they are addressed keep silence, look on with awe, for a mighty work is going on within them, and the Spirit of Evil, or their Guardian Angel, is very near to them in that hour. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... decision had something blighting about it; in a few words it contained the whole story. The hatred of the Portas and the Piombos and their terrible passions were inscribed on this page of the civil law as the annals of a people (contained, ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... inattackable surface made so absolute, he would suddenly commit some mistake or some violence, smash some windowpane for air, fail even of one of his blest inveteracies of taste. In that way, fatally, he would have put himself in the wrong—blighting by a single false step the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... B. K. Bruce, who, living to manhood under the blighting influences of slavery, by honesty, native ability and persevering study, placed his name in the forefront, leaving his career as a model. With an astuteness of perception for the retention of friends, he had suavity of manner for the palliation of foes; ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... act of humiliation. It must also be apparent that the whole system of penance is an unauthorized addition to the ordinances of primitive Christianity. Of such a system we do not find even a trace in the New Testament; and under its blighting influence, the religion of the Church gradually became little better than a species of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... in the presence of Charles IX. and his court, acknowledged his obligation to the devil, to whom he had sold himself, recounting the debaucheries of the Sabbath, the methods of bewitching, and the compositions of the unguents for blighting cattle. The astounding fact was also revealed that some twelve hundred accomplices were at large in different parts of the land. The provincial parliaments in the end of this and the greater part of the next century are unremittingly ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... wide-stretching and intricate web, woven for destruction, chances to touch any thread of the web, immediately that thread vibrates to the uttermost extremity. And man stands at the center of a vast web of wide-reaching influence, woven not for blighting, but for blessing, and every one of these out-running lines, whether related to friends near by or to citizens afar off, thrills and vibrates with secret influences; and there is no creature in God's universe so taxed as man, having a thousand dangers to avoid, and fulfilling ten thousand ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... friends the gypsies, who in all probability would have very genial manners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in the lane Maggie actually saw the little semi-circular black tent with the blue smoke rising before it, which was to be her refuge from all the blighting obloquy that had pursued her in civilized life. She even saw a tall female figure by the column of smoke, doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided the tea and other groceries; it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel more delight. But it was startling to find the gypsies in a lane, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Hollis exchanged few words during the ride to the Circle Bar. The heat—the eternal, scorching, blighting heat—still continued; the dust had become an almost unbearable irritation. During the trip to the ranch the two men came upon an arroyo over which Hollis had passed many times. At a water hole where he had often watered his horse they came upon ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of Temperance, also, the Woman-Suffrage movement early laid a blighting hand. As will be remembered, total abstinence was one of the doctrines to which many of the no-government, common-property, men and women were pledged. Western and Central New York has been the birthplace of some of the wildest and most destructive movements that our social life has witnessed. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... Van Siderens were a couple who subsisted, socially, on the fact that they had a studio. Van Sideren's pictures were chiefly valuable as accessories to the mise en scene which differentiated his wife's "afternoons" from the blighting functions held in long New York drawing-rooms, and permitted her to offer their friends whiskey-and-soda instead of tea. Mrs. Van Sideren, for her part, was skilled in making the most of the kind of atmosphere which a lay-figure and an easel create; and if at times she found the illusion ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... said Susy glibly. "People turned up: blighting bores that I wouldn't have dared to inflict on you." How easily the old familiar fibbing came ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung to the paddock. His twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which he had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman, and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called "the silly haw-haw" of some Englishmen, the "flapping cockatoory" of some English-women—Holly had none of that and Holly was his model. Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was concerned, Mr. Farraday made no reply, but turned to greet with fitting applause the great dancer, on whose account one of the American artistic bright lights had been extinguished forever, and in ten seconds was inwardly thanking Vandeford for extracting Miss Adair before she had felt the blighting smirch of the big number. While Mr. Farraday watched the exhibition before him, Mr. Vandeford was amusing the child of their joint solicitude by letting her look at the white lights. While waiting at the curb before ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... unmixed evil. Like the famed shield it had two sides. While it had its blighting effects it had its blessings. In bondage the negro was taught to speak the English language, and in childhood had the association of white children with their southern home training. They were taught two valuable lessons, industry and obedience, without ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... words that she would never forget. The names that he would use, the curses he would utter, spun deliriously in his head, and as he went on he found himself speaking his phrases aloud to the darkness, trying upon the silence the effect of each blighting sentence. