"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hotel proprietor, was perhaps the solitary person who did not understand her. In vain he waited patiently, as the seasons opened and closed, for her to accede to his importunities to sell her property. There the old inn stood, a blot within the terraced grounds and clean-cut park, unsightly to his eyes, and the humorous butt of his patrons. But Nancy had made her plans when the new order of things was first suggested, and she turned her rugged face to the sandy Monk Road ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... write, but was a rough bookless man, his condition would be scarcely the more gracious, even if he were able to copy in his scrawl the fine Roman hand of the concealed poet. I am surprised that the Baconians have never made that point. Will's "copy" was almost without blot or erasion, the other actors were wont to boast. Really the absence of erasions and corrections is too easily explained on the theory that Will was NOT the author. Will merely copied the fair copies handed to him by the concealed poet. The ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... thou hast a few names in Sardis, that have not defiled their garments; and they will walk with me in white: for they are worthy. He, who overcometh, the same one will be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name from the book of life, but I will acknowledge his name before my Father, and before his angels. He, who hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... your modern cheap science, in ten volumes. Now I haven't a quiet moment to spare for drawing this morning; but I merely give the main relations of the petals, A, and blot in the wrinkles of one of the lower ones, B, Fig. 12; and yet in this rude sketch you will feel, I believe, there is something specific which could not belong to any other flower. But all proper description ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... method they will soon follow with intent interest into those pages that describe how Ingmar met at the prison door the girl for whose infanticide he was ethically responsible. He brings her back apparently to face disgrace and to blot the fair scutcheon of the Ingmarssons, but actually to earn the respect of the whole community voiced in the declaration of the Dean: "Now, Mother Martha, you can be proud of Ingmar! It's plain now he belongs to the old stock; so we must begin to ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... haunted me. She loved me; of this I now felt doubly assured, and the knowledge made my heart light, even while I dreaded the consequences to us both. To have won was much, even although hope of possession did not accompany the winning. Neither of us might ever again blot out those passionate words of love, nor forget the ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad and marching ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... reverence for nobility, which can only be the result of long-continued wealth and influence, could never be inspired by mere titles, especially of such an exotic and fantastic character.... The sanction of negro slavery was a deep blot in this boasted system.... The colonists, who felt perfectly at ease under their rude early regulations, were struck with dismay at the arrival of this philosophical fabric of polity."—Murray's America, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... cheques; so to the bank we went ('Two tens, and the rest in gold'), and thence straightway (by cab) to the place where you buy sealskin coats for middling old ladies. But ere the laugh was done the park would come through the map like a blot. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... out in a lawyer's office, with all the legal want of punctuation and unintelligible phraseology. It had been copied verbatim by the old Squire, and was no doubt a properly binding and effective will. Never before had he dwelt over it so tediously. He had feared lest a finger-mark, a blot, or a spark might betray his acquaintance with the deed. But now he was about to give it up and let all the world know that it had been in his hands. He felt, therefore, that he was entitled to read it, and that there was no longer ground to ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... so long a transmission, worked but mildly. Shakspere violated the unities; his plays were neither right comedies nor right tragedies; he had small Latin and less Greek; he wanted art and sometimes sense, committing anachronisms and Bohemian shipwrecks; wrote hastily, did not blot enough, and failed of the grand style. He was "untaught, unpractised in a barbarous age"; a wild, irregular child of nature, ignorant of the rules, unacquainted with ancient models, succeeding—when he did succeed—by happy accident and the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... at length to pity by his tears, We spare him. Priam bids the cords unbind, And thus with friendly words the captive cheers; 'Whoe'er thou art, henceforward blot from mind The Greeks, and leave thy miseries behind. Ours shalt thou be; but mark, and tell me now, What means this monster, for what use designed? Some warlike engine? or religious vow? Who planned the steed, and why? Come, quick, the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... dreadful horrors of that time and scene, are recalled before me with frightful vividness, and make me shudder even now, when I think of them. A life time was crowded into those few short hours, and death alone may blot out the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot the page—is honorable. With submission, sir, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... argu-mentatively. "Tom and I are gentlemen of the old school; we live by the code and 'Bob' is our joint property, in a way. Any man who aspires to the honor of—well, of even paying attentions to that girl must stand the acid test. There must be no blot upon his 'scutcheon." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Another glorious cloudless day is dawning in yellow and purple and soon the sun over the eastern peak will blot out the blue peak shadows and make all the vast white ice prairie sparkle. I slept well last night in the middle of the icy sea. The wind was cold but my sleeping-bag enabled me to lie neither warm nor intolerably cold. My three-months cough is gone. Strange ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... called Suparvan in heaven.[163] Thou art he who grants the power of bearing or upholding all things.[164] Thou art thyself capable of bearing all things. Thou art fixed and steady (without being at all unstable). Thou art white or pure (being, as thou art, without any stain or blot). Thou bearest the trident that is competent to destroy (all things).[165] Thou art the grantor of bodies or physical forms unto those that constantly revolve in the universe of birth and death. Thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... who dragged the bodies of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation? Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into question, together with the titles of the whole line of our kings, that great body of our statute law which passed under those ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... despair." "A Christian's assurance," says Fraser of Brea, "though it does not firstly flow from his holiness, yet is ever after proportionable to his holy walking. Faith is kept in a pure conscience. Sin is like a blot of ink fallen upon our evidence. This I found to be a truth." "It was the speech of one to me," says Thomas Shepard of New England, "next to the donation of Christ, no mercy like this, to deny assurance long; and why? For if the Lord had not, I should ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place...." Beloved Pan! My knowledge of Pan was of the vaguest, and yet more than once or twice did I utter that prayer wandering alone the playing field, or watching the evening mist roll down the Thames Valley and blot up the elm trees, thick and white, clinging to the day like a fleece. The third Iliad again I have never forgotten, nor the twenty-fourth; nor the picture of the two gods, like vulture birds, watching the battle from the dead tree. Nor, again, do I ever ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... tragedy, Stratford (1837), {297} was written for Macready, and put on at Covent Garden Theater, but without pronounced success. He has written many fine dramatic poems, like Pippa Passes, Colombo's Birthday, and In a Balcony; and at least two good acting plays, Luria and A Blot in the Scutcheon. The last named has recently been given to the American public, with Lawrence Barrett's careful and intelligent presentation of the leading role. The motive of the tragedy is somewhat strained and fantastic, but it is, notwithstanding, very effective on the stage. It gives one ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... repenting him of Man deprav'd, Griev'd at his heart, when looking down he saw The whole Earth fill'd with violence, and all flesh Corrupting each thir way; yet those remoov'd, Such grace shall one just Man find in his sight, That he relents, not to blot out mankind, And makes a Covenant never to destroy The Earth again by flood, nor let the Sea Surpass his bounds, nor Rain to drown the World 890 With Man therein or Beast; but when he brings Over the Earth a Cloud, will therein set His ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... sanction such a crime as that are not fit to live. I will not leave one stone of that prison standing upon another. It is a blot on the face of the earth, and I will ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... and how are ye's onyhow? I take my pin in hand to till ye's I am yurs, in good hilth and sphirits; and it's hopin' ye's the same, truly! The pulsitations uv my heart are batin' wid the love I bears ye's, darlin' Katy! the fairest flower—niver mind the blot—that iver bloomed an the family tree uv Phil Doolan uv Tipperary, dead and gone this siven years, bliss his sowl,—and how are ye's? An' by the same token that I loves ye's much, I sind by the ixpriss, freight paid, a ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... my inner heart do I approve and embrace this our close, but unharassing way of life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or dog's-ear. You will much oblige me ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... besides Wile McCager, he met Caleb Wiley and several others. At first, they received him sceptically, but they knew of the visit to Purvy's store, and they were willing to admit that in part at least he had erased the blot from his escutcheon. Then, too, except for cropped hair and a white skin, he had come back as he had gone, in homespun and hickory. There was nothing highfalutin in his manners. In short, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... of the shame of it! The men he had drunk with, the women he had laughed with, the children he had played with, all ringed round him to see him die. And there he would hang till his bones dropped, a shame and a blot on the clean face of the earth, blackened by the heat, drenched white by the rain, twirled and swung by every breath of wind, while the pies and the crows made thimble-pits of his face, a waste rag of humanity. Come ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... which did not become him. "It is not good to wear," said a courtier, "but it is good to put on." The king put the robe on him.—A bore visited a sick man. "What ails thee?" he asked. "Thy presence," said the sufferer.—A man of high lineage abused a wise man of lowly birth. "My lineage is a blot on me," retorted a sage, "thou art a blot on thy lineage."—To another who reviled him for his lack of noble ancestry, he retorted, "Thy noble line ends with thee, with me mine begins."—Diogenes and Dives were attacked by ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... necessary and profitable for us to remember Him; whereby we are strengthened in faith, confirmed in hope and made ardent in love. For as long as we live on earth our lot is such that the evil spirit and all the world assail us with joy and sorrow, to extinguish our love for Christ, to blot out our faith, and to weaken our hope. Wherefore we sorely need this sacrament, in which we may gain new strength when we have grown weak, and may daily exercise ourselves into the strengthening and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... this sacrament can only have a retrospective virtue. Hence he concludes that we must appease God, whose wrath has been aroused by sin, through performances of our own, that is, through offerings that bear the character of "satisfactions." In other words we must blot out transgressions by specially meritorious deeds in order thus to escape eternal punishment. These deeds Cyprian terms "merita," which either possess the character of atonements, or, in case there are no sins to be expiated, entitle the Christian to a special reward (merces).[272] ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... settlers, while the maintenance of the convicts necessitated the expenditure of L80,000 to L90,000 a year of Imperial money in the colony. With these aids, the settlers kept their heads above water, till, owing to the Victorian outcry against what was termed 'a blot' on the already rather shady 'escutcheon 'of Australia, the immigration was stopped in 1868. Since then the convicts have dwindled down from 5,000 to 500. Happily the discovery of new pastoral lands occurred almost simultaneously with the cessation of convict ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... in the humbler classes of the community, to which reference has just been made, is surely a blot on our social economy. It is seemingly easier to girdle the globe with a wire, than to make sure that every child in Her Majesty's dominions shall receive the simplest elements of education. Within the sphere of the mechanic or the chemist, flights ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot of light in the middle and all around in the corners—shadows. We sit here in the blot of light—a fair mark. But what's going on in the shadows, Mr.—What's your name? Eh? What's going on in ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... expurgated edition has been published by Dr. Bowdler, demanding a far greater circulation than it may have as yet received. Praise, then, be awarded to all instructors of youth who will promote such expurgation from the classics as will blot out their immorality! ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... the Master with gentle sarcasm. He had learnt in his long life to economise anger. But he frowned as he dipped a pen in the ink-pot and made the correction; for he was dainty about his manuscripts as about all the furniture of life, and a blot or an erasure annoyed him. "Brother Copas," he murmured, "never ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... blackest and most shameful blot on the face of the earth, the grave the most repulsive of scandals, drawing the trench of its corruption and stain round the ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... and quickly, "God knows that I would cut my hand off to be able to blot that all out of my boyhood. Those things mean nothing to a man, Ju, and they meant less to me than to most men. Women can't understand that, but if you knew how men regard it, you would realize that very few can bring their wives as ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... scroll there came a blot, A space of time remembered not; When sense awoke, clouds late aglow With sunset fire, looked drifts ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... passed. They neared the City, the wall growing as they walked, rising higher and higher until it seemed to blot out the sky itself. A vast wall, a wall of eternal stone that had felt the wind and sun for centuries. A group of Martian soldiers were standing at the entrance, the single passage-gate hewn into the rock, leading to the City. As each person went through the soldiers examined him, ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... instance. One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at last he could ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... How shall we then reconcile him with himself? He would say that Christ is not bodily present in the sacrament after a bodily manner, but he is bodily present after a spiritual manner. Why should I blot paper with such a vanity, which implieth a contradiction, bodily and not bodily, spiritually and ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... with clumps of sagebrush. It had rained a few days before—the last rain of many, it chanced—and there were damp spots in the road in places and the grass and the sage were fresh in color. Meadow-larks were trilling, and the whole scene was one of peace—provided the beholder could blot out the memory of the tenantless clay stretched ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... despises all the dwellers in Hindoostan—with the exception of the Sikh, whom he hates as cordially as the Sikh hates him. The Hindu loathes Sikh and Afghan, and the Rajput—that's a little lower down across this yellow blot of desert—has a strong objection, to put it mildly, to the Maratha who, by the way, poisonously hates the Afghan. Let's go North a minute. The Sindhi hates everybody I've mentioned. Very good, we'll take less warlike races. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... parallel. I recalled the unhappy scenes I had witnessed around the railway terminus at Berlin under similar conditions, but that was paradise to the field at Sennelager Camp on the fateful night of September 11. It appeared as if the Almighty Himself had turned upon us at last, and was resolved to blot us from the face of the earth. We were transformed into a condition bordering on frigidity from rain-soaked clothes clinging to bodies reduced to a state of low vitality and empty stomachs. Had we been in good health I doubt whether the storm and exposure would ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... gone. Would it soften the father's heart and teach him the truth of Pascal's proverb that "The heart has reasons of its own that the reason knows not of;" or would it blot out the last remnant of faith, and leave Mr. Gear without a God as he had been without a Bible and without ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... be happy is to think of the things you have, and not of the things you have not. A man was once told that Caesar was going to cause him great unhappiness, and he replied that if Caesar could blot out the sun with a blanket he might make him unhappy. But if he had the sun to shine upon him, he would still be happy. We all have the sun to shine upon us, and other things a-plenty to be happy over, if we will just count them up. Let us not be like the little boy crying ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... condescending as he spoke to me, for all the laugh that showed the white teeth under his drooping black mustache. Wrong as it seemed, I didn't like him any more than I afterward liked the Sargent portrait of him, which was really an echo of my own first impression, though often and often I've tried to blot out that first unfair estimate of a real man of genius. There's so much in the Child's Garden of Verse that I love; there's so much in the man's life that demands admiration, that it seems wrong not to capitulate to his charm. But when one's own family are one's biographers ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... point that the proceedings were interrupted. A new party came into the open, their utilitarian Trade tunics made a drab blot as they threaded their way in a compact group through the throng of Salariki. I-S men! So they ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... beyond praise than in the "Disputa." The whole design has but one fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective, is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot believe that Raphael added it of his own motion; rather it must have been placed there at the dictation of some meddling cardinal or learned humanist who, knowing nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space should not be filled with ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... industrial but of social importance outweigh all others; and these two questions most emphatically come in the category of those which affect in the most far-reaching way the home life of the Nation. The horrors incident to the employment of young children in factories or at work anywhere are a blot on our civilization. It is true that each. State must ultimately settle the question in its own way; but a thorough official investigation of the matter, with the results published broadcast, would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to purle about the shaved chin and lips (which were also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two human beings well ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which heats upon a throne, And blackens every blot. ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... deed threatens to blot out the whole of a good life (in one's own case or in the estimate of the world) she should be brave enough to live it down. One should put her personality into everything she does and "do" things worth while. The world ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... time are scattering fast. Pont Audemer is being modernised, and many an interesting old building is doomed to destruction; whilst cotton-mills and steam-engines, and little white villas amongst the trees, black coats and parisian bonnets, all tend to blot out the memories of mediaeval days. Let us make the most of the place whilst there is time—and let us, before we pass on to Lisieux, add one picture of Pont Audemer in the early morning—a picture which every year ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... no relaxation in the firm but just execution of the law now in operation, and I should be glad to approve such further discreet legislation as will rid the country of this blot ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of me says that she does," said Aunt Deborah softly. "You see, dears, even Heaven can't blot out the lovely things of earth! At least, that's how it ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... same thing was probably going on all over England—and they would no doubt develop into respectable and virtuous citizens; but the spectacle of their joy was one that had no single agreeable feature. These loutish, rowdy, loud-talking, intolerable young men were a blot upon the sweet day, the pleasant countryside. Probably, Hugh thought, there was something sexual beneath it all, and the insolence of the group was in some dim way concerned with the instinct for impressing and captivating the female heart. Perhaps the more demure ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the title. It is probably in connection with the fact that the Emperor Maurice had supported the Patriarch John in his claim of equality with the Pope of Rome, that the explanation is to be sought of a circumstance which remains the chief blot on Gregory's fame. Maurice had given him little help against the Lombards, and had in various ways seemed to oppose or actually opposed Gregory in some of his reforms. When, therefore, Phocas murdered Maurice and usurped his ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... injustice remaining is that the relief of divorce is more accessible to men than to women. This obviously is a law made by men for their own advantage, but its existence is a blot on the fair fame of English justice, and also of English morality, that a husband's infidelity should be so lightly regarded. Let us hope the day is not far off when the conditions of divorce will be exactly the same ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... piteous moan, 'Fool, fool! why strivest thou in vain? Thou hast deceived thyself: thou art no better than any brainless ass that plods through life.' And then the world grows so dull, and one's life seems so worthless, that one would fain blot it out ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... in the immediate cause of the war; we know what nation has that blot to wipe out; but for fifty years or so we heeded not the rumblings of the distant drum, I do not mean by lack of military preparations; and when war did come we told youth, who had to get ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... a general flood, (So long by watchful ministers withstood,) Shall deluge all; and avarice creeping on, Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun. 409 POPE: Moral Essays, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... blot, sin: acc. sg. him be-beorgan ne con wom (cannot protect himself from evil or from the evil strange orders, etc.; wom wogum? crooked?), 1748; instr. pl. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... Factory. Not that it is such an unpleasant place—for I spent two years very happily there—but simply (to give a poetical reason, and explain its character in one sentence) because it is a monstrous blot on a swampy spot, with a partial view of ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... things should also be done in score-play competitions. If the hole is guarded by a bunker, and you have reason to fear that you cannot carry that bunker, it is in these circumstances a thousand times better to play short than to take the risk of putting your ball into it and making a serious blot upon your card. Similarly, when on the putting green, and there is a long distance between your ball and the hole, bring your mind to realise that it is really of less importance that you should hole out in one stroke than that you should ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... indeed, compels us to endure the evils of slavery for a time. While it continues it is a blot on our national character; and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away, and earnestly looks for the means by which the necessary object may be best obtained. And until ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... sky, and hands, as if in ejaculation, were waved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatal blurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. The approaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered, the size of a shield, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from its edges. The faces of the multitude were justified. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... twenty, he painted his first considerable landscape, a tract of moorland on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. This was his native ground. At Sowerby Bridge, a manufacturing town, which, like many others in the same part of England, makes a blot of ugliness on country in itself sternly beautiful, his father had settled as the manager of certain rope-works. Mr. Mallard's state was not unprosperous, for he had invented a process put in use by his employers, and ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... and he saw wrath flash into the general's face as he recognized the enemy. "Shoot them—shoot them—" he shouted. But the gray line vomited its smoke first, and the boy felt his foot afire. The general dropped from his horse, and as the boy looked down, he saw a red blot coming out on his instep. In the same instant he saw Captain Ward rush to the falling general, and saw the bodyguard gather about him, and then the blackness came over the child and he fell. He did not see them bear General Lyon's body into the brush, nor hear Ward moan his sorrow. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... of maturity did I perceive that these conflicts, which, long after, I heard execrated in certain quarters as a blot upon Prussian history, rather deserved the warmest gratitude of the nation. During those beautiful spring days, no matter by what hands—among them were the noblest and purest—were sown the seeds of the dignity and freedom of public ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain of curses from ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... not know how her aunt Eva and her uncle Jim were getting into greater difficulties every day, but she was too sensitive not to be aware of disturbances which were not in direct contact with herself. She never forgot what she had overheard that night Lloyd's had shut down; it was always like a blot upon the face of her happy consciousness of life. She often overheard, as then, those loud, dissenting voices of her father and his friends in the sitting-room, after she had gone to bed; and then, too, Abby Atkins, who was not spared any knowledge of hardship, told her a good deal. "It's ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... A great blot now came after the "Harrington," and wiping it up with the unresisting Richard's ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Whenever the Colors and you parade! Wherever that O. D. uniform Shall gladden the eyes of we useless men We can't forget who is meeting the storm— That some of you won't come home again! You went.... We talked.... God blot the past! ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... Cecile and Madame Arnaud. They brought him messages of comfort. Cold comfort. Futile condolence. Those who talk about suffering know it not. The letters only brought him an echo of the voice that was gone.... He had not the heart to reply: and the letters ceased. In his despondency he tried to blot out his tracks. To disappear.... Suffering is unjust: all those who had loved him dropped out of his existence. Only one creature still existed: the man who was dead. For many weeks he strove to bring him to life again: he used to talk to him, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... fault or your virtue, Eusebius, that you positively love these errors of human nature? You ever say, you have no sympathy with or for a perfect monster—if such there be—which you deny, and aver that if you detect not the blot, it is but too well covered; and by that very covering, for aught you know to the contrary, may be all blot. You would have catalogued this good lady among your "right estimable and lovely women!" and if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... feigned: and, lastly, that when the ambitious plans of d'Ossuna, partially discovered before their time by the Spanish government, might have compromised Venice also if they had been fully elucidated; in order to blot out each syllable of evidence which could bear, even indirectly, upon the transaction, so far as she was concerned, it was thought expedient to remove every individual who had been even unwittingly connected with it. So fully was this abominable wickedness perpetrated, that both the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field and his feet to the foe! And leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to heaven from the deathbed ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... touched, and in a whisper, "what pity that so gallant a gentleman should leave a rebel's blot ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (i.e. Law) in its smallest point, is himself guilty of departing therefrom. He who should give breath stifleth him that could breathe. The land that ought to give repose driveth repose away. He who should divide in fairness hath become a robber. He who should blot out the oppressor giveth him the command to turn the town into a waste of water. He who should drive away evil himself ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... affair. You, my dear friend, are well aware how I do hate Salzburg, not only on account of the injustice shown to my father and myself there, which was in itself enough to make us wish to forget such a place, and to blot it out wholly from our memory. But do not let us refer to that, if we can contrive to live respectably there. To live respectably and to live happily, are two very different things; but the latter ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... and composure, 'is one of the blessings, Edward, with which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland: her own jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day or other—when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies—they will blot it from their records, as levelling them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head—they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. I hope they will set it on the Scotch gate though, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and true Patriot, Who often wept for Zion, and felt pain For her great sins; who, when God's wrath waxed hot Against his country, ne'er her weal forgot, But prayed and wrestled with the Lord of Hosts, If, peradventure, he her crimes would blot From out his Book; and yet he never boasts Of love to country, as some do who ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... would seem, are that patriot's wages— Only to hear that the battle is o'er, Only to blot from our history's pages Memories of ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... must pass—fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... fortune to die before the fall of Oswego his name would have been handed down to future times as a perfect mirror of chivalry—a knight without fear and without reproach. It is sad to think that a career hitherto without a blot should have been marred with repeated acts of cruelty and breaches of faith. On both counts of this indictment the Marquis of Montcalm must be pronounced guilty; and in view of his conduct at Oswego, and afterwards at Fort William Henry, the only conclusion at which the ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... pleasant thus to chat with the angels, and I'll take good care not to quarrel with them. 'Tis beautiful to hear Good and Evil speak together with such humanity." The picture disclosed by the opening of the curtain is a mass of clouds, with Mefistofele, like a dark blot, standing on a corner of his cloak in the shadow. The denizens of the celestial regions are heard but never seen. A trumpet sounds the fundamental theme, which is repeated in full harmony after instruments of gentler voice have sung a hymn-like ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... dares to deny A resolute people the right to be free? Let him blot out forever one star from the sky, Or curb with his fetter the wave ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... battle—for Barcy alone of the towns in sight from here seems to be practically destroyed—which is the most painful, it is the devastation of the German occupation, with its deliberate and filthy defilement of the houses, which defies words, and will leave a blot for all time on the records of the race so vile-minded as to have achieved it. The deliberate ingenuity of the nastiness is its most debasing feature. At Penchard, where the Germans only stayed twenty-four hours, many people were obliged to make bonfires of ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... act has always been regarded as a blot upon the fame of Olaf Triggvison, but Olaf's fanaticism led him to believe that praise rather than blame was due to him for thus punishing the enemies of God. Moreover, this man Rand had been the terror of all peaceful men. He had laid waste many villages, and made human sacrifices to ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... of Africans ought to be left to the States—and the President. He thinks that as Cuba is the only spot in the civilized world where the African slave-trade is permitted, its cession to us would put an end to that blot on civilization. An end to it, indeed! Think of it!" His voice rose as he spoke. "End slavery and you end that accursed trade. And to think that a woman like Ann Penhallow should think it right!" Neither John nor ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... I did forget that at the moment," answered Maxton, while the blood mounted to his forehead. "It is the foulest blot upon my country's honour; but I at least am guiltless of upholding the accursed institution, as, also, are thousands of my countrymen. I feel assured, however, that the time is coming when that blot shall ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... horseman in the saddle, his lips moving with relish, his eyes glued on the minister; the doctrine was clearly to his mind. Charles Stewart, on the other hand, was half-asleep, and looked harassed and pale. As for Simon Fraser, he appeared like a blot, and almost a scandal, in the midst of that attentive congregation, digging his hands in his pockets, shifting his legs, clearing his throat, rolling up his bald eyebrows and shooting out his eyes to right and left, now with a yawn, now with a secret smile. At times ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not have believed all that work could have been done in two hours," he said, getting up from his chair. "Orderly and well written, and without a blot. The King's secretary could not have done better! Well, now you have seen the list of sales for a day, and I take it that be about the average, so if you come three times a week you will always have ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... I can fold up this letter, till that ugly D is dry in the last line but one. Do not you see it? O Lord, I am loth to leave you, faith—but it must be so, till the next time. Pox take that D; I will blot ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... behold with pain The hostile Britons hovering o'er the main, Lament the strife that bids two worlds engage, And blot their annals with fraternal rage; Two worlds in one broad state! whose bounds bestride, Like heaven's blue arch, the vast Atlantic tide, By language, laws and liberty combined, Great nurse of thought, example to mankind. Columbia rears her warning ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... has been many times invaded, the Welsh have never been conquered. Powerful tribes, like the Romans, Saxons and Normans, have tried to overwhelm them. Even when English and German kings attempted to crush their spirit and blot out their language and literature, the Welsh ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... overlooking Waterloo Street was, as far as I can remember, taken up by private suites. The palm court was built on the roof of the first floor and was a very great improvement to this part of the hotel as it removed from sight what had always been a blot and an eyesore. After the abolition of the shops, tiffin-rooms were established on the Waterloo Street side, which have since been converted into ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... had done what he flattered himself was rather a clever thing. He had made up a second packet of papers identical in outside appearance with the first. The inscription, the blue envelope, the red elastic band, and even a blot in the lower left-hand corner had been exactly reproduced. Inside, of course, were only sheets of blank paper. It was his intention to change the packets and to let Garvey see him put the sham one into the bag. In case of violence the bag would be the point of attack, and he intended ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... "In the dust I write My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears." Yet why evoke the spectres of black night To blot the sunshine of exultant years? Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden? 5 Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden, And wail life's discords into ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... Opinions and Notions as to make it thrive with true piety, Godlike purity and spiritual understanding"; and in a very happy passage, he reminds us that there are other ways of propagating religion besides writing books: "They are not alwaies the best Men who blot the most paper; Truth is not so {318} voluminous nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our Bookes doe. Those minds are not alwaies the most chaste that are the most parturient ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... reflexion, that should cause the Ethiopians great blacknesse. And the most probable cause to my judgement is, that this blackenesse proceedeth of some naturall infection of the first inhabitants of that Countrey, and so all the whole progenie of them descended, are still polluted with the same blot of infection. Therefore it shall not bee farre from our purpose, to examine the first originall of these blacke men, and howe by a lineall discent they haue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... masquerade, born of his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature; and he himself, with his rationality and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident—a blot of black upon a ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the first to notice a dark blot some twenty feet out on the ice. He rushed toward it with a yell of delight, followed by Hamp and ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... being wasted. Morty wasn't hurt, either, and if there were ever two people well out of a bad scrape it was he and I. He had been so frightened about me he was crying; and I guess his tears were like the recording angel's, because they seemed to blot out all the old quarrel between us. At least, when we got up and began to limp home it seemed to me I didn't mind anything so long as he was close to me. He was shameless enough to kiss me right before the nurse-girl, who ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... Framheim undisturbed and untroubled, and lived, be it said, not as animals, but as civilized human beings, who had always within their reach most of the good things that are found in a well-ordered home. Darkness and cold reigned outside, and the blizzards no doubt did their best to blot out most traces of our activity, but these enemies never came within the door of our excellent dwelling; there we shared quarters with light and warmth and comfort. What wonder was it that this spot exercised ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... story of exclusion is a blot upon the American national honor, and the most mystifying part of it is that intelligent people, the best people, are not a party to it. The railroads want the Chinese laborer. The great ranches of the West need him; people want cooks at $15 and $20 a month instead ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... sons, Edina! social, kind, With open arms the stranger hail; Their views enlarged, their liberal mind, Above the narrow, rural vale; Attentive still to sorrow's wail, Or modest merit's silent claim; And never may their sources fail! And never envy blot their name!" ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... varies the character of the range, exposed to every vicissitude of temperature and climate. White billows of fog beat upon the mountain tops like a silent sea, and blot out the landscape with an impenetrable veil. Thunder echoes through the rocky caves with incessant reverberations, and rain settles down in a drenching flood. The chill of the wooden Hotel penetrates to the bone; ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... to my purposes To wake a tumult on the sapphire ocean, That in this unknown form I might at length Wipe out the blot of the discomfiture Sustained upon the mountain, and assail 75 With a new war the soul of Cyprian, Forging the instruments of his destruction Even from his love and from his wisdom.—O Beloved earth, dear mother, in thy bosom I seek a refuge from the monster who 80 Precipitates itself ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... has upset me." For the first time he turns his head and regards her with a steady gaze. "I particularly object to your doing anything of the kind. It would be a disgrace, a blot upon our name forever. None of our family has ever been forced to work for daily bread. And I would have you remember you are ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... still spiritually alive. But the corruption of spiritual death worked until man was so far down in the filth of his moral putrefaction that the only way God could save the race from extinction was to save the one family that had accepted spiritual life from Him, and blot the rest of the race out ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... the crimes that had been wrought against them—to spread abroad the fire of their indignation, the story of their ravished womanhood and broken families all over France. They watched him leaden-eyed and wept softly. To forget, to forget, that was all that they wanted—to blot out all the past. This man with the top-hat and the evening-dress, he hadn't suffered—how could he understand? They didn't want to remember; with those flaxen-haired children against their breasts the one boon they craved was forgetfulness. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... temple had come then to blot out the tragedy, but in my ears rang the single shriek as the knife fell. Then silence, and when the smoke had cleared, the revolving temple had shut off all sight or sound from the chamber in which the three beautiful women ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Trebizond—mount, I say, behind me—in one short hour is pursuit and enquiry far behind—a new world of pleasure opens to thee—to me a new career of fame. Let them speak the doom which I despise, and erase the name of Bois-Guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! I will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare to cast on ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... into the hands of statesmen, men distinguished among a thousand parties for clear integrity, disinterested virtue, and spotless fame. This, my lord, would be a field worthy of your lordship's prowess. Could you but gain the interested, could you eternize rapacity, and preserve inviolate the blot of the English name, what laurels would not your ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... for a season, thereafter withdrawing. None shall injure the temple. Were not your hearts bitter against him, and when he spoke did ye not soften? He hath no inheritance of Paradise, but God shall blot him out in His own time. Bismillah! God cool his resting-place in that day. Donovan Pasha's hand is for Egypt, not against her. We are brothers, though the friendship of man is like the shade of the acacia. Yet while the friendship lives, it lives. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... men of the world, to whom human nature is as an open book. What do you expect me to do? What do you expect me to say? What more did you think to call forth from me when you came here this morning? Do me justice. Am I not going as far as a man can go when I say that I blot out of my memory the cursed evenings you and I spent together in cursed talk? That doesn't cover the ground, you think; but would any other form of words cover it any better? Would you believe me the more, whatever set of speeches ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... be dead to all who know me, and my ruin would have exiled me without this. Do not let an hour of grief for me mar your peace, my dearest; think of me with no pain, Beatrice; only with some memory of our past love. I have not strength yet to say—forget me; and yet,—if it be for your happiness,—blot out from your remembrance all thought of what we have been to one another; all thought of me and of my life, save to remember now and then that I ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of Columbia, as belonging strictly to the National Government, and to no separate State, has furnished a fruitful subject of remonstrance from British Christians with America. We have abolished slavery there, and thus wiped out the only blot of territorial responsibility on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and English times is far greater than it is generally represented to be. The English invasion was a cruel and a desolating one, no doubt; but it could not and it did not sweep away wholly the old order of things, or blot out all the past annals of Britain, so as to prepare a tabula rasa on which Mr. Green might begin his History of the English People with the landing of Hengest and Horsa in the Isle of Thanet. The English ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Patty, drawing a long sigh of relief. "And will you blot out last evening, and pretend it never was, and ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... Oh, Petro, don't be horrid, just when I really need you to be nice. And you can be nice—very nice. Don't let's even think about the family past. It's awful! It's a blot! But it can't be helped. We must try to live it down. And we can, with our money. We can and we must. A great chance has come to us. All the more because of—of what you reminded me—we must be careful of the sort of people we ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Now I see it all clearly; now I have a purpose in my life. It is to make you look upon me with r-respect,—with so much r-respect that you will for-rget that on one of those turned-over pages of my life there is a blot." ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... besought the Signory of Venice on his bended knees, as a return for services rendered by him to the State, that no public punishment should be inflicted on the culprits. He could not bear, he said, to be the cause of bringing a blot of infamy upon his religion, or of ruining the career of any man. Fra Giovanni Francesco afterwards redeemed his life by offering weighty evidence against his powerful accomplices. But what he revealed is buried in the oblivion with which the Council ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... beheld ships and brigs carrying into unutterable misery and woe men, women and children, victims of the most cruel slavery that ever saw the sun; could I forget the innumerable scenes of cruelty I have witnessed, and blot out the remembrance of the degradation, intellectual, moral and spiritual, which everywhere surrounded me—making the country like unto a den of dragons and pool of waters—my reminiscence of Virginia were indeed a joy and not ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... Natives had in South Africa, and creating a very awkward hiatus between the time the Commission would be appointed and the time the Commission could define the areas which would be regarded as white areas and the areas which would be regarded as native areas. That was the one serious blot ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of the United States Army. The name which my son bears came to me from men who had borne it with honour, and I transmitted it to him without a blot. He has disgraced it, by his ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... unrepented of and unforgiven, their names will be blotted out of the book of life, and the record of their good deeds will be erased from the book of God's remembrance. The Lord declared to Moses, "Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book."(855) And says the prophet Ezekiel, "When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, ... all his righteousness that he hath ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... impinge upon, and collide with, the operations of the other. Hence you get types of religion—yes! and two types of Christianity—in which the one or the other of these two harmonious attributes is emphasised to such a degree as almost to blot out the other. You get forms of religion in which the righteousness has swallowed up the love, and others in which the love has destroyed the righteousness. The effect is disastrous. In old days our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and bear himself as if it were exactly what he had planned. The Chief copied his attitude with scrupulous precision and unfailing nerve, though quite prepared to see the red whirlwind suddenly turn back and blot himself, the audacious Grom, and the whole shuddering tribe from the face of the outraged earth. But no such thing happened. The torrent of flame raged straight up the valley, cutting a path some fifty odd paces in width, and leaving ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts |
