"Obliterate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1827 has been acted over again? till they have been brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry of 'No Popery,' to be emancipators? Have they obliterated from their minds—gladly, perhaps, would some among them obliterate from their minds—the transactions of that year? And have they forgotten all the transactions of the succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spirit of liberty in Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet, found a vent by forbidden passages? Have they forgotten how we were ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thought how he would worship the woman that could fill it. There was a time when she must, beyond question, be one whose radiant mirror had never reflected form of man but his: now he would be content if for him she would abjure and obliterate her past. To make the woman who had loved forget utterly, was a greater victory, he said, than to wake love in the heart of a girl, and would yield him a finer treasure, a richer conquest. Only, pure as snow she must be—pure as the sun himself! Paul Faber was absolutely tyrannous ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... country—we might, under the influence of a momentary oblivion, stand still and laugh. But they are engraven where no amusement can conceal them, and of a kind for which there is no recompense. Can ye restore to us the beloved dead? Can ye say to the grave, give up the murdered? Can ye obliterate from our memories those who are no more? Think not then to tamper with our feelings by an insidious contrivance, nor suffocate our humanity by seducing ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... lack the means to serve you, or throw light where all is so profoundly buried in darkness. Yet I am not sure. Small things will often lead to greater, and though the past is unhappily beyond recall, since our Maker Himself cannot undo the work of yesterday, or obliterate events embalmed in vanished time, yet there is always the future; and if we could but read the past aright, which we never can, then the future would prove less of a painful riddle than ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... which contained the magnificent tombs of the Kings of France. These were mostly destroyed early in the revolution (but a few still remain, in the museum of monuments at Paris, as I afterwards found) when the promoters endeavoured to obliterate all traces of royalty: but when after a long series of convulsions, Buonaparte thought his dynasty had been firmly established on the throne of the Bourbons, he decreed that this abbey should be restored ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... saw the cruelty in him again. It was impossible for her, listening with every sense taut to the uttermost, to obliterate the personal element, to think that he was merely a machine grinding, in the course of his duty, as the implacable mills crush the yielding grain into the listless powder ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... which the modern world is confronted, it is necessary to divest oneself of all prejudices and to enquire in a spirit of scientific detachment whether any definite proof exists that a concerted attempt is being made by Jewry to achieve world-domination and to obliterate the Christian faith. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... suggests to me that some person or persons in authority may have been bribed, as is common in the East, or perhaps frightened with threats of bewitchment. The seventh is that a night was chosen when a wind blew which would obliterate all spoor whether of men or of swiftly travelling camels. These are enough to begin with, though doubtless if I had time to think I could find others. You must remember too that although the journey would be long, this country of the ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... phenomenon produces no light of any real value, and only occasionally for a few minutes does it illumine the landscape. Tales of sleighing over the wastes of snow by the light of the aurora borealis have no foundation in fact, for seldom, if ever, has it sufficient power to obliterate the stars, and never does the moon pale before it. On the other hand, it is certain that these northern lights, streaming up into the heavens on every clear night of the long winter, must bring feelings of pleasure to the inhabitants of the Polar ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... impropriety of bestowing the agelong duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, such as might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which would obliterate all mean peculiarities; for, if the original were unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... their social position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to make ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... geography, on which only a few prominent features of the country are laid down, and the learner is left to fill in the details as his knowledge advances. Only in this case the details have already been filled in by the light of very imperfect knowledge, aided by a fertile imagination. These we must obliterate if we would restore the possibility of a faithful delineation, and we must be careful, in future, to avoid a similar error. We must put down nothing as certain which has not been conclusively ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... important effects of modern means of easy communication between all parts of the world has been to obliterate or minimize distinctions in national character and in degrees of civilization. The manner of life of England and Australia differ less now than the manner of life of England and Scotland differed in the sixteenth century. The great ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and mother whilst they remained shut up together there, Elspie thought not-cared not. She spent the time in passionate caresses of her darling, in half-muttered ejaculations, some of pity some of wrath. All she desired was to obliterate the impression which she saw had gone deeply to the child's heart. Olive wept not—she rarely did; it seemed as though in her little spirit was a pensive repose, above either infant sorrow or infant fear. She sat on her nurse's knee, scarcely speaking, but continually falling ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... that he was ashamed of the crime of which he had been guilty, and that he would endeavor to obliterate the recollection of the past by treating him in future with ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... thus operate against the perfect sanctity of Shakspeare's posthumous reputation, it is certain that the splendor of his worldly success must have done much to obliterate that effect; his admirable colloquial talents a good deal, and his gracious affability still more. The wonder, therefore, will still remain, that Betterton, in less than a century from his death, should have been able to glean so little. And for the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to the degree or violence of their exertions. Hence the analogy between the insanities of the mind, and the convulsions of the muscles described in the preceding genus, is curiously exact. The convulsions without stupor, are either just sufficient to obliterate the pain, which occasions them; or are succeeded by greater pain, as in the convulsio dolorifica. So the exertions in the mania mutabilis are either just sufficient to allay the pain which occasions them, and the patient dwells comparatively in a quiet state; or those exertions ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... that whilst the possession of them brings me many unhappy memories, yet they have been a certain comfort to me. I wish I could dispose of memory as easily as I send these to you (for I feel they are really your property) but more do I wish that I could recall and obliterate the occasion which has made Mr. Glover so ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... keel-marks, and going seawards on the left-hand side. Jump out of a boat and push it out to sea, and notice which side of the boat you stand by instinct—provided you were doing as he was, pushing on the point of the bows. The fact that his feet obliterate the keel-marks in one place proves that. So now we want to find a left-handed man in sea-boots who knew Sholto was blind"—and he laughed ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... of the labia and nymphae, which may be so firm and extensive as to obliterate the vulva. Debout has reported a case of absence of the vulva in a woman of twenty upon whom he operated, which was the result of the fusion of the labia minora, and this with an enlarged clitoris gave the external ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... entered the Imperial domain all was most scrupulously well kept. Not a gravel stone was out of place. Gangs of men were, indeed, kept to rake over instantly the gravel drives so as to obliterate the track of the wheels ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... newspapers say to destroy your religion. As usual, they prevaricate. I have come to free you. All you who have yokes to shed prepare to shed them now. I come with the olive-branch in my hand. Greet me with outstretched palms. Do not fight me for I am come to save you, and I shall utterly obliterate any man, be he fellah, Moujik, or even the great Marmalade himself, who prefers fighting to being saved. We may not look it, but we are true Mussulmen. If you doubt it, feel our muscle. We have it to burn. Desert the Mamelukes and be saved. The ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... and does not fit the English character at all. Our towns are ugly enough; our public buildings rouse no enthusiasm; and many of our monuments and stained glass windows seem to shout for a friendly Zeppelin to obliterate them. But we British have not descended to ugly conduct. Pericles and Plato would have found the bearing of this people in its supreme trial more "beautiful" than the Parthenon itself. The nation has shaken off its vulgarity even more easily ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... convent and the nuns whom she loved, and to go back to the palaces of the king, in which she afterward continued to live, sometimes in one and sometimes in another, for many years. Wherever she went, she was surrounded with scenes of great gayety and splendor. They wished to obliterate from her mind all recollections of the convent, and all love of solitude and seclusion. They did not neglect her studies, but they filled up the intervals of study with all possible schemes of enjoyment and pleasure, to amuse and occupy her mind and the minds ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... chest shall be Two cubic meters of space Enough to hold all memory Of you and me— And this shall be the place Where silence shall embrace Our bodies, and obliterate the trace Our souls made on the purity Of night... Now lock the chest, for we Are dead, and ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... the woods except charcoal-burners or woodmen, or escaped convicts like themselves. By such they would not be suspected of being aught but what they seemed—two peasants; unless indeed, a hat should fall off. The first night after leaving the prison Godfrey had done his best to obliterate the convict brand, by singeing it off as ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... appears again somewhat prominently in our tale. This was a little elderly female who seemed utterly destitute of the very common human attribute of self-assertion, and in whose amiable, almost comical, countenance, one expression seemed to overbear and obliterate all others, namely that of gushing good-will to man and beast! Those who did not know Reni-Mamba thought her an amiable imbecile. Those who knew her well loved her with peculiar tenderness. Her modesty and self-abnegation ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... dignity of defeat—the only glory remaining—should be swallowed up in the shameful disaster of civil war; in a word, it was not sufficient to have destroyed the present, compromised the future; you wish now to obliterate the past! Funereal mischief! Why, the Colonne Vendome is France, and a trophy of its past greatness,—alas, at present in the shade—is not the monument, but the record of a victorious race who strode through the world conquering as they went, planting the tricolour everywhere. In destroying the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... good copy, let me tell you, but I don't want to allow my professional zeal to obliterate my sense of the decencies of ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... set: as the Indian religious are by long continuing in strange postures in their pagods. But most commonly such a habit is contracted, that it falls insensibly into that posture when some present object does not obliterate that more natural impression by a new, or dissimulation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Retrospections, like these, obliterate many of my former notions on the subject of the Emigrants; and if I yet condemn emigration, it is only as a general measure, impolitic, and inadequate to the purposes for which it was undertaken. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... late Queen Jadwiga, in Christian virtues, in caring for the sick and to redeem with her merits her father's soul; she therefore did not omit any opportunity to make the old Christian country appear no worse than others, and by this means to obliterate the remembrance that she was born in a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... sovereign far greater and wider-reaching than that which would have accrued to them as independent rulers of their ancestral dominions. They governed imperial provinces and commanded imperial armies. They were admitted to the closest councils of the prince whose main object was to obliterate all the dissensions and prejudices of the past, and, without diminishing the real power of the local princes who entered into his scheme, to weld together, to unite under one supreme head, without loss of dignity and self-respect to anyone, the provinces till then disunited ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... years ago, while I was in school. I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago. He won my love. I cannot deny it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate again. He was even more despicable than my stepfather. Without the faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance Rosalie could have had for restitution. Time began to prove to me that he was not the man I thought him to be. His nature revealed itself; and I found I could not marry him. Besides, my mother ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... character was his love for Marguerite Verne and any goodness that remained was now visible upon his brow. Some trace of true manhood still lingered there and arrested the gaze of the pure-minded maiden as she looked upon him and prayed that the Omnipotent One would obliterate the earthy incrustations so firmly impressed there and instead cause His image to shine with ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... their places; also the fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been tattooed in the bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was perfectly clear from their blurred appearance, and from the staining of the skin round them, that efforts had been made to obliterate them. It was obvious, then, that those initials had once been very familiar to you, and that you had afterwards ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... all love, all security, to leave the train and take another train because it is the only one that goes to where invisible machines belch red-hot pieces, of iron and Death casts out a finely meshed net of steel and lead to capture men? Who will obliterate from my soul the picture of that small dirty junction, the shivering, sleepy soldiers without any intoxication or music in their blood, looking wistfully after the civilian's train and its brightly lighted windows as it disappeared behind the trees with ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... am sorry that I cannot quite agree with you. No doubt this marriage is vexatious enough, but whether it is well to obliterate all traces of it, or rather to do away with it altogether, is quite ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... though declared to be 'most certain' and 'quite certain' in two consecutive sentences, silently vanishes to make room for the new. But why does the author allow himself to spend nine octavo pages over the discussion of this one passage, freely altering sentence after sentence to obliterate all traces of his error, without any intimation to the reader? Had not the public a right to expect more distinctness of statement, considering that the author had been led by this error to libel the character of more than one writer? Must not anyone reading the apology to Dr Westcott, contained ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... such a thing. If I were he, I think I should fly to the antipodes. I should change my name, sear my features with vitriol, and learn another language. I should obliterate my past self altogether; but men are so different, so audacious—some men, at least—and Stanley, ever since his ill-omened arrival at Redman's Farm, last autumn, has amazed ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be an artist in the treatment of your appearance, instinctively knowing how a prevailing fashion in line and colour may be adapted to you, but you can be taught what your own type is, what your strong points are, your weak ones, and how, while accentuating the former, you may obliterate ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... remembrance of the insults became more unendurable. Abuse from the old to the young, and from a sick man to a sound one, cannot fail to rankle, since it cannot be flung back. Generosity may impose silence, but it cannot obliterate an insult ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... horizontal line, and fails of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is one instance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes as it were, for not only does the man believe the evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but, (what is monstrous!) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not know that he has seen ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... fierce for conquest, had driven innocence from the throne of virtue the guardian angels wept; and all their tears, however bitter, could not obliterate the stains which marked the progress ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... mark for government stores of every description. To obliterate, deface, or remove this mark is felony; or even to be in possession of any goods so marked without sufficient grounds. It is no doubt one of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... acquainted with his real views, I had liked him very much, as an agreeable, well informed man, whom I was always glad to meet in society; he had served in the navy in early life, and the polish which his manners received in his after intercourse with courts and cities had not served to obliterate that frankness of manner which belongs proverbially to the sailor. Whether this apparent candour went deeper than the outward bearing I was yet to learn; however there was no doubt that as far as I had seen of Lord Glenfallen, he was, though perhaps not so young as might have ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... from the gray rocks of the island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives. On some there were merely the initials of a name; some were inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme, in deep letters, which the moss and wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliterate. These, these were graves where loved ones slept! It is an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental eulogies; but when affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor, then we may be sure that ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... against us; their approaching and then returning without coming into camp, proves it a certainty," remarked Howe, after satisfying himself that they had not only been there and gone away, but were anxious to obliterate all traces of ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... he would feel and if "cela se voyait" as they say. There was also a feeling of remorse involved in this eagerness. He wished to satisfy himself that Adrienne was not suffering, and as formerly, to smile on her as if redoubled affection would, in his own eyes, obliterate ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... them," said he, "have been laid for forty years or more. They are now ruts. I cannot obliterate them in ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... on this side by a stone stile, over which having clambered, you remained still on the wild hill, the within not being so divided from the without as to obliterate the sense of open freedom. A delightful place to be buried in, postulating that delight can accompany a man to his tomb under any circumstances. There was nothing horrible in this churchyard, in the shape of tight mounds bonded with sticks, which shout ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... into the ground, and pray. It seemed as if the titanic thunderbolts, that had hitherto been hurled aimlessly about, were suddenly concentrated on that one spot. It seemed as if all the gods in Olympus were hurling their rage upon it, determined to obliterate it from the face of the earth. The most gigantic guns that had ever been used in war were concentrating their fire upon it, and the result was awful. Nothing they had experienced before was comparable to it. It ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... of Chinese and Korean blood, but had developed a distinct nationality and kept their ancient Ural-Altaic language. In China the Manchus retained their separate nationality and semi-military organization. It was not until the early years of the 20th century that steps were officially taken to obliterate the distinction between the two races. The Manchus are a more robust race than the inhabitants of central and southern China, but resemble those of northern China save that their eyes are horizontally set. They are a lively and enterprising people, but have not in general the intellectual ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... argument that will not bear abridgement, showing the physical improbability that man, a walking animal, was descended from a climbing one, and the deplorable consequences which obliterate free will and necessitate the secularization of morals, as elaborated by Prof. Huxley's friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer. This part of the subject has a special interest to Americans, since the work in which Mr. Spencer's views are inculcated has been introduced as ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... being alone and deserted by their allies, would perhaps have made a composition with Xerxes," he yet blames the Thebans, who were forced to the same act by the same necessity. But when he could not wholly obliterate this most great and glorious act of the Thebans, yet went he about to deface it with a most vile imputation and suspicion, writing thus: "The confederates who had been sent returned back, obeying the commands of Leonidas; there remained ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... opportunity to study the two men and to glean the esthetic pleasure which all beauty gave him. Both represented the best type of their respective races, and, curiously enough, this perfection seemed to obliterate the differences. Travers could not help thinking, as he glanced from one to the other, that, had it not been for the dress, it would have been difficult to decide who was the native prince and who the officer. Nehal Singh's high forehead and clean-cut features ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... hard boiling will destroy the fine flavor of all fruits, and especially of berries and other small fruits. Cinnamon, cloves, or other spices, should not be added, as their stronger flavors deaden or obliterate the natural flavor, which should always be preserved as perfectly as possible. If desirable to add some foreign flavor, let it be the flavor of another fruit, or the perfume of flowers. For Instance, flavor apple with lemon, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the open, roaming the prairie alone with the wolf hounds, or with French after the cattle, did much to obliterate the mark which those five days left upon Kalman's body and soul. From the very first the boy had no difficulty in mastering the art of sticking on a broncho's back, partly because he was entirely without fear, but largely because he had an ear and an eye for rhythm in sound and in motion. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... the Europe: each party had acted merely for the honour of the nation to which he belonged, and the Viceroy, with the true spirit of a man of honour, far from resenting a conduct so similar to his own, seemed now to make it his object to obliterate every recollection of offence. As soon as he was fully informed of the nature of Governor Phillip's commission, he gave it out in orders to the garrison that the same honours should be paid to that officer as to himself. This distinction the ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... policy, dictating inviolable secrecy, and justifying a somewhat arbitrary way of dealing with a trusted official; and the marked graciousness with which Jones was received when he met the President at the ministry of finance on current business went far to obliterate his unpleasant recollections. I further bound him to my fortunes by obtaining for him a rise of salary from the directors, "in consequence of the favorable report of his conduct received ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... get 'em.... Lord!" in a piercing undertone as some misguided humorist in the cruiser's stokehold inconsiderately allowed a puff of black smoke to issue forth from the foremost funnel, completely to obliterate the strings ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... Time will obliterate the deepest impressions. Grief the most vehement and hopeless, will gradually decay and wear itself out. Arguments may be employed in vain: every moral prescription may be ineffectually tried: remonstrances, however cogent or pathetic, shall have ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... With courtesy receive him, rise and bow, And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave, Then lay before him all thou hast. Allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate Thy soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be, Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles, to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... months, reasoning from the conduct of George III.; but in this I am persuaded he would find himself deceived, for the same decision and steadiness of mind does not belong to his successor. And should the change once take place, new attachments and habits would prevail, and obliterate all former anger.—The Government say their majority on Friday will be seventy. I think more, by ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... that he was going to take a run over to the Bar L-M, to look things over. It was by no means the first time he had said this, and the girl felt that he had no particular reason to suspect her to-day. It was still snowing, not too heavily for one to venture out, but steadily enough to obliterate ski tracks entirely in less than an hour. Johnson left the house, and a little later Wanda set forth, her preparations swiftly made. Johnson was out of sight. She drove on swiftly to a hilltop due east of the house from which she would be able to see him before ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... stifles a feeble note and prevents it from being heard; a brilliant light eclipses a feeble glimmer. Heavy waves overcome and obliterate ripples. In the two cases cited we have waves of the same nature. But a clap of thunder does not diminish the feeblest jet of light; the dazzling glory of the sun will not muffle the slightest sound. Of different natures, light and sound do ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... but he would have known better than to go back, even if himself, and not his father, had been the first comer of his line from the north. He had married an English Christian, and, having none of the Scotch accent, was ungracious enough to be ashamed of his blood. He was desirous to obliterate alike the Hebrew and Caledonian vestiges in his name, and signed himself E. M. Crotchet, which by degrees induced the majority of his neighbours to think that his name was Edward Matthew. The more effectually to sink the Mac, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... swarth-iness and leanness. These we suspect to have been also characteristics of the old original ton d'apameibomenoi Greeks. If so, the fact would seem to argue, that the changes, after all, had not been on a scale sufficient to obliterate the primitive type of Hellenic nature; whilst the existence of any diffused type marks a tendency to national unity, and shows that some one element has so much predominated as to fuse the rest into a homogeneous whole. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... we understood them as sympathetically and cared as much for them, the cross would be far more intelligible to us? But if, in plain fact, we do not see why we should bear the cross for others, why we should deny and obliterate self on this scale for the salvation of men—how, I ask, to people of such a mind should Jesus be intelligible? It is not to be expected. In no other sphere would one dream of it. When a man avows that he does ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... degree of austerity as ridiculous in a man as uncharitable in a Christian. And as to that unfortunate conversation which a deplorable chance caused you to hear, and in which my expressions, as it always happens, went far beyond the measure of my thought, it is an offense which I can never obliterate, I know; but I shall at least explain frankly. Every one has his own tastes and his own way of understanding life in this world; we differ so much, you and I, and you conceived for me, at first sight, an extreme antipathy. ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... grandchildren—the unmistakable Hawaiian colour, tinted beyond shadow of mistake by exposure to the Hawaiian sun. One-eighth and one-sixteenth Hawaiian were they, which meant that seven-eighths or fifteen-sixteenths white blood informed that skin yet failed to obliterate the modicum of golden tawny brown of Polynesia. But in this, again, only a trained observer would have known that the frolicking children were aught but pure-blooded white. Roscoe Scandwell, grandfather, was pure white; Martha three-quarters white; the many sons and daughters of them seven-eighths ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... produce a strong, firm tissue support over the ring through which the cord passes, so that the intestines cannot descend through it. It is rather interesting to find that the surgeons of this time tried to obliterate the canal by means of the cautery, or inflammation producing agents, arsenic and the like, a practice that recalls some methods still used more or less irregularly. They also used gold wire, which was to be left in the tissues ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... must be very slight, for if the embroidery be not done till some time afterwards the lines get so firmly fixed in the stuff that one washing will not obliterate them; the tracing ink moreover ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... the past dominate the rest of your life," she asked slowly, "is the future to count for nothing? There are, in all probability, many years ahead of you—cannot you, in them, obliterate ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... some winged Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate! ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Trenmor first a brute and then a bore. Albert is none of these (except perhaps the last), but he is madder than the Mad Hatter and the March Hare put together, and as depressing as they are delightful. He has hallucinations which obliterate the sense of time in him; he thinks himself one of his ancestors of the days of Ziska; he has second sight; he speaks Spanish to Consuelo and calls her by her name when he first sees her, though he has not the faintest sane idea who she is or whence she comes; and he reduces his family ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... it was with Griffith. His love got benumbed, and the sense of his wrongs vivid. He nursed a bitter hatred of his wife; only, as he could not punish her without going near her, and no punishment short of death seemed enough for her, he set to work to obliterate her from his very memory, if possible. He tried employment: he pottered about the little farm, advising and helping,—and that so zealously that the landlord retired altogether from that department, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the Hampton Court plan. Follow, say to the right, the path indicated by the dotted line, and what I have said is clearly correct if we obliterate the two detached parts, or "islands," situated on each side of the star. But as these islands are there, you cannot by this method traverse every part of the maze; and if it had been so planned that the "centre" was, like the star, ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... slanderous and wicked people, who, beyond doubt, wish not only to lessen and obstruct the profit, honor, piety and welfare of our glorious Confederacy, but according to their race and nation, under a false show of good, to obliterate and utterly destroy it, should receive almost more respect, confidence and esteem than we. And yet, God knows, we have never had any higher wish than to live on friendly terms with you, our dear Confederates, and assist in all things, which might serve ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... than this for directing aviators at night has never been devised, for low clouds or mist cannot obliterate the signal and they are visible to the aviator for over fifty miles. In fact, this type of signal was so very excellent that our knowledge of the exact positions of the various batteries was of great assistance to us ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... sensibility to reputation. I am almost indifferent as to what shall be the event of this day. I would not open my mouth upon the occasion, if my life were the only thing that was at stake. It is not in the power of your decision to restore to me my unblemished reputation, to obliterate the disgrace I have suffered, or to prevent it from being remembered that I have been brought to examination upon a charge of murder. Your decision can never have the efficacy to prevent the miserable remains of my ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... speculate. Unbidden at times the memory of certain revealing looks or acts of his father's floated into his mind:—a dread if not terror that on occasion dilated the elder man's eyes, and a steadfast driving of himself at work as if to obliterate painful and despairing thoughts, and an uneasy, furtive vigilance when forced to visit town. Once when a stranger, a short heavy-set bearded man, had unexpectedly appeared at the door, his father had leaped for the revolver hanging in its holster on ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... spirit—the spirit which has given distinction to the Anglo-Saxon race—and he and Shakespeare were contemporaries, and yet of this spirit not a vestige is to be found in the English historical plays and no opportunities lost to obliterate or distort its manifestations. Only in Brutus and his fellow-conspirators—of all Shakespearian characters—do we find the least consideration for liberty, and even then he makes the common, and perhaps ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... creates the social dividend. Ability is demonstrated only under strenuous competition inspired by self-interest. Therefore, Socialism, excluding competition inspired by self-interest would obliterate the social dividend. ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... no din of battle; they of the village would think that the camp was one of sleep. Then when the bodies had been buried in a pit, the earth tramped down flat and solid, and cooking fires built over it to obliterate all traces of a grave, they would strike camp and go back the way they ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea, turning them round and round with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... visited Memphis in the 12th century, thus describes its remains then existing: "Notwithstanding the vast extent of this city, the remote period at which it was built, the attempts made by various nations to destroy it and to obliterate every trace of it, by removing the materials of which it was constructed, combined with the decay of 4,000 years, there are yet in it works so wonderful as to confound the reflecting, and such as the most eloquent could not adequately describe." Among the works specified by him, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... to England, so anxious was she to obliterate that fatal episode in the dark church, she made a journey with certain friends to Lainston, and, while the vicar's back was turned, tore the fatal page out ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... public opinion against him. He terrifies all who are about him. Yet, if he has companions, he plumes himself before them on his exploits, and here we may begin to notice the power of public opinion, for the approbation of his band serves to obliterate all consciousness of his turpitude, and even to make him proud of it. The warrior lives in a different atmosphere. The public opinion which would rebuke him is among the vanquished. He does not feel its influence. But the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... it's worth trying," said Ralston. "For it's the only chance left to try. If we could sweep away the effects of the last few years, if we could obliterate his years in England—oh, I know it's improbable. But help me and ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... lucifers, fire-sticks); by chemical means (spontaneous combustion); tinder; tinder-boxes; fuel; small fuel for lighting the fire; to kindle a spark into a flame; camp fires Burning down trees; hollows in wood; fire-beacons; prairie on fire; first obliterate cache marks; leave an enduring mark; heating power of fuels; blacksmithery; wet clothes, to dry; tent, to warm; ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... there is more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical amount of misery and desperation, than in whole gangs of Quashees.' He maintained, too, that a strain of sentiment about criminals was very prevalent in his day, which tended seriously to obliterate or diminish the real difference between right and wrong. He hated with an intense hatred that whole system of philosophy which denied that there was a deep, essential, fundamental difference between right and wrong, and turned the whole matter into a ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and tattered paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented with charcoal sketches, chiefly of people's heads in profile. These being specimens of Peter's youthful genius, it went more to his heart to obliterate them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by Michael Angelo. One sketch, however, and that the best one, affected him differently. It represented a ragged man partly supporting himself ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ah, Charles!" he added with a deep and weary sigh, "you plainly know nothing of my feeling. I cannot prevent myself from speaking of it—it makes me the merest boy; and now I say that it is far too strong to be dispelled in any degree by merriment. Mirth and joy and festive scenes obliterate some annoyances—those vague disquietudes which oppress some persons; they are scarcely a ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... life. No portrait of Mormonism will prove to be a true likeness which does not depict its twofold features, its iniquity and its thrift. The conclusion forces itself upon the visitor that railroads and contact with the world will gradually obliterate the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... commerce. No antidote served so well to counteract the poison of clannish rivalry as did their enthusiasm and their constructive energy. These men, dreamers and promoters, were building better than they knew. They thought to overcome mountains, obliterate swamps, conquer stormy lakes, master great rivers and endless plains; but, as their labors are judged today, the greater service which these men rendered appears in its true light. They stifled provincialism; they battered down Chinese Walls of prejudice and separatism; ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... crops. This does not surely secure them, for the elements are capricious and beyond our control; but where good cultivation prevails the failures are few, and even unfavourable seasons do not utterly obliterate the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Such perfect completeness is not in nature. Man can do nothing to create beauty, but everything to produce ugliness. A Hottentot profile cannot be changed into a Roman outline, but out of a Grecian nose you may make a Calmuck's. It only requires to obliterate the root of the nose and to flatten the nostrils. The dog Latin of the Middle Ages had a reason for its creation of the verb denasare. Had Gwynplaine when a child been so worthy of attention that his face had been subjected to transmutation? ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the United States as mediator between the Dominican Republic and Haiti in their boundary dispute, and because of the further fact that the revolutionary activities on the Haitian-Dominican frontier had become so active as practically to obliterate the line of demarcation that had been heretofore recognized pending the definitive settlement of the boundary in controversy, it was found necessary to indicate to the two island Governments a provisional de facto boundary line. This was done without ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... rain. Sommers noticed that Alves had changed her dress from the black gown she had worn in the afternoon to a colored summer dress. The room had been rearranged, and all signs of the afternoon scene removed. It was as if she willed to obliterate the past at once. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... dear,' cried I; 'but now I find my first suspicions of Mr Thornhill's baseness were too well grounded: but he can triumph in security; for he is rich and we are poor. But tell me, my child, sure it was no small temptation that could thus obliterate all the impressions of such an education, and so virtuous a ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... of the buyers, and, if necessary, the local assessment, will guarantee the proper working of what has been taken over. In the same way, as we cannot, and indeed do not wish to obliterate distinctions between single individuals, so the differences between local groups will also continue. Everything will shape itself quite naturally. All acquired rights will be protected, and every new development will be ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... possesses. Eucken works a change in every man and woman who remain with him for a length of time. Many of us understand something of what Jesus Christ meant to his disciples; how he created an affection within their souls which all the obstacles of the world [p.234] could never obliterate. Eucken has done something of the same kind, on a smaller scale, for hundreds ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... friend also to adopt. He was unable to comprehend Herrera's deeply-rooted and unselfish love, which had grown up with him from boyhood, had borne up against so many crosses and discouragements, and which time, although it might prove its hopelessness, could never entirely obliterate. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... seldom happens, that study terminates in mere pastime. Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot, at pleasure, obliterate ideas: he that reads books of science, though without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the ideas which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... method of hypothesis when he attempts to explain (say) the state of parties upon the Exclusion Bill, or the policy of Louis XI. Problems such as the former of these are the easier; because, amidst the compromises of a party, personal peculiarities obliterate one another, and expose a simpler scheme of human nature with fewer fig-leaves. Much more hazardous hypotheses are necessary in interpreting the customs of savages, and the feelings of all sorts of animals. Literary criticisms, again, abound with hypotheses: e.g., as to the composition ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... life, that at this distance of time we cannot succeed in forming any clear idea as to their individual temperament and character. The monuments record such achievements as they took pride in, in terms of uniform praise which conceal or obliterate the personality of the king in question; it is always the ideal Assyrian sovereign who is held up for our admiration under a score of different names, and if, here and there, we come upon some trait which indicates the special genius of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... struggle for years—till their armies are practically obliterated, as Lee's army was. If the Allies were actually to kill (not merely wound, but actually kill) 5,000 Germans a day for 300 days a year, it would take about four years to obliterate the whole German Army. There is the bare possibility, therefore, of a long struggle yet. But I can't believe it. My dominant mood these days is an end within a very few months after the submarines are knocked out. Send over, therefore, 1,000 improvised destroyers the next two months, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... to be seen in the ruins is unrivaled in the kingdom—the tracery of the windows being particularly fine. The ruined church possesses the grace and lightness of architecture peculiar to the twelfth century, and is, even in its decay, of truly sublime and grand proportions. Time has been unable to obliterate the skilful work of our forefathers, for the Early English transition arches, the delicate molding, and the exquisite stone tracery in the windows still delight the eye. The history of Tintern is almost a hidden page ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... gone by here, hating the dreary obscurity of that stairway; how often she had thought of this obscurity as something lying in wait to obliterate the footsteps of any girl who should ascend into the smoky darkness above! Never had she passed without those ominous imaginings of hers: pretty girls turning into old maids "taking dictation"—old maids of a dozen different ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... inevitably to degrade man, to destroy that sense of his dignity which is the principal security of human life, to obliterate a belief in the divine origin and sanction of morality, and in the existence of a future life of rewards and punishments, and so to promote the disorganization of society, and the degradation of men to ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... burial-place. Away at Grenen, in the sand-dunes, overlooking the fighting waters of the Skagerack and Cattegat, stands his cromlech-shaped tomb, near the roar of the sea he loved so much, where time and sand will soon obliterate all that remains of the ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... desperate one,—should never feel that that secret lacks power to destroy her because it has long lain quiescent. I thought my child safe, and rejoiced as any woman might rejoice, and as I would rejoice now, if Fate were to obliterate that secret and emancipate us all from the horror ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... found for stables and carriage-houses in those dwellings scarcely larger than your hat? It was in the suburbs only, in the outskirts of the city, that the dimensions of the residences rendered anything of the kind possible. Let us, then, obliterate these chariots from our imagination, if we wish to see the streets of Pompeii as ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... is too discursive and long-winded. The prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons, destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its characteristics. It would have been clearer with fewer words. Honesty bids us recognise a certain ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... the inland cities. In Britain, the Picts broke through the Wall of Antoninus, and wrested almost the entire island from the hands of the Romans. In Africa, the Moorish and other tribes, issuing from the ravines of the Atlas Mountains and swarming from the deserts of the south, threatened to obliterate the last trace of Roman civilization occupying the narrow belt of fertile territory skirting ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... mind has no originally implanted conscience. Mr. Spencer himself at one time espoused the doctrine of the intuitive moralists, but it has gradually become clear to him that the qualifications required practically obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them. It has become clear to him, in other words, that if among civilized folk the current belief is that a man who robs and does not repent will be eternally damned, while an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... enough to obscure the track, there swaying in the sweet sunlight and vocal with joyous birds of bright and gorgeous plumage. Then tropical vegetation would completely hide the trail, crystal lakes would obstruct it, cascades shooting down from perpendicular rocks would obliterate it, mountain passes barricaded by basaltic columns would render it uncertain, and on one occasion it was completely covered up by a fall of snow to a depth of more than ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Moslem, and clove him in twain like a doughnut. The spirit of Grimes was upon me, and if I had had a graveyard I would have destroyed all the infidels in Jerusalem. I wiped the blood off the old sword and handed it back to the priest—I did not want the fresh gore to obliterate those sacred spots that crimsoned its brightness one day six hundred years ago and thus gave Godfrey warning that before the sun went down his journey of life ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... terrible ones. They made me see that nothing I might then do could obliterate the fact that she was lost if the world knew what I knew, or even so much as suspected it; that any betrayal on my part or act of contrition on his would only pile the earth on her innocent breast and sink her deeper and deeper into the grave she was then digging for ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... presents a striking appearance. In order to obliterate rings due to the successive application of the forms and to cover the efflorescence so common to concrete structures, the outside was given two coats of neat cement wash applied with ordinary calcimining brushes, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - A Concrete Water Tower, Paper No. 1173 • A. Kempkey
... bends his head and shoulders, and squeezes his skinny hands together, in a desperate effort to obliterate himself altogether, if possible, in the face of such mishaps—"madama will condescend to remember the late spring frosts. There is no corn anywhere. Upon the lowlands the frost was most severe; in April, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... by the elaborate defences constructed by the Germans during the winter had been at any rate partially learnt, and the infantry attack on the morning of 10 March was preceded by an artillery preparation which set a new standard of destruction and was designed to obliterate trenches, barbed wire, and machine-gun positions. It was effective over the greater part of the front attacked, and in the centre and on our right the Fourth and Indian Corps quickly overcame the dazed and decimated Germans and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... was gone; Wetter remained; the Countess von Sempach remained. There was the new position. The Prince's death then might well be to them so great a calamity as to lose its rank among sorrows, regrets for the past be ousted by terror for the future, and the loss of an ally obliterate grief for ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... in the pride and glory of the result. South and North Germany had marched side by side to the battle-field, every difference of race or creed forgotten, and the honor of the German fatherland the sole watchword. The time seemed to have arrived to close the breach between north and south, and obliterate the line of the Main, which had divided the two sections. North Germany was united under the leadership of Prussia, and the honor in which all alike shared now brought South Germany into ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... of man's life is by far the most important. No subsequent training can entirely obliterate the results of early impressions. They may be greatly modified; the character may be changed; but some, and indeed many, of the impressions of youth will ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... into the currency in which he has to repay his debt is entirely problematic. Business loses its genuine character and becomes no better than a speculation in the exchanges, the fluctuations in which entirely obliterate the normal profits ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... 'to have seen Aosta. I am glad to have done it. It is not often at my age that one can get so much pleasure out of a new thing.' I think he had a double motive in mentioning Aosta. He put it forward partly to obliterate for me the sadness of the past three weeks by raising the memory of the pleasant ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... blotted together. According as the apprehension of God is clear, and distinct, and more deeply engraven on the soul, so is this notion of man's duty of worshipping God clear and imprinted on the soul, and whenever the actions of men do prove that the conception of the worship of God is obliterate or worn out,—whenever their transgressions do witness that a man hath not a lively notion of this duty of God's worship,—that doth also prove that the very notion of a godhead is worn out, and cancelled in the soul, for how could souls conceive of God as he is indeed, but they must ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... well as of Fairfax, it was best for England that the Army should still serve the constituted authority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own. No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Ireton had hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been for teaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democratic spirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation; and they knew, in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... like "A Terrible Temptation" are among the best of their kind, and in "The Cloister and the Hearth" he performed the major literary feat of reconstructing, with the large imagination and humanity which obliterate any effect of archeology and worked-up background, a period long past. And what reader of English fiction does not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those very different yet equally lovable women, Christie Johnstone and Peg Woffington? To run over his contributions ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... were not the only ones which ran with blood. At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned its edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and presented a scene of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all the external devastations. I intended, my lord, to have proceeded in a sort of method in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to alter my design. Such a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you. Lapse of time cannot make it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... manner the mental and moral history of Japan has so stamped certain characteristics on her language, on her thought, and above all on her temperament and character, that, however she may strive to Westernize herself, it is impossible for her to obliterate her Oriental features. She will inevitably and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... missive might be inscribed as the motto of his 'Commentaries.' Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain. It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or whether ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... no doubt, formerly had inscriptions; but as many people continually pass, in various directions, across the churchyard, and as the tombstones are not of a very hard material, the records on many of them are effaced. I saw none very old. A quarter of a century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is merely cut "The burial place of" so and so; on others there ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ostentation—for servitors of gaiety as proficient as these importations were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and plants and roped vines were brought from afar—not, however, until the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate the interior structure of the big house, in the Amberson way. It was the last of the great, long remembered dances that "everybody talked about"—there were getting to be so many people in town that no later than the next year there were too many for "everybody" to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... demand the return of their children, or the good Younge felt forcibly his weakness to bring to justice the rich and great-for the law is weak where slavery makes men great-so as to make him disgorge the ill-gotten treasure he might have concealed, but the proof of which nothing was easier than to obliterate. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... them. The hunters say that between the hyena, whose stench is beyond description awful, and the jackal, whose stench is strong dog, they obliterate the tiger smell and so prevent the desperate panic coming in time to the hunted creatures, who fear the tiger ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... door on the inside, and proceeded to a minute inspection of the room. He darted from one object to the other with the agility of a grasshopper. I remained by the door, fearing to obliterate any clues. Poirot, however, did not seem grateful ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... was followed with the greatest difficulty, for the time which had elapsed since it was made was almost sufficient to obliterate it entirely. Now and then, where the ground was more favorable, it was easily discernible. After progressing a mile or so, O'Hara exclaimed, ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... light on this matter; but unfortunately they were destroyed in the year 1746, by one Donacha Dhu na Dunaigh, at the instance, it was said, or at least by the connivance, of the gracious Duncan of Knock, who had a desire to obliterate the recorded foibles of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to Olifant's River and at the cobalt mine near there joined those who had remained behind under General Muller. The enemy, however, who seemed determined, if possible, to obliterate us from the earth's surface, discovered our whereabouts about the middle of July, and attacked us in overwhelming numbers. We had taken up a position on the "Randts," and offered as much resistance as we ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... our ears and the singing and whizzing of those big shells was bizarre, to put it mildly. One did not know whether to get up or efface one's self in the blankets. I remember having the utmost confidence in the headboard of my bed, which was toward the window. But that did not obliterate the siren whistle of those big shells and the moment of suspense between the lightning and the thunder. After each deafening burst I kept reiterating to myself, "Saved again," as one would repeat a chronological table of something important. About 8.00 A. M. we straggled into the breakfast room—all ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... much tends to blur moral distinctions, and to obliterate plain duties, as the free indulgence of speculative habits. We must all know many a sorry scrub who has fairly talked himself into the belief that nothing but his intellectual difficulties prevents him from ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... had endeavored to obliterate every trace of the government of her murdered husband, Peter III., so Alexander strove to efface all vestiges of his assassinated father, Paul. He entered into the closest alliance with England, and manifested much eagerness ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... probably the descendants of nations highly advanced in cultivation. How can we distinguish the prolonged infancy of the human race (if, indeed, it anywhere exists), from that state of moral degradation in which solitude, want, compulsory misery, forced migration, or rigour of climate, obliterate even the traces of civilization? If everything connected with the primitive state of man, and the first population of a continent, could from its nature belong to the domain of history, we might appeal to the traditions of India. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... one it brought embarrassment; to the other, what seemed very like a broken heart. The countess-dowager's tactics must change as by magic. She had to transfer the affection and consideration evinced for Edward Lord Hartledon to his brother; and to do it easily and naturally. She had to obliterate from the mind of the latter her overbearing dislike to him, cause her insults to be remembered no more. A difficult task, even for her, wily woman as ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... expansive extravagance of a Marseillais keyed up with exceptionally bad absinthe. "Be not disturbed in the smallest! In this very coming moment this camel of a cat shall die a thousand deaths; and in but another moment immeasurable quantities of salt and ashes shall obliterate his justly despicable grave! To an instant accomplishment of Monsieur's wishes I pledge whole-heartedly the word ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the forsaken husband of Violet Vere, when he heard that that popular actress had died suddenly in America from a fit of delirium tremens brought on by excessive drinking, was able, by some gentle method known only to Love and himself, to forget all her frailties—to obliterate from his memory the fact that he ever saw her on the boards of the Brilliant Theatre,—and to think of her henceforth only as the wife he had once adored, and who, he decided in vague, dreamy fashion, must ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... we want is a death-ray strong enough to obliterate these monsters, without simply disintegrating them and creating new fragments to bud into the complete being. Why do you suppose they are so tenacious of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... important question, how shall he obtain pardon and justification with God, on account of his past transgressions? and how shall his sinful and unholy nature be sanctified and prepared for admission into the realms of everlasting glory? Can personal repentance, on the part of the sinner, obliterate the crime of which he has been guilty, so as to reinstate him into the condition of a sinless and unfallen being? Unquestionably not. For whatever act has been performed by God, or angels, or by man, must remain ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... men, and in consequence to sever all the bonds of civil society, by the authorization of theft, falsehood, perjury, the most culpable impurity, and in a word each passion and each crime of human weakness; to obliterate all sentiments of humanity by favoring homicide and parricide; and to annihilate the authority of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... forced to side with those who are openly Atheists or Agnostics. The clue to their theories was unguardedly exposed by Weizsaecker, who said, with regard to St. John's Gospel, "It is impossible to imagine any power of faith and philosophy so great as thus to obliterate the recollection of the real life, and to substitute for it this marvellous picture of a Divine Being." [1] This remark shows us that the critic approached the Gospel with a prejudice against the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity, and rejected the Gospel mainly because it would not ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... and intelligence. It was a clever expedient for ascending the first rung of the social ladder, for raising himself above his station. Above all things, he wished to escape from that frightful Faubourg where everybody reviled his family, and to obliterate all these foul legends, by effacing even the very name of the Fouques' enclosure. For that reason the filthy streets of the old quarter seemed to him perfect paradise. There, only, he would be able ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola |
