"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father's menials had worn. I had been begging my bread from Robert Beaufort's lackey! I said nothing; the man went on his business on tiptoe, that the mud might not splash above the soles of his shoes. Then, thoughts so black that they seemed to blot out every star from the sky—thoughts I had often wrestled against, but to which I now gave myself up with a sort of mad joy—seized me: and I remembered you. I had still preserved the address you gave me; I went straight ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a climax. If, as he professed to believe, "the best poet is he who best executes his work," then he is hardly a poet at all. He is habitually rapid and slovenly; an improvisatore on the spot whore his fancy is kindled, writing currente calamo, and disdaining the "art to blot." "I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle." He said to Medwin, "Blank verse is the most difficult, because every line must be good." ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of Agatha's name, he endeavored to resume his habitual calmness. He passed his hand over his eyes, as if to blot out the remembrance of the passion which yet burned within him, and gradually regained, in voice and manner, ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... but the bitterness which during his brief visit home had been put to sleep, raised its head and robbed him of all pleasure in his anticipated change and of much of the incentive to put forth his best effort in it. He felt that the result of this ungracious letter must be to blot the new leaf which he had so ardently desired to turn with shadows of his past which no effort of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... they were recognised by one of the Frangipani, who were the lords of the territory. Arrested by him and handed over to Charles, they were subjected to a form of trial, and beheaded in the market-place of Naples. This act has always been regarded as an indelible blot on Charles's record. Dante couples it with the alleged murder, by his order, of St. Thomas Aquinas; and it seems to have been felt even by members of the Guelf party as something, if one may so say, beyond the ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... stare. A solitary thought dominated her consciousness, dwarfing and distorting all others: she was in danger of arrest, imprisonment, the shame and ignominy of public prosecution. Even though she were to be cleared of the charge, the stain of it would cling to her, an ineradicable blot. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... His life must not be shadowed with disgrace. He must not hate me in my coffin. Oh, Grey! Grey! May God bless the boy and give him every needful happiness, and make him so good and noble that his life will blot out the stain upon ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Far more really than he saw the dim church and the trees, he saw Finlay grovelling on the ground and the stern men crouching over him. He saw a knife gleam in the lantern's light. He shut his eyes, as if by shutting them he could blot out the pictures of his imagination. He waited to hear a shriek, a smothered cry, a groan, the laboured breath of struggling men, the splash of blood. The suspense became an agony. He rose to his feet ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... sparkling beauty from your face. Looke not so fiercely nor cry out for helpe, For if you doe this makes you cry your last. Seing neyther words, kind letters, hearty sighes. Humble intreaty nor a world of payne Can move you to take pitty of my love, But Tyrant-like your beauty seeks my life; I will blot out that beauty with this juice. Thus, thus I wipe away my passions, Thus doe I heale the torments of my love, Thus doe I ransome my inthralled eye, And by depriving of the cause of life Kill th' effect, which was a world of sorrow. Farewell, foule Bellamira; ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... {106a} Another untoward blot! but leaving no doubt of the word. The only doubt is whether he meant the MUZZLE of the animal itself, or one of those leathern muzzles which are often employed to coerce the violence of ferocious animals. In besieged ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... form went up to say a lesson. Each boy was put on in turn. When it came to Walter's turn Mr Paton first inquired his name, which he entered with extreme neatness in his class-book—a book in which there was not a single blot from the first page to the last. He then put him on as he had ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... shrift. And I say not, where I speak of division of confession, that if thou have license to shrive thee to a discreet and an honest priest, and where thee liketh, and by the license of thy curate, that thou mayest not well shrive thee to him of all thy sins: but let no blot be behind, let no sin be untold as far as thou hast remembrance. And when thou shalt be shriven of thy curate, tell him eke all the sins that thou hast done since thou wert last shriven. This is no wicked intent of division ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... rights over her which are denied to me would not have been sufficient to drive me away from the one woman who is all the world to me. But I thought that the child, even before it was born, would take possession of her heart, draw her closer to her husband, and blot me out of her ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... is written of Samuel (Ecclus. 46:23): "He lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy to blot out the wickedness of the nation." Therefore other saints can likewise be called prophets after they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... perhaps, indeed, the very style of painting lent itself to speedy destruction. In the second half of the Sixteenth Century a traveller says that the picture is half spoiled; another sees in it only a tarnished blot; people complain that the picture is already lost, assuredly it can scarcely be seen; another calls it perfectly useless, and so speak all the later ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... need not go deeply into a history so fresh in the minds of all, as that blot which shows John Bull himself upholding a wretched dissipated monarch against a wife, who, whatever her faults, was still a woman, and whatever her spirit—for she had much of it, and showed it grandly at need—was still a lady. Suffice it to say that ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... palms that sharply cut the moonlight. As she did so something black moved away from them, as if it had been part of them and now detached itself with the intention of approaching her along the track. At first it was merely a moving blot, formless and small, but as it drew nearer she saw that it was a horseman riding slowly, perhaps stealthily, across the sand. She glanced behind her, and saw Batouch not far off, and the fires of the nomads. Then she turned again to watch ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... for the praises of the world. God is my witness that I am innocent of my brother's sins; in politics I have never meddled much, but have performed the duties of my office and ploughed my patch of ground. But I am a gentleman by birth, and should be glad to wipe out the blot on my escutcheon; I am a Pole, and should be glad to do some service for my country—even to lay down my life. With the sabre I was never over skilled, and yet some men have received slashes even from me. The world knows that at the time of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... us he was nineteen years 25 Considering and retouching Peter Bell; Watering his laurels with the killing tears Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well 30 May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil The over-busy gardener's ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... vision. Out of an orchard into the stubble of a wheat-field broke a panicky mass; a score or more of men who had lost their officer and their heads presumably. They were the nail under the hammer, a brown blot, a target. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... I have always thought your objection to church-going a blot upon an otherwise estimable character. Hitherto I have been too busy to attend to it, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... where he wished her to sign. A thrill of repulsion that was strong enough to be painful ran through her, and she rolled the penholder still more quickly and nervously, so that she almost dropped it, and a little blot of ink fell upon the sheet before she had begun ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... can wait awhile," grumbled the boy; but he went out, all the same, and Bartley, looking through the window, saw his lantern wavering, a yellow blot in the white moonshine, toward the stable. He sat down in the hostler's chair, and, in his turn, kicked the pine-root with the heel of his shoe, and looked about the room. He had had, as he would have said, a grand good time; but it had left him hungry, and the table ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... leaving only the four in the house to be accounted for. The dark specks in the brush were working closer to the house, effectually blocking escape. Then she could no longer make them out. The building showed only as a darker blot in the obscurity. A tiny point of light attracted her eye. It grew and spread. She knew that one of her men had crawled up under cover of night and fired the house. It was now but a question of minutes, but the sight oppressed her. She thought of the burning ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... same whom, after having utterly defeated at the lake Regillus, they kept in peaceable subjection for one hundred years; that the place being distinguished by the memory of their defeat, would rather stimulate them to blot out the remembrance of their disgrace, than raise a fear that any land should be unfavourable to their success. Were even the Gauls themselves presented to them in that place, that they would fight just as they fought at Rome in recovering their country, as the day ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... shalt not suffer that there be a beggar or a pauper within thy borders." Kindness to slaves ceased to be a virtue for us when we abolished slavery; and we look forward to the day when nor man nor woman nor child shall work and still be condemned to a life of misery. That great blot upon the page of history, woman's fate, has partly been erased, and we are drawing near to the time when in the world as in Christ there shall be made no distinction between slave and freeman, between man and woman. If we compare modern with ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... steady, would not blot out much smaller sounds nearby, and now he heard noises in the larger chamber. The voice of Colonel Woodville was raised ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the pen in a passion, 'Worse, worse than their troubles a lot! I've been in disgrace, since he used me, For making a terrible blot.' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... they increase in magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem to have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark day-visions; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... should have shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him. Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at once, and the drooping head would have been proud again, and she would have gone ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... of about Charlotte's age slipped in. Nobody except Mrs. Barnard, who said, absently, "How do you do, Rose?" seemed to notice her. She sat down unobtrusively in a chair near the door and waited. Her blue eyes upon the others were so intense with excitement that they seemed to blot out the rest of her face. She had her blue apron tightly rolled ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the dark pool and its nameless horror; but when from the height they paused breathless and gasping to look down, there was no stain, or blot, or ripple on its ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... from the thraldom of a modified despotism to have made, as yet, any very great progress in developing the elements of national prosperity and greatness which the vast empire of Brazil so abundantly possesses, and the foul blot of slavery, with its ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... old lady writes, and how fond she is of sporting their arms," he continued, as he held up the great blot of red wax carefully sealed over the adhesive ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... a start of recollection, and plunged down the slope into the covert. The woods received and closed upon her. Once more, she wandered and hasted in a blot, uncheered, unpiloted. Here and there, indeed, through rents in the wood-roof, a glimmer attracted her; here and there a tree stood out among its neighbours by some force of outline; here and there a brushing among the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Oh, don't be entirely heartless. Wouldn't a cup of tea blot it out? With a Peak & Frean?" She advances beseechingly upon him. "Come, I will give ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... narrow stage of my woman's imagination. But instead of bringing me release, it brought me heart-ache; instead of spelling victory, it came involved with the thin humiliations of compromise. For things could never be the same again. The blot was there on the scutcheon, and could never be argued away. The man I loved had let the grit get into the bearings of his soul, had let that grit grind away life's delicate surfaces without even knowing the wine of abandoned speed. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... kindly asked me to make this little speech, and I do not wish to turn it into a sermon, but I must conclude by saying that, splendid as is the history of England in many points, there is one black blot upon the page, and that, the act of hers by which she renounced Christ's Vicar, by whom kings reign. You have done justice at last in returning to us those possessions which our forefathers dedicated to God's service. But there ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... to the loveliest creature under heaven. He doesn't have to lie awake nights for fear the skies will fall and blot him out before ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she was the same good comrade, cool and quick. But as before a change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so Shelton was affected by the inner change in her. He had made a blot upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was left a mark, and it was ineffaceable. Antonia belonged to the most civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to write a constitutional history, and he could not be expected to deal with his subject from that special point of view. Freeman's complaint, which is quite just, was that he neglected almost entirely the relations of the Crown with the Houses of Parliament and with the courts of law. The moral blot accounts for a good deal of the indignation which Froude excited in minds far less jaundiced than Freeman's. No one hated injustice more than Froude. But cruelty as such did not inspire him with any horror. No punishment, however atrocious, seemed to him too great for persons ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... could have matched the ribbon for you. "Allison does not know," I heard Lucretia say the other day. "We do not want her to know. It would distress her too much." I shall not let you know, my darling. I write it now, but I shall blot it out lest it hurt you too much to know afterward how precious each moment you gave me was, lest it grieve your tender heart to know there was something more you might have given ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hand to have the honour Of his destruction. I, that am A nothingness in deed and name Did scorn to hurt his forfeit carcase, 1040 Or ill intreat his fiddle or case: Will you, great Sir, that glory blot In cold blood which you gain'd in hot? Will you employ your conqu'ring sword To break a fiddle and your word? 1045 For though I fought, and overcame, And quarter gave, 'twas in your name. For great commanders only own What's prosperous by the soldier ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... every man who comes into the world, was too bright for them, and shone into their consciences, and showed them that the wages of sin was death. The law of God, St. Paul tells us, was written in their hearts; and how much soever, poor creatures, they might try to blot it out and forget it, yet it would rise up in judgment against them, day by day, night by night, convincing them of sin. So they in their terror sold themselves to false priests, who pretended to know of plans for helping them to escape from this angry ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... You, my dear friend, are well aware how I do hate Salzburg, not only on account of the injustice shown to my father and myself there, which was in itself enough to make us wish to forget such a place, and to blot it out wholly from our memory. But do not let us refer to that, if we can contrive to live respectably there. To live respectably and to live happily, are two very different things; but the latter I never could do short of witchcraft,—it ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... promised to speedily blot out all possibility of an earthly future. In answer to his letter describing his visit to Dr. Marks, he received from Mrs. Arnot a brief note, saying that the warm weather had affected her very unfavorably, and that she was quite ill and had been losing strength for some weeks. On this ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... A darker blot appeared on the darkness and two warriors, bearing a third, came through the bushes. The man whom they bore was a dark-browed, cruel savage who had carried the scalp of a white woman at his belt. But he would ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... into the colony, began to spring forth, and, as if brought to a warmer and more fertile soil, to grow so rank as to promise little peace and happiness to the young settlement. No common dangers or difficulties could blot out of their memories the prejudices and animosities contracted in England: the odious terms of distinction were revived and propagated among the people, and while one party were attached to the church of England, the other, who ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... to bring some of the Fernalds over here to see the place," observed he. "For some time Mr. Clarence has been complaining that this shack was a blot on the estate and threatening to pull it down. He'd better have a peep at it now. You may find he'll be ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... you seriously contemplate divorcing your wife. You must know that you have not the accepted grounds for doing so. As for the law you quote which allows divorce in cases of two years' so-called desertion, I can only say that I consider it a blot on Leichardt's Land legislation. Divorce should be for one cause only—the cause to which Our Lord gave a qualified approval; and Bridget has never been unfaithful—in act or desire, to her husband. I would maintain this ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... there is no more pathetic figure in all the history of Spain than this poor, mistreated Juana la Loca, "the mad Juana," and to every diligent student of Spanish history this instance of woman's inhumanity to woman will ever be a blot on the scutcheon of the celebrated ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... that in us that time can never tame; And life will always seem a careless game; And they'd better far forget— Those who say they love us yet— Forget, blot out with bitterness ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... as black clouds once more rose to blot out the pleasant picture she had formed in her mind; and as the mists gathered the tears fell once more, hot, briny tears which seemed to scald her eyes as she sank upon her knees by the bedside and buried her face ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... besought the Signory of Venice on his bended knees, as a return for services rendered by him to the State, that no public punishment should be inflicted on the culprits. He could not bear, he said, to be the cause of bringing a blot of infamy upon his religion, or of ruining the career of any man. Fra Giovanni Francesco afterwards redeemed his life by offering weighty evidence against his powerful accomplices. But what he revealed is buried in the oblivion with which the Council ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... live?"— "God knows: The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin A wind blew on them and life entered in; They shook and rose. Hasten the time, O Lord, blot out their ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... plain prose, be it understood that every body was satisfied, even Mr. Churchill; for Beauclerc had repaired for him, just in time, an error which would have been a blot on his gallantry of the day. He had forgotten to have some of the pretty grey hairs plucked from the heron, to give to the ladies to ornament their bonnets, but Beauclerc had secured them for him, and also two or three of those much-valued, smooth, black feathers, from the head of the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... will you make for me? Tell me how many bright golden prospects you will blot out for the silly woman you have ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... yonder like a blot of ink he sits across the way, Upon the smiling terrace of the Cafe de la Paix; That little wizened Spanish man, his face is ghastly white, His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger's in the night. I know ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... achieve greatness, some men are born to greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." With Cromwell, greatness was achieved. He was the architect of his own fortunes, owing little to, what is called, "chance," less to patronage, and still less to crime, if we except the one sad blot upon the page of his own history, as connected with that of his country. There appears in his character but a small portion of that which is evil, blended with much that is undoubtedly good. Although ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... did. We feel on cooler deliberation and upon giving the matter the thought which its importance demanded, that he is helping us and that he has placed the American Legion in a position to help us to move in a body politic, to overcome certain things in the State of Illinois and blot out pro-Germanism. ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... that slavery followed hard upon the heels of the Pilgrim Fathers, "and was tolerated" until 1780. Massachusetts "felt free" to tear from the iron grasp of the imperious magistrates the liberties of the people, but doubtless felt not "free" enough to blot out "the crime and folly of an evil time." And yet for years lawyers and clergymen, orators and statesmen, historians and critics, have stubbornly maintained, that, while slavery did creep into the colony, and did exist, it was "not probably by ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... for an instant looking at her, but not heeding her words. "Will you listen to me again? Will you forget the wrong I did you?—my stupidity and folly and unworthiness? Will you blot out the past and let me begin again. I see you as clearly now as the light of that window. Will you ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... blot, Scatchy being addicted to blots]: I am honestly frightened when I think what we are doing. But, oh, my dear, if you could know how pleased we are with ourselves you'd not deny us this pleasure. Harry, you have it—the real thing, you know, whatever it is—and I haven't. None ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when we seek His forgiveness. If I, His poor little creature, feel so tenderly towards you when you come back to me, what must pass through Our Lord's Divine Heart when we return to Him? Far more quickly than I have just done will He blot out our sins from His memory. . . . Nay, He will even love us more tenderly than before ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... I Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven May scatter thy delusions, and the blot Upon my fame vanish in idle thought, Even as flame dies in the envious air, And as the flow'ret wanes at morning frost, And thou shouldst never—But alas! to whom Do I still speak?—Did not a man but now ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... which was termed by the country paper chaste and elegant, was by united efforts, in which Clarence had the lion's share, presented in time for the christening of the first child at the Parsonage. It is that which was sent off to the Mission Chapel as a blot on the rest of Earlscombe Church. Yet what an achievement it ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slave-dealer how many slaves he had had on board, and we learned with astonishment that the number amounted to 670. Much has already been said and written upon this horrible trade; it is everywhere execrated, and looked upon as a blot on the human race, and yet ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... the shaved chin and lips (which were also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two human ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the subject, tried to blot the stories from her memory, and presently buried her ears in the pillow to shut out the clamor of the storm. After a sound night's slumber, and an interview with Miss Thwaite she resumed her ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... may? Let me tell you, king, that it was an exceedingly great glory to you to have overcome Manfred, but a far greater one it is to overcome one's self; wherefore do you, who have to correct others, conquer yourself and curb this appetite, nor offer with such a blot to mar that which you ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and for whose welfare, with all the generous truth of a sister's feeling, they would barter everything, yet who were in an unending danger! Think of them, with this skeleton behind the door of their hearts, fearful at every moment! Does it seem good in the scheme of existence, or a blot there, that those who are themselves innocent, but who are yet the real sufferers, whether punishment to the culprit fall or fail, should be made thus poignantly miserable? We ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the Court of Aldermen, who elect one to be the Lord Mayor for the year ensuing. (The office is compulsory to an alderman, but he is excused upon the payment of L1,000.) The one selected is generally the one next in rotation, unless he has not paid twenty shillings in the pound, or there is any blot in his private character, for it does not follow that an alderman having served the office of sheriff must necessarily become Lord Mayor; the selection rests first with the livery, and afterwards with the Court of Aldermen; and in case of bankruptcy, or compounding ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... as possible. Leniency, indeed, of any kind he simply regards as weakness. He would be a highwayman if the existing conditions of society allowed it, and if he had the necessary personal courage. As it is, he is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our roads. Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is with the genuine Gipsies. He has taken to it from choice, and the true-bred Romany will always ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... married a lady of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado; and, giving the name to one of his children, they subsequently retained it as a patronymic in preference to their own. It would appear, from the same poem, not only that the Alighieri were the more important house, but that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of the Elisei; perhaps their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from some disreputable district. Perhaps they were known to have been of ignoble origin; for, in the course of one of his most philosophical treatises, he bursts into an extraordinary ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... in the lee of the cabin, Captain Swope, and Lynch and the tradesmen. Lynch carried the lighted hurricane lamp that hung handy in a sheltered nook during the night. Forward, a respectful distance, the stiffs of the watch made a vague blot in the gloom. As, we came down the poop ladder a voice I recognized as Boston's called to us from this last group, "He tried to get you, Big 'Un!" So I knew that the lightning flash had revealed to the watch what it had ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Have mercy upon me, O God; according to thy loving kindness, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and it would be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. However, God was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he could for the time being. Kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a lie. That would have been a fatal blot on Kim's character if Mahbub had not known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub's business, Kim could lie ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... "' William Pleydell died unmarried and intestate in 1667, and was succeeded by his cousin Anthony. Except that during the former's tenure a good deal of timber was cut, White Ladies had been well cared for. The one blot upon his stewardship was the disappearance of the greater part of the family plate, which Nicholas Pleydell's will proves to have been unusually rare and valuable. There used to exist a legend, for which the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... bowels of compassion, O Lord, be open to thy faithful servants, who have this day perished by the hand of the barbarians. Hither did they come to vindicate thy faith; for thy sake are they fallen. Do thou, O Lord, mercifully blot out their offences, accounting them worthy to be delivered from the pains of hell. Send thy archangels to rescue their souls from darkness, and bear them to the regions of light, where thy blessed martyrs eternally live and reign ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... Society towards this clearly stated letter, with its useful suggestions, must always remain as a blot on the record of this usually very receptive and liberal-minded body. Far from publishing it or receiving it at all, they derided the whole matter as too visionary for discussion by the society. How was it possible that any great scientific ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... his gloves and laid them on the inlaid bureau. He had the physique of a director of public companies, and the grave manner that impresses shareholders. He talked of the weather, drew Cornish's attention to a blot of ink on the high-art wallpaper, and then put on his gloves again, well pleased with ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... You can always speak to me in public, or socially, in the most friendly manner; as I shall hope to be able to speak to you. But you must never transgress the ordinary rules of decorum. If you do, I shall have to take, for my own protection, another course. I know you now! I am willing to blot out the past; but it must be the whole ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... holy name, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." It recurs in the prophets: "I, the Lord, am he that blotteth out thy sins; yea, tho they be as a thick cloud, I will blot them out." It is the highest note reached by the singers of the Old Testament; but it comes to us with greater resonance and sweetness from the lips of the men who have stood in the presence of Jesus Christ, and who are able to say, as they look into the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... nothing to another, although somehow to him it conveyed not only Katharine herself but all those states of mind which had clustered round her since he first saw her pouring out tea on a Sunday afternoon. It represented by its circumference of smudges surrounding a central blot all that encircling glow which for him surrounded, inexplicably, so many of the objects of life, softening their sharp outline, so that he could see certain streets, books, and situations wearing a halo ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Nay, be wondered that the family spirit should have so completely seized upon the fighting side of his heart as to preclude all thoughts of matrimony; for he could not but remember that his relations were as ready for marriage as for fighting. To doubt this would have been to throw a blot upon his own escutcheon. He therefore very prudently asked himself to whom, if he did not marry, should he transmit his courage. He was a single man, and, dying as such, he would be the sole depository of his own valor, which, like Junius's secret, must perish with him. If he could ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... exactly similar instruments. Any one possessing a private wire can write at his own desk in the manual character a letter or message on one of these slips. Placing it in his own instrument, it at once reproduces itself exactly in his autograph, and with every peculiarity, blot, or erasure, at the nearest office. Here the copy is placed in the proper box, and at once reproduced in the office nearest the residence of the person to whom it is addressed, and forwarded in the same manner to him. A letter, therefore, covering one of these slips, and saying ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... view powerful intellects were reverting to the Middle Ages and eager to blot out the whole development of modern society since the Reformation, as the Encyclopaedic philosophers had wished to blot out the Middle Ages. The ideal of Bonald, De Maistre, and Lamennais was a sacerdotal government of the world, and the English ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... because itself was fair, For fair is loved; and of itself begot Like to itself his eldest son and heir, Eternal, pure, and void of sinful blot, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... prater, fit to sit in the chimney-corner of a pot-house, and make blasphemous comments on the one greasy newspaper fingered by beer-swilling tinkers. I will not suffer in my company a man who speaks lightly of religion. The signature of a fellow like Byles would be a blot on our protest.' ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Bastile over which Prince Mastowix held sway, he had charge of this fearful secret record; but the better to blot his existence out, should inquiries ever be made, he applied a false name to the "No. 20"; described him as a Russian, a Nihilist, who had been caught in holding correspondence with Paul Zobriskie, and who ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... other title than that of homicides, while the simple affirmation of others has been admitted (in default of testimony) who are themselves the authors of the deed, for which they stand in judgment. The indiscriminate system of accepting bail is a blot on our criminal legislation, and is one great reason why so many violators of the law avoid its penalties. To this doubtless must be ascribed the non-interference of the Attorney General. The law of habeas corpus being subjected to the interpretation of every magistrate, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the softness and the graces of theirs. Men will then add affection to the esteem which they before had for you. Women are the only refiners of the merit of men; it is true, they cannot add weight, but they polish and give lustre to it. 'A propos', I am assured, that Madame de Blot, although she has no great regularity of features, is, notwithstanding, excessively pretty; and that, for all that, she has as yet been scrupulously constant to her husband, though she has now been married above a year. Surely she does ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of her comrades scornfully, and tells her how of course the home-folk have been careful to blot out all memories of one who has come to the town to lead the life she leads. She may be sure the old people have rubbed out the mark showing how tall she was on the door, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... did forget that at the moment," answered Maxton, while the blood mounted to his forehead. "It is the foulest blot upon my country's honour; but I at least am guiltless of upholding the accursed institution, as, also, are thousands of my countrymen. I feel assured, however, that the time is coming when that ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... exclaimed, seizing the inky paper. "I want to see whether I am doing right or not to sign. If that is a butterfly I am right, and if anything else, no matter what, I am wrong." I took the sheet, doubled it in the middle of the enormous blot, and pressed it firmly together. Emile Perrin thereupon began to laugh, giving up his mannikin attitude entirely. He leaned over to examine the paper with me, and we opened it very gently just as one opens one's hand after imprisoning ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... consternation she found the object of her intended visitation vanished. The surprise of the duenna was strongly pictured on her shrivelled visage, as the dismal truth obtruded itself upon her mind. The wrath of Monteblanco, and the blot upon her own dear reputation, as the natural consequences of this disaster, took possession of her mind. She first uttered something between a whine and a discordant cry, meaning thereby to indicate at once her emotions ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Damon drove along, they scanned, as best they could in the light from the young moon and the powerful lamps on the runabout, every part of the highway. They were looking for some dark blot which might indicate where a man had fallen from his wheel and was lying in some huddled heap on the road. But they saw nothing like ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... which we write, (about sixty years ago), Algiers was under the dominion of Turkey, but exercised all the rights of an independent state. It may be described as a monstrous blot of barbarism hanging on the skirts of civilisation. It was an anomaly too, for it claimed to be an orthodox power, and was recognised as such by the nations of Europe, while in reality its chief power consisted in consummate impudence, founded on pride and ignorance ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... your modern cheap science, in ten volumes. Now I haven't a quiet moment to spare for drawing this morning; but I merely give the main relations of the petals, A, and blot in the wrinkles of one of the lower ones, B, Fig. 12; and yet in this rude sketch you will feel, I believe, there is something specific which could not belong to any other flower. But all proper description is {94} impossible without careful profiles of each petal laterally ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... once and will not be here again!" And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp. In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Stone, as it hung there ominously in the light of the moon; or listened towards it if it was dark. When the moon rose late, and The Stone chanced to be directly in front of it, a black sphere seemed to be rolling into the light to blot it out. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said the American, "you have only to sign it." And a receipt duly prepared was handed to Mother Etienne, who in a trembling hand appended her signature and a flourish. I don't know that she did not even embellish it with a huge blot of ink. ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... influence of the father is, at the outset, as great as that of the mother. The unhappy or immoral thoughts of one alone at the critical moment when life is imparted, may fix for eternity a foul blot upon a character ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... to accept some invitation, apart from occasions of too great solemnity, when he was really constrained to dress himself in the complete livery of circumstance and ceremony, he remained faithful to his black felt hat, which made a blot among all the carefully polished "toppers" of his colleagues. He was called to order; he was reprimanded; he obeyed unwillingly, or worse, he resisted; he revolted, and threatened to send in his resignation. To pay court to people, to endeavour to make himself ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... while, though so noiselessly that when he opened his eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the little embroidery frame at the window. Finding himself alone, he sat up in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it could. For a little space the walls of the room became as the interior of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rushing of many waters. After the surroundings had resumed their normal figurings he rose to his knees. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the Lapiths were always an unadventurous, respectable crew," said Priscilla, with a note of scorn in her voice. "If I were to write my family history now! Why, it would be one long continuous blot from beginning to end." She laughed jovially, and helped herself to another glass ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the spun-glass eraser. First she rubbed out the cents after the written figure "Twenty-five." Carefully with a blunt instrument she smoothed down the roughened surface of the paper so that the ink would not run in the fibers and blot. Over and over she practised writing the "Thousand" in a hand like that on the check. She already had the capital "T" in "Twenty" as a guide. During the night in practising she had found that in raising checks only seven capital letters were used—O in one, T in two, three, ten, and ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... them. Hence the multiplied injuries which have fallen so heavily upon him. Hence the reduction of his wages from one degree to another, till at length, in the case of millions, fraud and violence strip him of his all, blot his name from the record of mankind, and, putting a yoke upon his neck, drive him away to toil among the cattle. Here you find the slave. To reduce the servant to his condition, requires abuses altogether monstrous—injuries reaching ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... scale than The Moorings. It thinks it is an old French Chateau, and tries to convey the same impression to beholders, as do several others of more or less the same sort. But it's a hopeless effort. The poor dears might as well give up and resign themselves once for all to being a blot on the exquisite blue and gold landscape; though perhaps if they can hold out for two or three hundred years, they may do better. The farther we went, along a glorious road called the Cliff Drive, and the more charming Colonial houses and ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... delay'd, 'Till signs aerial promised heavenly aid; Oft pitch'd their idle lances in the plain, While south-winds held their unpropitious reign. Remember too the word disclosed from high, The sacred word of ancient prophecy,— "When gather'd mists from Denmark's sky shall crowd, And blot the North with one continued cloud, Then shall a second sun to Sweden rise, And with unchanging glory gild her skies." Reflect on this, and let my words have way, Nor spurn the needful counsels of delay. Should all our province with united strength ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... lapsed into a moody silence afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them—a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!—if she was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... it over the docks, if that would blot out one evening behind the broom bushes at Garthowen, and one night when I saw a sight which spoilt my life. It's twenty minutes to the starting time yet, Sara. Art tired, or will I tell the rest ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore, say, that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, Sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the Third be a blot on the page of history. You are surrounded by British counsellors, but remember that they are parties. You have no ministers for American affairs, because you have none taken from among us, nor amenable to the laws on which they are to give you advice. It behoves you, therefore, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Againe my spectickles were throwne from ye table, and almost into ye hot fire. My paper, do what I could, I could hardly keep it. Before I could dry my writing, a mammouth hat rubbed along it, but I held it so fast that it did only blot some of it. My wife and I being much afraid that I should not preserve ye writing, we did think best to lay it in ye Bible. Againe ye next night I lay it there againe, but in ye morning it was not to be found, till I found it in a box alone. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... "It's a blot in the 'scutcheon, of course," said Miss Rebecca. "It's for our niece to say." But there was no sternness in ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... homage? If a frantic legislature pronounces woman a chattel, has it no power, with returning reason, to take back the blasphemy? Is the impious edict irrepealable? Be it, that with legal forms it has stamped wives "wares." Can no legislation blot out the brand? Must the handwriting of Deity on human nature be expunged for ever? Has law no power to stay the erasing pen, and tear off the scrawled label that covers up the IMAGE ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... lock of his heart and opened up to reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped out by ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Parganiotes that the indemnity allowed them was irrevocably fixed at 150,000! The transaction is a disgrace to the egotistical and venal nation which thus allowed the life and liberty of a people to be trifled with, a lasting blot on the honour ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... of the definition should make you tremble for your lives, if you meditate his dishonour. From imposture comes contempt, from contempt hatred, from hatred homicide, which takes out the blot of dishonour. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... o'er the wave the crowding barges row, The Moorish flags the curling waters sweep, The Lusian mortars thunder o'er the deep; Again the fiery roar heaven's concave tears, The Moors astonished stop their wounded ears; Again loud thunders rattle o'er the bay, And clouds of smoke wide-rolling blot the day; The captain's barge the gen'rous king ascends, His arms the chief enfold, the captain bends (A rev'rence to the scepter'd grandeur due): In silent awe the monarch's wond'ring view Is fix'd on Vasco's noble mien; the while His thoughts with wonder weigh the hero's toil. Esteem and friendship ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the massacre of the 270 wild bison for their heads and robes, already noted. The second blot is the equally savage slaughter in the early winter of 1911, by some of the people of Gardiner, reinforced by so-called sportsmen from other parts of the state, of all the park elk they could kill,—bulls, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... These premises were now a mere blot of desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn. All the copse up the Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just here, in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the night from ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... insurrectionary movement. Alvarado himself declared that he had information that the Mexicans intended to rise, but he gave no proofs, whatever, to justify his suspicions. The affair, indeed, seems to have been utterly indefensible, and must ever remain a foul blot ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... task impossible for any man save one like him, he had felt the meaning of it grow strangely and wonderfully, and through that flourished up consciousness of how passionately he now clung to this thing which would blot out his former infamy. The iron fetters no more threatened his hands; the iron door no more haunted his dreams. He never forgot that he was free. Strangely, too, along with this feeling of new manhood ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... utterly beaten infantry, the Constable Montmorency and several generals taken prisoner, the Duke d'Enghien mortally wounded, the flower of the nobility cut down like grass,—such were the terrible results of a battle which plunged France into mourning, and which would have been a blot on the reign of Henry II, had not the Duke of Guise obtained a brilliant revenge ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger
... morning of April 4, 1853, a "Persian prince" embarked at Southampton for Alexandria. The "prince" was myself, about to undertake a journey for the purpose of removing that opprobrium to modern adventure, the huge white blot which on our maps still notes the eastern regions of Arabia. I had hoped to make a more extended tour, but the East India Company had only granted me a year's furlough, refusing the three years that I had asked on the ground that my project was too dangerous. The attempt was one that could not be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... fertilizing Nile from its bed and leave its shores dry, because, from time to time, it destroyed fields and villages in the excess of its overflow? "This day and its deeds of shame," he went on sadly, "are a blot on the pure and sublime book of the History of our Faith, and every true Christian must bitterly bewail the excesses of a frenzied mob. The Church must no less condemn Caesar's sanguinary vengeance; it casts a shade on his honor and his fair name, and his conscience no doubt will punish him for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thy dear sake all cakes I shun Smeared o'er with jam. No apricot Or greengage tart my heart hath won; Their sweetness doth but cloy and clot. What marmalade in fancy pot Or cream meringue, though fair it be, Thine image e'er can mar or blot? Oh! penny bun, I love ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... medicine for the spleen, but in my inner heart do I approve and embrace this our close, but unharassing, way of life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or dog's-ear. You will much oblige me by ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... filled gloriously with noble, and even with royal names, till at last she stopped short, and covering one medallion with her finger, she said, "Pass over that, dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great uncle John's: what could he expect by marrying into that family, where, you know, all the men were not sans peur, and none of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... out of bed, and paced across the dark room to the grey blot of the window. She forgot her distrust of the night air in all her misery of throbbing head and heart, and flung back the casement, so that the soft marsh wind came in, with rain upon it, and her tears were mingled with the tears ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... or symbol belonging thereto, be at any time set up or established at Laon." By the same ordinance the municipal administration of Laon was put under the sole authority of the king and his delegates; and to blot out all remembrance of the olden independence of the commune, a later ordinance forbade that the tower from which the two huge communal bells had been removed should thenceforth be ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... haughty men!" the wrathful monarch cried, The while his face grew dark with rage and fury, so defied; "Yea, heat the furnace seven fold, and in the fiercest flame Blot out forever from the ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... attracts the lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond the possibility of refutation. Sometimes they are reproached as wanting in affection, when they displease their fathers by making an obscure name celebrated. The family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... you write offends the critic's rules, It is an evil sign, no doubt; But when 'tis lauded to the skies by fools, 'Tis time, indeed, to blot it out." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... indeed had I left it? It was a new book with scarcely a blot in it. Great heavens! I had forgotten it and left it out of doors at the far end of the garden in the most removed asparagus bed. For my historical studies I had selected the asparagus bed which was like a bit of copse, for the feathery ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... dissected and demonstrated,—in a word, whatever is of the body only,—that the schools of knowledge do resolutely and courageously possess themselves of, and portray. But whatever is immeasurable, intangible, indivisible, and of the spirit, that the schools of knowledge do as certainly lose, and blot out of their sight, that is to say, all that is worth art's possessing or recording at all; for whatever can be arrested, measured, and systematized, we can contemplate as much as we will in nature herself. But what we want art to do for us is to stay what is fleeting, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... mortal lips. He painted picture after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm himself into the paradise of human hearts, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... homely verse, of many meanest, Hope to escape his venemous despite, More then my former writs, all were they clearest From blamefull blot, and from all that wite, With which some wicked tongues did it backebite, And bring into a mighty Peres displeasure, That never so deserved to endite. Therfore do you my rimes keep better measure, And seek to please, that now ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... my soul for ever she returns; Or rather Lethe could not blot her thence, Such as she was when first she struck my sense, In that bright blushing age when beauty burns: So still I see her, bashful as she turns Retired into herself, as from offence: I cry—"'Tis she! she still has life and sense: ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... greatest masters their faults, We are willing to cover with the veil of oblivion those of the said Baron; do hereby grant him, with regret, the Congee he requires;—and abolish his Office altogether, to blot it from men's memory, not judging that anybody after the said Baron can be worthy to fill it." "Done at Potsdam, this 1st of April, 1744. FREDERIC." ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... vanished our hopes. My mistress had taught me the precepts of God's Word: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor. I would give much to blot out from my memory that one great wrong. As a child, I loved my mistress; and, looking back on the happy days I spent with her, I try to think with less bitterness of this act of injustice. While I was with her, she taught me to read and spell; and for this privilege, which so rarely ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... Mariana, by causing you so much grief and pain (I know you will grieve, Mariana) and giving you so much anxiety. But what could I do? I could think of no other way out. I could not simplify myself, so the only thing left for me to do was to blot myself out altogether. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... to the knife! The great white chief—the owl-eyed fool!—will not blot from our agreement the names of the Saulteaux chiefs—chiefs! there are no Saulteaux chiefs. All their braves are cowards, on the same dead level of stupidity, and their women are—are nothing, fit for nothing, can do nothing, and must soon come to nothing! What then? The duty of Cree warriors ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... becoming personally acquainted), that I may have the gratification of recording my humble tribute of admiration and respect for his high abilities and character; and for the bold philanthropy with which he has ever opposed himself to that most hideous blot and foul ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... and produce of the settlers, while the maintenance of the convicts necessitated the expenditure of L80,000 to L90,000 a year of Imperial money in the colony. With these aids, the settlers kept their heads above water, till, owing to the Victorian outcry against what was termed 'a blot' on the already rather shady 'escutcheon 'of Australia, the immigration was stopped in 1868. Since then the convicts have dwindled down from 5,000 to 500. Happily the discovery of new pastoral lands occurred almost simultaneously with the cessation of convict immigration, and the colony ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... kitten, a tiny black blot on the pink and green, came daintily down the path to meet her, mindful of her two pails of warm milk. Sport, who had succeeded in putting the cows into their places, came bounding up in a fit of boisterous ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... been implanted, and which give a taste for mucky authors that reek with suggestiveness; and to avoid the waste of nerve substance and nerve weakness in ways which Ibsen and Tolstoi have described. These things are the darkest blot on ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... had called out the Militia in order to prevent a Blot being put upon the Fair Name ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... Goths, and other barbarians have sacked Rome, monsters of the Imperial house have devastated the city to wipe out the remembrance of their predecessors and glorify themselves; but if Rome was not built in a day, so two thousand years have not sufficed to blot out its magnificence. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin |