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... energy, to comment on the false measure which people apply to the sufferings of others. Insensibility to wretchedness, or, as in the vocabulary of oppression it is called, content, is often a proof of nothing but that stupefaction of the faculties which is the natural result of long and blighting misery. A contented slave is a degraded man. His sorrow may be gone, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... as his eyes ran on from line to line. When he came to the end, where his mother's wavering signature stood above that of Isom Chase, his head dropped a little lower, his hands lay listlessly, as if paralyzed, on the paper under his eyes. A sudden dejection seemed to settle over him, blighting his ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... may have conduced to the comfort of others, nay, even to their convenience and luxury, but it never availed aught to my own appearance or circumstances; I went on, like that unhappy-looking tree, decaying in the trunk and blighting in the branches, and yielding up the produce of a liberal education and an active nature to the public, but reaping for my own portion only misfortune and disappointment; I had sprung up in the wilderness of the world, and I was left to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... Greeks. All their splendid work for civilization ought not to have wholly blinded us to the fact of their great and terrible sin against the variety of life. It is a remarkable fact that while the Jews have long ago been rebelled against and accused of blighting the world with a stringent and one-sided ethical standard, nobody has noticed that the Greeks have committed us to an infinitely more horrible asceticism—an asceticism of the fancy, a worship of one aesthetic type alone. Jewish severity had at least common-sense as its basis; it ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... the reaper Take the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper Wails manhood in glory. The autumn winds rushing Waft the leaves that are serest, But our flower was in flushing When blighting ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... not pollute territory now free; we know the utter folly of appealing to the morality or humanity of a pro-slavery party, where the rights of a black man are involved; but when you insist on taking slaves into a free Territory, and smiting the land with this blighting, withering curse, we plant ourselves on our constitutional rights, and say, thus far shall you go, ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins
... vernal daughter of Demeter. Demeter then wanders among men, and is hospitably received by Celeus, King of Eleusis. Baffled in her endeavour to make his son immortal, she demands a temple, where she sits in wrath, blighting the grain. She is reconciled by the restoration of her daughter, at the command of Zeus. But for a third of the year Persephone, having tasted a pomegranate seed in Hades, has to reign as Queen of the Dead, beneath the earth. Scenes from this tale ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... state of hopeless misery and sorrow, at his loss, having no sympathy with him in his new and blessed abode, and in his more exalted employments and purer enjoyments, would he not rather bless God, more ardently, that he was so quickly removed from such chilling, blighting earth-born influences as she might ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... talk and admiration of the gay capital, although women of superior physical attractions rendezvous there. Nothing blemished her appearance; no excesses, no indulgements, not even bearing a son had a blighting effect. Unfortunately for the dissevered artist, she had been his model for the most renowned of his works and her name was ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... window pane. Faster, faster, like metallic clicks of a speeding-up machine, the sleet rattles for a little while, and lo! where are the leaves, the flowers, of yesterday! Thus did the Colonel age at this quick approach of blighting cold which the optimism of his nature was impotent to withstand. Yet he was still unwilling to give up the fight. Jeb was afraid, not a coward! There lay a vast difference between these, ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... had passed since Sir Wilfred had paid that ill-omened visit to the Grange, and yet some subtle mysterious change had passed over Margaret. It was as though some blighting influence had swept over her; her face was pale, and her eyes were swollen and dim as though with a night's weeping, and the firm beautiful mouth ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sea, Wave against wave as a sword, Clamour of currents, and foam, Rains making ruin on earth, Winds that wax ravenous and roam As wolves in a wolfish horde; Fruits growing faint in the tree, And blind things dead in their birth Famine, and blighting of corn, When thy time was ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... speak soberly. Discuss the matter.—Yes, my hand, but I must have my wits. Leave me free to use them till we choose our path. Let it be the brains between us, as far as it can. You ask me to join my fate to yours. It signifies a sharp battle for you, dear friend; perhaps the blighting of the most promising life in England. One question is, can I countervail the burden I shall be, by such help to you as I can afford? Burden, is no word—I rake up a buried fever. I have partially lived it down, and instantly I am covered with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there are also occasional showers, but the weather upon the whole is clear and pleasant. The days gradually become warmer, and the blighting north-west winds are to be apprehended. The sea and land breezes again resume their full sway. The thermometer at sun-rise varies from 60 degrees to 65 degrees, and at noon is frequently ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... came out, strong and warm, and the atmosphere was moist. Your horse, that old white horse which has been on the ranch so many years, was impatiently fighting flies. Though you are not any kinder to horseflesh than you are to human beings who come within your blighting influence, you took the saddle off the animal. Perhaps the horse had caught his foot in a stirrup as he kicked at a ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... crisis with which she did not know how to cope or to bear. The world could never be blacker for her than it was when she clung sobbing to the little sorrel pony's thick neck that morning. The future looked utterly cheerless and impossible to endure. She had not learned that no tragedy is so blighting that there is not a way out—a way which the sufferer makes himself, which comes to him, or into which he is forced. Nothing stays as it is. But it appeared to Susie that life could never be ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... of all on earth: 'So flourishes and fades majestic man. 'Fair is the bud his vernal morn brings forth, 'And fostering gales awhile the nursling fan. 'O smile, ye heavens, serene; ye mildews wan, 'Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime, 'Nor lessen of his life the little span. 'Borne on the swift, though silent, wings of Time, 'Old-age comes on apace ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... for which she did penance whenever her madonna loveliness, consummated by the white robe and veil of her novitiate, tempted her to one of the little mirrors in the pupil's dormitory, was powerless to check the blighting flow. There had been moments when she had argued that her vanity had its rights, for had it not played its part in weaning her from the world?—that wicked world of San Francisco, whose very breath, accompanying her family on their monthly visits to Benicia, made her cross herself and pray ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... we have the origins of the doctrine of the Fall. Right through Christian history the tendency has run to look upon the world as the ruins of a divine plan marred by man's perversity and self-will. It is time we got rid of it, for it has had a blighting, deadening influence upon hopeful endeavour for the good of the race. It is not integral to Christianity, for Jesus never said a word about it and did not even allude to it indirectly. It implies a view of the nature and dealings of God with men which is unethical and untrue. Surely, if God ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, trembling at ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... tender mind, and nurtured with its strength, it assumes the tenacity of a first principle. But it is altogether erroneous. It is the product of the selfish heart. No sentiment is more fertile in covetousness, or more blighting to that generous humanity, which it is the first object of the Christian to cherish. It is a sentiment grovelling in its tendency, bowing multitudes, it is feared, even of professedly good men, to a species of slavery, over ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... gloomy Erinnys, who combin'd to throw A strong delusion o'er my mind, that day I robb'd Achilles of his lawful prize. What could I do? a Goddess all o'er-rul'd, Daughter of Jove, dread Ate, baleful pow'r, Misleading all; with lightest step she moves, Not on the earth, but o'er the heads of men, With blighting touch; and many hath caus'd to err. E'en Jove, the wisest deem'd of Gods and men, In error she involv'd, when Juno's art By female stratagem the God deceiv'd, When in well-girdled Thebes Alcmena lay In travail ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Company, to the last few years, when he had come to be regarded almost superstitiously as the saviour of sinking properties, he had moved quietly, cautiously, and unswervingly in one direction. The blighting panic of ten years before had hardly touched him, so softly had he ventured, and so easy was it for him to return to his little deals and his diet of crumbs. They were bad times, those years, alike for rich and poor, for Northerner and Southerner; but in the midst ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... not be able to vanquish. Why then hath that Jishnu endued with great strength been subject to death? Oh, why doth that Dhananjaya, relying on whom we had hitherto endured all this misery, lie on the ground blighting[66] all my hopes! Why have those heroes, those mighty sons of Kunti, Bhimasena and Dhananjaya, came under the power of the enemy,—those who themselves always slew their foes, and whom no weapons could resist! Surely, this vile heart of mine must be made of adamant, since, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... presents the aspect of a tree closely trimmed, and with only a few twigs left at the very top. And when all his children are sent away, his family presents the aspect of a trunk without branch, shoot, twig or foliage, standing alone in an open field. This is unnatural, blighting to much of the comfort and cheerfulness of the parental abode, and is not the example which it is desirable to hold up before the eyes of the heathen. One important reason, then, why a missionary should have a family, is lost ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... sings as if from his watchman's height He saw, this blighting day, The far vales break into colour and light From the banners and ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... President of the Board gave the same energy and attention to consular squabbles as to the reorganization of a national-fighting force, was almost daily engaged in a fierce clandestine struggle to maintain even his modest position. Jealousy, which flourishes in Peking like the upas tree, was for ever blighting his schemes and blocking his plans. He had been brought to Peking to be tied up; he was constantly being denounced; and even his all powerful patroness, the old Empress Dowager, who owed so much to him, suffered from constant premonitions that the end was fast approaching, and that with ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... woke up, for he saw that he was in evil case. The spirit of the British raj was falling like a blight and a pestilence upon the means by which he had lived, drying up the fountains of religious revenue and slowly but surely blighting the luxuriance of that pious liberality which always took the form of feeding holy men. He found that he must work for his bread whether he liked it or not, and the only implement of secular work that would not soil his priestly hand was the pen. And this was already ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... (1874); she proposed to him, but his heart being pre-engaged he rejected her; and in consequence his earthly bride was smitten sick and died, and the hand of the goddess fell heavily on Siva himself, thwarting all his schemes and blighting his fortunes and possessions, until at last he gave himself up to her. She then possessed him and caused him to prosper exceedingly, gifting him with supernatural power until his fame was noised abroad, and he was venerated as the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... in connection with this text; as for example, "Fools make a mock at sin" (Proverbs 14:9), for only a fool would. Better trifle with the pestilence and expose one's self to the plague than to discount the blighting effects of sin. And, again, "The soul that sinneth it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). From this clear statement of the word of God there is no escape. Or, again, "Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance" ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... enriched to a more than natural fertility. In two or three places grapevines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters already purple, and promising the richness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice. The blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees and vines; the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and too early intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay tropically there, even when less than temperate in every other region. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Court of Ivan, the first Grand Prince of Muscovy who assumed the Eastern title of Tzar, and who relieved Russia from the terrible invasions of the Tatars. This wild race for nearly four hundred years had roamed over the country, destroying and plundering all they met with, and blighting all the attempts at civilization that had begun to be made in the eleventh century. It was only when the Russians learnt the use of firearms that these savages were in any degree repressed. In the year 1551 the city of Kazan, upon the River Kazanka, a tributary of the Volga, was the last city that ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the office. Then, abruptly, as he went, "the job" seemed purposeless. Unrealized, hope had still persisted in his heart—the hope that, by some possible turn of circumstance, the shattered ideal of Esme Elliot would be revivified. The blighting of his love for her had been no more bitter, perhaps less so, than the realization which she had compelled in him of her lightness and unworthiness. Still, he had wanted her, longed for her, hoped ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a change had been observed in his demeanour. He had become gentle, almost amiable, and much more like his former self before the blighting influence of Bligh had fallen on him. Though he seldom laughed, he would chat pleasantly with his companions, as in days gone by, and frequently took pains to amuse the children. In particular, he began to go frequently for long walks in the ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... extensive knowledge, and his works bespeak a philosophical spirit; but their great and characteristic excellence proceeds from that glow of fresh and youthful admiration for everything that is amiable or august in the character of man, which, in Necker's heart, survived all the blighting vicissitudes it had passed through, combining, in a singular union, the fervour of the stripling with ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... of the King when the most memorable of his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771, at Brighton—a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded her widow's weeds, and was ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... gambled genteelly, and drank. It is not strange that in this icy atmosphere the growth of any young friend in the Christian life was stunted. Such influences are like the dreaded north wind that at times sweeps over the valleys of California in the spring and early summer, blighting and withering the vegetation it does not kill. The brightness of his hope was dimmed, and his soul knew the torture of doubt—a torture that is always keenest to him who allows himself to sink in the region of fogs after he has once stood upon the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... Though it loosens The kindly bonds that neighbours ought to keep, I'll take a summons out to curb the nuisance Unless you stop it. Can I laugh or weep For those who fling their challenge at the blighting gale, Who smile to hear the cannon's murderous croon, When you go on like a confounded nightingale ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... here, whose sun of happiness hath set on earth forever! How many whose tear-dimmed glance can descry naught in the far future but a weary waste—whose life-springs all are dried—whose up-springing hopes all withered by the blighting touch of Sorrow! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... And what disgrace his fall attends. The Court he quits to fly from Care, And seeks the peace of rural air: 50 His groves, his fields, amused his hours; He pruned his trees, he raised his flowers. But Care again his steps pursues; Warns him of blasts, of blighting dews, Of plund'ring insects, snails, and rains, And droughts that starved the laboured plains. Abroad, at home, the spectre's there: In vain we seek to fly from Care. At length he thus the ghost address'd: 'Since thou must be my constant guest, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... mentioned Cuba. Mr. Draper, however, decided that an inland journey would be best, and, inconvenient as it was, determined to travel as far as some of the cotton-growing states. After the usual busy preparations, they set off, the wife fully realizing that she was blighting in the bud her husband's projected speculations for a few weeks to come, and feeling that he was making what he considered ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... are not giving any particular attention to field work, but are working on these special problems. I think you all appreciate that progress of investigations on this kind of subjects is rather slow, and in the meantime the man who has his trees and his nurseries blighting is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... valley of sweet waters, were to know Earth paved like Heaven; and to seem such to me Even now what wants thy stream?—that it should Lethe be: * * * * * * * But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... faith of his kinsmen, half-stripped of his faith in himself. If he were to realize the constructive dreams of which he had last night so confidently prattled to Adrienne, he must lead his people from under the blighting shadow of the feud. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... weeping and for wailing, For bitter hail and blighting frost, For high hopes on the low earth trailing, For sweet joys missed, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... of drawing-room that such women might be expected to have, of the coldest grays and greens, with no individuality of decoration. The whole house was the same, cheerless and depressing even to those familiar with London in a November fog, but blighting to one who knew not London in any weather. Even the servants seemed cold, mechanical creatures, made of well-oiled steel or iron; and when Lady MacMillan had driven off to a hotel, Mary cried heartily in her own bleak room, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... feverish, full age—so full, and yet, my God, how empty!—in the wilderness of every man's soul, was not a voice heard crying out, prophesying the end? I know that a thought sometimes came to me, passing through my brain like lightning through the foliage of a tree; and in the quick, blighting fire of that intolerable thought, all hopes, beliefs, dreams, and schemes seemed instantaneously to shrivel up and turn to ashes, and drop from me, and leave me naked and desolate. Sometimes it came when I read a book of philosophy; or listened on a still, hot Sunday to a dull preacher—they were ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... As recreation it was blighting; and I said almost as much. Ma Pettengill was deaf to it, her gray head in its broad-brimmed hat sternly bowed in meditation as she wove to her horse's motion. Then I became aware that she talked to another; one who was not there. She said things I was sure ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... under pounding hoofs, a rude, powerful hand clapped round her waist, clutched deep and strong, and swung her aloft. She felt a heavy blow when the shoulder of the horse struck her, and then a wrenching of her arm as she was dragged up. A sudden blighting pain made sight ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... watched the slow change—slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... possession, was the inclosing a small triangular corner of one of the fields within a stone wall. The corner cut off—and which still remains cut off—was the "Goodman's Croft"—an offering to the Spirit of Evil, in order that he might abstain from ever blighting or damaging the rest of the farm. The clergyman of the parish, in lately telling me the circumstance, added, that my kinsman had been, he feared, far from acting honestly with Lucifer, after all, as the corner which he had cut off for the "Goodman's" share ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... and have pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the fair ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... know it was the general notion in your day that woman's physical constitution doomed her by its necessary effect to be sick, wretched, and unhappy, and that at most her condition could not be rendered more than tolerable in a physical sense. A more blighting blasphemy against Nature never found expression. No natural function ought to cause constant suffering or disease; and if it does, the rational inference is that something is wrong in the circumstances. The Orientals invented the myth of Eve and the apple, and the curse ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... rioted in its follies. Nationality had no soul, energy no lifesprings, progress no railroads to move onward. The honorable John, having conquered, and very modestly enthroned himself, was strong to maintain his centralizing power, from which point he would make effectual his blighting policy. Notwithstanding this, John would have us believe him world-wide in his kindness, desire his power made known to mankind in general, and stood ever ready to have his philanthropy and his tears spent ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... extinguished. The countries that suffered the greatest loss of their best citizenship received a check of more than a century's growth. The hand on the dial of progress was turned backward wherever the blighting inquisition was felt. Its blighting effects may yet be seen in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and other countries where the papacy exerts a controlling influence. Men, whose deeds are evil and they are unwilling ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger |
