"Disfigure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pictures of the fashionable society of Brighthelmstone are distinguished by a force and vivacity of satire which she has rarely surpassed. it is true that in both "The Wanderer" and "Camilla" we meet with occasional touches of that peculiar extravagance of style which disfigure, the "Memoirs of Dr. Burney," but these passages, in the novels, are SO comparatively inoffensive, and so nearly forgotten in the general power and charm of the story that we scarcely care to instance them ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the woman kindled the brand of purpose: for when it was knowne, that the king would see hir, Ethelwold willed hir in no wise to trim vp hir selfe, but rather to disfigure hir in fowle garments, and some euil fauored attire, that hir natiue beautie should not appeare: but she perceiuing how the matter went, of spite set out hir selfe to the vttermost, so that the king vpon the first sight of hir, became so farre inamored of ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... reason or to divine revelation, it will be allowed that they do not offer the absurdities with which the mythologies of many ancient nations abound.[Z] The article which makes skill in fishing a virtue worthy of being compensated in the other world, does not disfigure the salutary and consoling dogma of the immortality of the soul, and that of future rewards and punishments, so much as one is at first tempted to think; for if we reflect a little, we shall discover that the skilful fisherman, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... scornfully, thus. This exasperates the savages, and they attack us with volleys of sucked oranges and half-eaten pippins." "And you retire?" "Without doubt, if I am sober; for orange will stain silk, and an apple may disfigure a feature." ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... straining to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth a moment's thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards at things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me that we make a mistake seeking to keep Death, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... shipbuilders and shipowners.... The book is beautifully printed on good paper, and its appearance does credit to the publishers; the work of translation has been remarkably well done, the language bearing none of those irritating traces of Teutonism which disfigure so many English versions ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... pausing in her work, and giving her one of her slow glances, "I'm glad you're better; I never heard such distressing sobs. It's a great pity for you to cry so much, for you disfigure yourself; but I wish now that you are here you'd sit still, for I'd like to sketch you with that woebegone look. I never saw such a perfect ideal of ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... fumitory," said the young man, pulling a piece at random in the reckless way in which men do disfigure forest flower-beds. "It isn't strictly indigenous, but it is naturalized in many places, and you must have seen it before, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... portico. But nature is not always obedient to man; the vines and palm-trees do not prosper in their new location, and now the long flexible branches of the one, and the broad leaves of the other, droop half withered above the grotto, which they disfigure ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... Venus. The natives of Libra are tall and well made, elegant in person, round-faced and ruddy, but plain-featured and 'inclined to eruptions that disfigure the face when old; they' (the natives) 'are of sweet disposition, just and upright in dealing.' It governs the lumbar regions, and reigns over Austria, Alsace, Savoy, Portugal, Livonia, India, Ethiopia, Lisbon, Vienna, Frankfort, Antwerp, Charleston, etc. It is a masculine ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... took possession of me. Wasn't it enough to maim and disfigure poor Tamplin, why cook him to death—I'd shut off that cock. I fought with it, but it wouldn't close, and I ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the minor Caroline poets; but it is far more noticeable in drama, and resulted in the production, by some of the playwrights of the transition period under Charles I. and Charles II., of some of the most amorphous botches in the way of style that disfigure English literature. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... can only be kept alive by these neglected attentions; yet if men and women took half as much pains to dress habitually neat, as they do to ornament, or rather to disfigure their persons, much would be done towards the attainment of purity of mind. But women only dress to gratify men of gallantry; for the lover is always best pleased with the simple garb that sits close to the shape. There is an impertinence ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... had about him, and having tied his horse to a branch of the tree, said, "Good dervish, I want to have some talk with you, but your hair prevents my understanding what you say, and if you will consent, I will cut off some part of it and of your eyebrows, which disfigure you so much that you look more like a bear than ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... to resign, and promised in a calmer season to demand judges himself, and to give an account of his designs and of his conduct. The commissioners tried to induce him to submit, quoting the example of the ancient Roman generals. "We are always mistaken in our quotations," he replied; "and we disfigure Roman history by taking as an excuse for our crimes the example of their virtues. The Romans did not kill Tarquin; the Romans had a well ordered republic and good laws; they had neither a Jacobin club nor a revolutionary ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... grand vizier, with the civil magistrate at the head of them. At this sight he stood motionless, and had not power to utter one word. "Ganem," said the favourite, "there is no time to be lost; if you love me, put on the habit of one of your slaves immediately, and disfigure your face and arms with soot. Then put some of these dishes on your head; you may be taken for a servant belonging to the eating house, and they will let you pass. If they happen to ask you where the master of the house is, answer, without ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot of the Jodelle, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent; the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste, belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by a spirit of tenderness. The burlesque tone, which in many languages may be tolerated, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the idea of "the mathematical infinite" into metaphysical speculation, especially by Kant and Hamilton, with the design, it would seem, of transforming the idea of infinity into a sensuous conception, has generated innumerable paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infinity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and plausible error ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... that merit which they undoubtedly possess. "They are ingenious, but puerile; flowing, but not sufficiently correct." ——The best way of convincing the antiquarian reader of the merit of these compositions, would be to disfigure them with old spelling; as perhaps the most complete confutation of the advocates for the authenticity of what are called Rowley's poems would be to exhibit an edition of them in modern orthography. —Let us only apply this very simple test,— "handy-dandy let them ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... money to assist his researches. Four volumes in quarto were at length published! Vella had the adroitness to change the Arabic MSS. he possessed, which entirely related to Mahomet, to matters relative to Sicily; he bestowed several weeks' labour to disfigure the whole, altering page for page, line for line, and word for word, but interspersed numberless dots, strokes, and flourishes; so that when he published a fac-simile, every one admired the learning ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... one of the most celebrated passages in modern poetry, a passage not easily to be surpassed for its majesty and tenderness, and for a beauty which even those tiresome allusions to the classics, that give a faded air to so much of the poetry of the sixteenth century, cannot seriously disfigure nor obscure. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... plain to a degree. Nothing in the world can disfigure a woman more successfully than an unbecoming hat and a cheap black veil, which imparts a dingy, leaden tint to the complexion. I had every reason to be satisfied with my disguise that afternoon, but I wasn't. Not a bit! I felt ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... their whole personality. His own features would then become scarcely recognizable, he could force the strangest metamorphoses upon them, but while mimicking the ugly and grotesque, he never lost his own native grace. Grimace was never carried far enough to disfigure him; his gayety was so much the more piquant because he always restrained it within the limits of perfect good taste, holding at a suspicious distance all that could wound the most fastidious delicacy. He never made use of an inelegant word, even in the moments ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... qualifications of the delight which an historian feels while engaged in the details of those grateful episodes which frequently reward his progress through musty chronicles, to find himself suddenly arrested in his narrative by some of those rude interruptions by which violence and injustice disfigure so frequently, in the march of history, the beauty of its portraits. One of these occurs to us in this connection. Our Huguenot settlers on the Santee were not long suffered to pursue a career of unbroken prosperity. The very fact that they prospered— that, in the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... engineering. The Bible tells us "King Uzziah built towers at the gates of Jerusalem, and at the turning of the wall, and fortified them." We may note in passing that the buttresses, battlements, and bartizans with which our modern architects ornament or disfigure churches, peaceful dwellings, and public buildings, are copied from the early ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... instead of adding to the universal harmony of His creation, make monsters of ourselves, moral blots upon the beautiful face of His world? It were idle for Him to give us the knowledge of His will and then to stand by and let us disfigure His fairest designs; to bid us do what is right, and then let us do wrong without exacting redress or atonement. If He is wise, He must not only lay down the law, but He must also enforce it; He must make it our highest interest to keep His law, to do the right; so that ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... "do a little glacier work" (it sounds like embroidery, but means scrambling perilously over ice), our taste for unwholesome—or, in other words, seasoned—food. When I am reproved by English acquaintances for the "Americanisms" which disfigure my speech and proclaim my nationality, I cannot well defend myself by asserting that I read the same Bible as they do,—for maybe, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the improper application of strong caustics to this passage by incompetent and ignorant surgeons. Every person has observed the contraction of tissue caused by a severe burn, which often produces such a distortion of the injured part as to disfigure the body for life. A similar result is produced when the neck of the womb is burned with strong caustics. The tissues are destroyed, and, as the parts heal, the deeper-seated tissues firmly contract, forming a ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... individuals. The press, moreover, is the guardian of social, political, and religious morality. The greatest as well as the most trifling affairs which conduce to the well-being and comfort of the multitude are eagerly canvassed. The faults and vices which disfigure and disgrace even the most advanced forms of civilization are unshrinkingly laid bare, and the proper remedies prescribed. The political conduct of nations and of public men is carefully scrutinized, and every false step that they may make is immediately ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... that they have been deformed by the devil, but not begotten: or that they are real devils with a human body either simulated or purloined. For if the devil, by divine permission, may take possession of the whole man and change his mind, is it strange that he may disfigure also his body, causing men to be ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... a new Cabinet—'Home Secretary and Abbot of Westminster, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.' The first duty of the Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700 coming under its consideration. A small tablet would recall what has been taken away. Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring gaps would be filled up. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... purposes, which must soon take place even if there be no change in the character of business, conducted with a little system and uniformity. The streets themselves have been made so fine that it will require some moral courage—a thing for which Washington is not noted—to disfigure them by the hideous jumbles that accorded so well with the old ways. Such splendid monstrosities as the Treasury—as a whole, the worst public building in the city, although good in parts, so situated that one must go down stairs from Pennsylvania Avenue to get into the grand north entrance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... applied it to extort either confession or evidence debased themselves to the level of the Holy Inquisitors. Froude did not, I grieve to say, stop at an apology for the rack. In a passage which must always disfigure his book he thus describes the fate of Antony Babington and those who suffered with him in 1586. "They were all hanged but for a moment, according to the letter of the sentence, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was still unimpaired, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the exhibition of indecent or other objectionable advertisements. The Societe pour la protection des paysages, founded in 1901, has for one of its objects the prevention of advertisements which disfigure the scenery or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... opinionated and contentious; can they make him wise? They exhaust the mind by a certain jejune and barren subtlety, without fertilizing or inspiring it. By their stammering and by the stains of their impure style they disfigure theology which had been enriched and adorned by the eloquence of the ancients. They involve everything whilst trying to resolve everything.' 'Scotist', with Erasmus, became a handy epithet for all schoolmen, nay, for everything superannuated and antiquated. He would rather lose ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the form of these tales. Doubtless Osiris and Sit did not escape unscathed out of the hands of the theologians; but even if sacerdotal interference spoiled the legend concerning them, it did not altogether disfigure it. Here and there in it is still noticeable a sincerity of feeling and liveliness of imagination such as are never found in those of Shu and of Sibu. This arises from the fact that the functions of these gods left ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of stakes and flaming pyres; she spread the adjectives thickly on her finest tartines, and decorated them with a variety of her most pompous epithets. It was an infringement of the copyright of the passages of declamation that disfigure Corinne; but Louise grew so much the greater in her own eyes as she talked, that she loved the Benjamin who inspired her eloquence the more for it. She counseled him to take a bold step and renounce his patronymic for ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... and a short petticoat constitute the chief dress of the women, who also wear gaiters like the men. Their hair, which is of jet-black colour, they suffer to grow to its natural length; but they do not pierce their noses, nor disfigure their ears. In winter both the men and women, in order to guard against cold, wrap themselves in blue rugs, which they always carry with them, and which form an essential part of ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... taking in their canoes their wives and children, cooking-pots, and sleeping-mats. When they reach a good game district, they erect temporary huts on the bank, and there dry the meat they have killed. They are rather a comely-looking race, with very black smooth skins, and never disfigure themselves with the frightful ornaments of some of the other tribes. The chief declined to sell a harpoon, because they could not now get the milola bark from the coast on account of Mariano's war. He expressed some doubts about our being children of the same Almighty Father, remarking ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Poonans, Pakatans, Sians, and Ukits, the latter of whom are acknowledged to be the wildest of the human race yet met with in Borneo. Of these tribes, all with the exception of the Ukits are tattooed, unlike the Dyaks, who look upon the practice with contempt, and say that they have no need to disfigure their faces to frighten their enemies. A curious mixture of the Dyak and Malay races are the Milanoes. These occupy the sea-coast and Oya, Muka, and Bintulu rivers. The custom (similar to that of the Indians on the Mosquito shore) of flattening ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... barriers in order to prevent their affording shelter to the enemy. My friend had once visited Paris, and had been struck by the beauty of these woods. Apparently he thought that, even for their own salvation, the French had no right to disfigure scenes of beauty that had delighted the eyes of ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... annually on this object, I believe, something at the rate of L2000 a month! The marble used is of an unusually soft nature, hence its decay and cost of repair. But these constant patchings certainly disfigure and spoil the beauty of the surface architecture, especially at the Eastern end, and afford a convincing instance of how a man may mar his own object ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... new-comers was a man who particularly interested me: his name was Jung, the same who afterwards became known under the name of Stilling. In spite of an antiquated dress, his form had something delicate about it, with a certain sturdiness. A bag-wig did not disfigure his significant and pleasing countenance. His voice was mild, without being soft and weak: it became even melodious and powerful as soon as his ardor was roused, which was very easily done. On becoming better ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... me." cried she, indignantly. "You are trying your best to disfigure me, and to make me look old before my time. Who ever saw such a ridiculous structure as this headdress, that makes me look like a perambulating castle on a chessboard? Come, another coiffure, and let it not be such a ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... towns to blow down, the order must come from me, gentlemen. But we will let that matter rest until I get my army," rejoined the general, rubbing his eyes, and continuing to disfigure his face by mixing the colors with which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... prefers a deep, rich, loamy soil near water, but grows in almost any situation; of more rapid growth than almost any other native tree, and formerly planted freely in ornamental grounds and on streets, but fungous diseases disfigure it so seriously, and the late frosts so often kill the young leaves that it is now seldom obtainable in nurseries; usually propagated from seed. The European plane, now largely grown in some nurseries, is ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... to put a ball through your head, Captain Passford, not only because it would disfigure a handsome face, but because you may be of great use to ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... would be useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... as much as possible to cultivate the effect of reason on this feeling. But we must beware lest by falsely extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its source lie in particular feelings of pleasure (which are in fact only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the law itself, by putting as it were a false foil upon it. Respect, not pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its foundation ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... look of fear disfigure his face," he continued, "and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman's wriggle forward from beneath the wall of the tent ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... you have not put on your corset; a cold in the head wouldn't oblige you to disfigure your waist and wear half a dozen petticoats, nor hide your hands in these old gloves, and your pretty feet in those hideous shoes, nor dress ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Certain of his own compositions, such as the more effective fragments from the Romeo and Juliet Symphony, again made a particular impression on me, it is true; but I was now more consciously awake to the curious weaknesses which disfigure even the finest conceptions of this extraordinary musician than on those earlier occasions, when I only had a sense of general discomfort adequate to the magnitude ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... jest and half in earnest; he had horrified her beyond expression by telling her how he would punish a wife if he were the husband she deceived. With a grim, lurid smile he remembered the penalty. He had said he would not kill; he would disfigure the woman frightfully and permit her to live as a moral example to other wives. Slitting her mouth from ear to ear or cutting off her nose—these were two of the penalties he would inflict. He now felt less brutal. He might kill, but he would not disfigure. For an ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... as in those other mechanicall artes) be not well tempered, or not well layd, or be vused in excesse, or neuer so litle disordered or misplaced, they not onely giue it no maner of grace at all, but rather do disfigure that stuffe and spill the whole workmanship taking away all bewtie and good liking from it, no lesse then if the crimson tainte, which should be laid vpon a Ladies lips, or right in the center of her cheekes should by some ouersight or mishap be applied to her forhead or chinne, it would make ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... I think the same of the charge of untruthfulness, and I select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable, but because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, "Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick, but not stain. I think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than other dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... welcomed a death without Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth He lost the art of observing himself Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us Infallibility of our august mother Inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him Love's a selfish business one has work in hand No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it Silence and such signs are like revelations in black night The defensive is perilous policy in ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... disfigure their bodies with hideous paintings, eat nothing but loam for some three months, when the height of the Orinoco cuts them off from the turtles which form their ordinary food. Some monks say they mix earth with the fat of crocodiles' tails, but this is a very false assertion. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... volume for the press, Bailey's text has been carefully revised, and clerical errors have been corrected, but the liberty has not been taken of altering his language, even to the extent of removing the coarsenesses of expression which disfigure the book and in which he exaggerates the plain speaking of the original. Literary feeling is jealous, no doubt justly, on ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... from our sky, and its stick has fallen quietly enough among the pines of New Jersey, citizens have opportunity for calm reflection. We are not justified, perhaps, in attributing to McClellan all the evils and errors that disfigure his tenure of office. Intellect equal to the position he could not create for himself, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men of average ability would not have descended from his balloon-like elevation ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the defects of an age when civilization was still struggling with the remains of barbarism, it is to foster no spirit of vain exultation: it is rather to turn with increased pleasure from those stains which disfigure the picture, to the contemplation of the more prominent and brilliant figures which occupy the fore-ground. We remember that upon times thus backward in many of the refinements of life, and scarcely yet freed from ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make, with so much of passion, I am glad to add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional aberration. But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure—with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution, or in stating the law, whether in the details of statistics or the diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope his mouth, but out there flies ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... overdone, for nature. The usual amount of common-place remarks were made, too, on the lucky diversity that was to be found in tastes, and on the happy necessity there existed of all being able to find the means to please themselves. But these were no more than the moral blotches that usually disfigure human commendation. The sentiment and the sympathies of the mass were powerfully and irresistibly enlisted in favor of the unknown maiden—feelings that were very unequivocally manifested as she drew nearer the estrade, walking timidly ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... I'm about it I want to add that, at Mrs. Ascott's suggestion—which really is my own idea—I have decided not to build all those Rhine castles, which useless notion, if I am not mistaken, originated with you. I don't want to disfigure my beautiful wilderness. Mrs. Ascott and I had a very plain talk with Hamil and we forced him to agree with us that the less he did to improve my place the better for the place. He seemed to take it good-humouredly. He left yesterday to look over Mrs. Ascott's place and plan for her ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... there is no doubt of it. Such beauty as they have never seen here in their lives! Fanciful extravagances in dress, and atrocious hair-dressing, cannot disfigure her; and by Jove! she has tried both. And one has only to imagine that woman dressed and "coiffeed," as she might be, to conceive such a triumph as London has not witnessed for the century! And I do long for such a triumph. If my lord would only invite us here, were it ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, mutilate. Defect, fault, imperfection, disfigurement, blemish, flaw. Delay, defer, postpone, procrastinate. Demoralize, deprave, debase, corrupt, vitiate. Deportment, demeanor, bearing, port, mien. Deprive, divest, dispossess, strip, despoil. Despise, contemn, scorn, disdain. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... As a child I ate these raw in quantities, as did also most of my young friends, but they will be found the better for cooking. They are particularly good and large in the early spring. The inmost bark also has food value, but one must disfigure the tree to get that, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... which may be owing to the scarcity of proper materials; for all the colours which they brought to sell in bladders, were in very small quantities. Upon the whole, I have no where seen savages who take more pains than these people do, to ornament, or rather to disfigure, their persons. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... no doubt that the Irish take better care of their children than the parents of similar position in either England or Scotland. Cases of cruelty, which so constantly disfigure the police courts in both the latter countries, are very rarely heard in ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... school by the vigour of her harmony, her clearness, and the logic of her conception and exposition." Imbert, who has written a biographical sketch of her, says: "The talent of Augusta Holmes is absolutely virile, and nowhere in her works do you find the little affectations which too often disfigure the works of women. With her, nobility of thought and sentiment take first place. She worships the beautiful, and her Muse has sung only subjects that are worthy of being sung. She is masterly in her ease, and all the resources of ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... heap of beauties, without order or symmetry, and a plot whereon nothing but seeds, nor nothing perfect or formed is to be found; and a production loaded with many unprofitable things which ought to be retrenched, and which choak and disfigure those which deserve to be preserved? Mr. Pope will pardon me if I here oppose those comparisons, which to me appear very false, and entirely contrary to what the greatest of ancient, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... disfigure thus Our prairie garden-land, Let me consort with Cerberus, Be chained to crags precipitous, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... verse, 'that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour'. I mean the word, 'Saviour'. I am so glad that is there to meet those who say, 'Ah! you talk about adornments, but I am distressed because I see so many things about me that disfigure and discredit the doctrine'. You feel that you need a power which can give deliverance from the worldly spirit, the light and frivolous disposition, bad tempers, resentments, and other selfish and sinful things which hold you more or less in bondage; but in that beautiful word, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... music, and bold as they could be in their exercises (it was a Lacedaemonian who, at Olympia, for the first time threw aside the heavy girdle and ran naked to the goal) forbade all that was likely to disfigure the body. Though we must not suppose all ties of nature rent asunder, nor all connexion between parents and children in those genial, retired houses at an end in very early life, it was yet a strictly public education ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... is also a birthmark, and if found upon the neck or shoulders where it is likely to disfigure, it may be removed by the high-frequency spark, or by surgery, in the same way as warts. Never tamper with moles. Leave them alone or turn them over ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... dishonest. Could your mother or your father have been untruthful? Here you are, so hungry and starved that you are dying for love. Where did you get all that capacity for loving? You didn't inherit it from hardened, heartless people, who would disfigure you and purposely leave you to die, that's one sure thing. You once told me of saving your big bullfrog from a rattlesnake. You knew you risked a horrible death when you did it. Yet you will spend miserable years torturing yourself with the idea that your own mother might have cut off that ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the objects (idealism, scepticism, and so on), or anthropological discussions on prejudices, their causes and remedies: this attempt, on the part of these authors, only shows their ignorance of the peculiar nature of logical science. We do not enlarge but disfigure the sciences when we lose sight of their respective limits and allow them to run into one another. Now logic is enclosed within limits which admit of perfectly clear definition; it is a science which has for ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the guild of scholars would here use his privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and phrases,—abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and written speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, the pages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken or lead to general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show signs of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... back empty-handed. That was most kind of him, but it was none of Gaydon's business. The King was ill at ease and looked as though he had not slept a wink the livelong night. Well, swollen eyes and a patched pallid face disfigure all men at times, and in any case they were none ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Mayor, sword-bearer, and chaplain; to despise the authority of the sheriffs; and to hold the court of aldermen as nought; but not on any account, in case the fulness of time should bring a general rising of 'prentices, to damage or in any way disfigure Temple Bar, which was strictly constitutional and always to be approached with reverence. Having gone over these several heads with great eloquence and force, and having further informed the novice that ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Simultaneously he discerns his own existence and marks off the inner region of his dreams. And it behooves him not to obliterate these discoveries. By trying to give his mind false points of attachment in nature he would disfigure not only nature but also that reason which is so much the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... sure, and it was very kind in you to take it off their hands; but now it is paid for, it can't make much difference whether you disfigure yourself with ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Aksakoff, instead of leading forward with the great liberal movement that came after the Crimean War, resulting finally in the emancipation of the serfs, would lead backward to the stagnant hours of medieval Russia. Then there were no German words to disfigure the Russian language! Then there were no German divisions of rank among the officials to strangle life by their formality. No, none of these, nor the disturbing importations of Peter; in Aksakoff's variation of the gospel, the Russians are ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... said unto the fellow: Now praise God that he hath thus mercifullie preserv'd thee, and see thou ever make much of this kinde woman that so friendly saves thy life. With that the Fellow viewing her and seeing a great skarre in her face, which did greatlie disfigure her, a long nose, thin lips and of a sowre complexion, hee said unto the Hangman: On (my good friend) doe thy duty: Ile none of her." ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... rattle. Then came some good passages, which confounded me only the more. Then, "God save the King," which announced the British victory. Anon followed some marches, with the occasional bang of the bass drum to "disfigure or present" the distant cannon; and then there was a pause, and the people began to get up. I was confounded, looked towards the orchestra, and they were moving away; and I discovered I had heard the whole—alas! the day. What ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... not allow himself to remain idle many minutes. The fractured front of the craft being immovably fixed in the bank, he leaned his head over the side and washed the paint from his face. He disliked to disfigure himself in that fashion, though he always carried the stuff with him, to be used in such an emergency as has ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... tells its readers, "if we strike out the first person of Robert's speeches, ay, out of his whole career, they become a rope untwisted," &c. &c. &c. This excited old lady is evidently anxious to disfigure the head of the government, by scratching ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... had their faces so crushed and wounded by the stones that they have become frightful. I have aroused them from their state of unconsciousness, cured their wounds but left the hideous scars to disfigure them. I have deprived them of all their rich clothing and dressed them like peasants and I married them at once to two brutal ostlers whom I commissioned to beat and maltreat them until their wicked hearts are changed—and this I ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... every time. That's the sort of hairpins we are—all wool and a yard wide. Now, ladies and gents, while it is not designed that the pleasure of this evening be marred by any special formalities, any such unnatural restrictions as disfigure such functions in the effete East [applause], and while I am only too anxious to exclaim with the poet, 'On with the dance, let joy be unconfined' [great applause], yet it must be remembered that this high-toned ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... in the course of time, it had to be sent to the wash-tub, and then, behold, all the little lovely harps followed the example of the harp that "once through Tara's hall the soul of music shed," and disappeared! Only vague, dirty, yellow reminders of their beauty remained, not to decorate, but to disfigure ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... Belles Lettres in France nearly two centuries ago, by Carlencas, the writer says: "It is to no great purpose to speak of the Gothick sculptures: for everybody knows that they are the works of a rude art, formed in spite of nature and rules: sad productions of barbrous and dull spirits, which disfigure our old churches." Fie on a Frenchman who could so express himself! We recall the story of how Viollet le Duc made the people of Paris appreciate the wonderful carvings on Notre Dame. All the rage in France was for Greek and Roman remains, and ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting it in an antiquated and outlandish dress. The language of many theologians, like the Latin of the Romish Church, is, to vast numbers, a dead language,—an unknown tongue. There ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the Professor, and cast a furtive deprecating glance back at Mary. "Wait! I tell you it's no use; you can hurt yourself and disfigure yourself and weaken and impair your body, but not the life! Not the life! I tell you—it's no good!" He flung out a long arm and his great forefinger pointed at Smith imperatively. "I'll have you back," he said. "I'll have you back. You're ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... It is only for a moment that some one has overridden your will and obliterated your true self. It is inconceivable that this can be your real, your abiding determination. You cannot have thrown aside all shame, all love, all fidelity, all truth. If you did, you would dishonour and disfigure humanity. There can be no truth left in the world if you are false, if you are capable of descending to this depth of abandonment, of breaking such holy oaths, of crushing my heart. Then there is nothing more under the sun in which ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... recommended as restorations for faded writing, but these should be avoided as far as possible, as they are liable to stain, disfigure the paper, and in the end make matters materially worse. Familiarity with particular handwritings after some practice will enable the reader to make out otherwise unintelligible words without any other assistant than ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... his captors into doing him some injury that might lessen his powers of thought or action, and the girl, seeing that no immediate gain could be had from speech, dreaded to be smitten on the mouth in a way that might disfigure her in her lover's eyes. Only at times, when a wind would blow the smoke and flame aside, she looked across the camp-fire into the young man's face, and in the look and in the smile of the steady lips he read not only an unswerving courage, but also a confidence in his own resourceful protection, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "pingue ingenium" is a circumlocution for "a blockhead;" "anilia instrumenta" are "his old woman's accoutrements;" and "repetito munere Bacchi" is conveyed to the sense of the reader as, "they return again to their bottle, and take the other glass." These are but a specimen of the blemishes which disfigure the most literal of the English translations of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... for the present; but the writer believes that his principal character has grown wiser and better since he was first introduced to the reader. He has made mistakes of judgment, but whatever of example and inspiration he may impart to the reader will be that of a true and noble boy, with no vices to disfigure his character, and no low aims to lead him from "the straight and ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... nothing could be extracted from him. When closely questioned or otherwise interfered with, then old Con-stair Lo-vair would show that his long cruel penance had not yet banished the devil from his heart. A terrible wrath would disfigure his countenance and kindle his eyes with demoniac fire; and in sharp ringing tones, that wounded like strokes, he would pour forth a torrent of words in his unknown language, doubtless invoking every imaginable curse on ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... has been graduated from college without the loss of his front teeth or an eye. He has a few scars, which will not permanently disfigure him; and though he halts slightly as the result of a strained tendon in the calf of one of his legs, Dr. Meredith assures us that this is chiefly a nervous symptom, which will pass off presently. ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... one wide sheet unintersected by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines, which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which mark the course of rivers in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... with a bush of Thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes in to disfigure, or to present, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... unlicked cub^; rudis indigestaque moles [Lat.]; disorder &c 59; deformity &c 243. disfigurement, defacement; mutilation; deforming. chaos, randomness (disorder) 59. [taking form from surroundings] fluid &c 333. V. deface [Destroy form], disfigure, deform, mutilate, truncate; derange &c 61; blemish, mar. Adj. shapeless, amorphous, formless; unformed, unhewn^, unfashioned^, unshaped, unshapen; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... claim a certain pre-eminence in the long list of hapless victims, who made up the literary hecatomb of the Johnsonian era. Without the grosser elements, which enter into their methods of living and disfigure their character, the abject squalor of vulgar surroundings, the love for pot-houses and low companionships, the utter disregard for personal respect, he otherwise underwent all the pain, the want and uncertainty of their impoverished ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... utmost kindness, and the smile was returned by the other; and the blushes with which Miss Mackenzie was always ready at this time, became her very much. As for Mrs. Mackenzie—the very largest curve that shall not be a caricature, and actually disfigure the widow's countenance—a smile so wide and steady, so exceedingly rident, indeed, as almost to be ridiculous, may be drawn upon her buxom face, if the artist chooses to attempt it as it appeared during the whole of this summer evening, before dinner came (when people ordinarily ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had the pleasure of seeing the two nymphs eat like starving savages, and drink still better. When the Hermitage had done its work the Astrodi proposed that we should cast off the clothes which disfigure nature. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
