"Blighting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand to redeem those terrible seven years of dissipation and death," he would often say in after years when, with his soul still scarred and battered from his conflict with blighting passion, he tearfully urged young men to free themselves from the chains of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... sheltered, and where the soil had doubtless been enriched to a more than natural fertility. In two or three places grapevines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters already purple, and promising the richness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice. The blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees and vines; the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and too early intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay tropically there, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... behaviour in the Tenderloin. For the first time in his life he stood in the limelight. Nellie charged him with other trifling things, such as failure to provide, desertion, cruelty; but none of these was sufficiently blighting to take the edge off the delicious clause which lifted him into the seventh heaven of a new found self-esteem! His first impulse had been to cry out against the diabolical falsehood, to deny the allegation, ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... cold anywhere on earth as it was in the upper part of New York State. The coldest days they had ever known in New York City—and they had always believed that nothing could be colder—were balmy when compared with that awful day on the outskirts of Syracuse—that bleak, blighting day in the wind-swept graveyard where the mother ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... filberts—not blighting, but not thriving this year or last. Reason unknown. Soil is heavy clay hardpan near top. Top swampy ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... battle, while there will be none whom he will not be able to vanquish. Why then hath that Jishnu endued with great strength been subject to death? Oh, why doth that Dhananjaya, relying on whom we had hitherto endured all this misery, lie on the ground blighting[108] all my hopes! Why have those heroes, those mighty sons of Kunti, Bhimasena and Dhananjaya, came under the power of the enemy,—those who themselves always slew their foes, and whom no weapons could resist! Surely, this vile heart of mine must be made of adamant, since, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... The blighting influence of constitutional strife and intestine war which followed in the Stuarts' reigns turned the serious artist's thoughts aside to grave and prophetic forms of literary utterance, while writers of the frivolous sort devoted their talent to a lighter and ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... infectious! I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of their transformation I ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... duties and commonplace routine. Only one emotion largely controlled her thought and that was a dumb gratitude for what she believed she was receiving. She could not agree that her devoted service gave ample return. She was under obligation, and the feeling was blighting to the girl's independence. Work, the necessity for work, was an accepted state of mind to poor Mary. The luxury and consideration that were hers in her present life took from labour, as far as she mentally ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... proper observance of this direction, you cannot fail to profit by the others. But, if you neglect this, your pursuit of doctrinal knowledge will serve only as food to your pride, self-confidence and vain-glory, and exert a blighting ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... pronounce a true verdict who are themselves the persons to be judged, and who therefore can give no opinion, centuries may elapse before fair comparison can be made between two artists of different ages; while the patriarchal excellence exercises during the interval a tyrannical—perhaps, even a blighting, influence over the minds, both of the public and of those to whom, properly understood, it should serve for a guide and example. In no city of Europe where art is a subject of attention, are its ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... should obey their parents; insubordination is an evil, blighting the buddings of self-government. Parents should teach their children at the 236:24 earliest possible period the truths of health and holiness. Children are more tractable than adults, and learn more readily ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... warrior waves his standard high, His falchion flashes in the fray; He madly shouts his battle-cry, And glories in a well-fought day. But Famine's at the city gate, And Rapine prowls without the walls; The city round lies desolate, While Havoc's blighting footstep falls. By ruined hearths, by homes defiled, In scenes that nature's visage mar, We feel the storm of passions wild, And pluck the bitter ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... made up my mind that the atmosphere of Gladwyn is fatal to my soul's health. I seem to wither up like some sensitive plant in that blighting air; half-truths, misunderstandings, and jealousies have corroded our home peace. I am better away from it all, for here I can own myself ill and miserable, and no one blames or misapprehends my meaning: there are no harsh judgments under ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to obloquy by the admirable eulogist of Columbus, Mr. Irving, "as a warning example of those perfidious beings in office, who too often lie like worms at the root of honorable enterprise, blighting by their unseen influence the fruits of glorious action and disappointing the hopes of nations." This denunciation he incurred by thwarting the schemes of Columbus, in their minor details at first, afterwards becoming ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... that slavery is an existing evil, incompatible with the principles of political liberty, at war with our system of government, and extending a baleful and blasting influence over our country, withering and blighting its fairest prospects and brightest hopes. Who has said that these petitions are unjust in principle, and on that ground ought not to be granted? Who has said that slavery is not an evil? Who has said it does not tarnish the fair fame of our ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to bring forth a bitter harvest of tares. Ah, boys, beware of the first seeds of hate! Pluck them from you, as you would your hand from the fire. Otherwise they will spring up so quickly that they will wind themselves, like poisonous weeds, round every fibre of your being, blighting and strangling all the better impulses of your nature, killing, above all, the choicest blossom that comes to us from the Divine garden—the blossom of love. Where hate flourishes, love cannot be. There is no room for the two. Never since the world began have they ever flourished side ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... like all other living things; and until they are given a fair chance to become strong, by development and exercise and proper care, why should anything more than a relative weakness be expected of them? If you abandon them too soon to blighting influences, there is always danger of their being more or ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... religion, and might spoil all the worldly prospects of a young man like Wallace. There was that young Neil Lindsay. Her brother always said that he was the brightest young man that Orchard Glen had ever sent out, and that he would make his mark in the world, and Mr. Sinclair had spread his blighting influence over him and now he was studying to be a minister and would likely go away off into some dreadful heathen country and never be heard of again. And indeed Orchard Glen could furnish many another instance of his undoing a promising ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... atmosphere of fog and smoke, about which your blear—eyed poets haven't so much. By the by, these gentry are fond of singing of the blessed sun—were they sailors they would bless the moon also, and be—to them, in place of writing much wearisome poetry regarding her blighting propensities. But I have lost the end of my yarn once more, in the strands of these parentheses. Lord, what a word to pronounce in the plural!—I can no more get out now, than a girl's silk worm from the innermost of a nest of pill boxes, where, to ride the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that the blighting winds of unkindness or indifference, seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary's mind. It surmounted every obstacle; and, by degrees, from a person little considered in the family, she became in some sort its director and umpire. The despotism of her education cost ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... with this goodly outside; for penetrating, by a long narrow passage and complicated stairway, to the interior of the house, I found that it had nothing to offer me but the usual number of commonplace rooms in the usual blighting state of restoration. I must say that the people of the house, considering they had nothing in the world to show me, were kind and patient under the intrusion, and answered with very polite affirmation my discouraged inquiry if this were ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Pawnees. In Attica, Hades, Lord of the Dead, ravishes away Persephone, the vernal daughter of Demeter. Demeter then wanders among men, and is hospitably received by Celeus, King of Eleusis. Baffled in her endeavour to make his son immortal, she demands a temple, where she sits in wrath, blighting the grain. She is reconciled by the restoration of her daughter, at the command of Zeus. But for a third of the year Persephone, having tasted a pomegranate seed in Hades, has to reign as Queen of the Dead, beneath the earth. Scenes from ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... said, every one of those bitter words at which she had been so indignant the morning before, was true, was justified. That day Priscilla tore the last shreds of self-satisfaction from her soul and sat staring at it with horrified eyes as at a thing wholly repulsive, dangerous, blighting. What was to become of her, and of poor Fritzing, dragged down by her to an equal misery? About one o'clock she heard Mrs. Morrison's voice below, in altercation apparently with him. At this time she was crying again; bitter, burning tears; those scorching tears that ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... however; and the spirit which created it, needed only external cause and circumstance to bring it once more into powerful operation. Meanwhile the Popes throughout the Renaissance used the imputation of heresy, which never lost its blighting stigma, in the prosecution of their secular ambition. As Sarpi has pointed out, there were few of the Italian princes with whom they came into political collision, who were not made ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... of Scripture which ought to be read in connection with this text; as for example, "Fools make a mock at sin" (Proverbs 14:9), for only a fool would. Better trifle with the pestilence and expose one's self to the plague than to discount the blighting effects of sin. And, again, "The soul that sinneth it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). From this clear statement of the word of God there is no escape. Or, again, "Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance" (Psalm 90:8). There is really nothing hidden from ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... hailstones, so it didn't much matter where a fellow went—he was sure to get peppered. Of course the captain couldn't be left up there—we wanted him for morning parades. Then I happened to see the little field-piece stranded among the chaparral. It was a cursed nice little cannon. It would have been a blighting ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a change had been observed in his demeanour. He had become gentle, almost amiable, and much more like his former self before the blighting influence of Bligh had fallen on him. Though he seldom laughed, he would chat pleasantly with his companions, as in days gone by, and frequently took pains to amuse the children. In particular, he began to go frequently for long walks in the woods with his own sons— little ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... instead of Greece, she held her dependencies under the straitest servitude to herself as conquered provinces, repressing all political or commercial independence. A similar restrictive policy, indeed, hampered the colonies of other nations, but it was nowhere else so irrational or blighting ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... was satisfied with thinking, through all eternity, 'how comfortable he was.'{1} I look with feelings of intense pain on the mass of poverty and crime; of unhealthy, unavailing, unremunerated toil, blighting childhood in its blossom, and womanhood in its prime; of 'all the oppressions that are done under ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... him to talk the "little language" of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it, "accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then miraculously dimpling toward her votary." How such a creature can become the cool blighting Nemesis of a hopeful home, ruining it by extravagance, and taking credit to herself for every act of calm revolt, until her wretched husband, who had meant to be another Vesalius, compares her to Boccaccio's basil, that flourished upon the brains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... general character of their heads, no one would believe a single noble family without at least one unrecorded, undiscovered, or well concealed irregularity in its descent; and he would judge it the cruellest thing to have let him know the blighting fact, seeing that in ignorance he might have succeeded with a ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... said Captain Pharo, with blighting sarcasm, new-lighting his pipe preparatory to leaving the hall; "I thought she ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... to those already recorded for D., who, being thus elected into the position of fourth letter of the alphabet, will be returned as elected on the Temperance and Vegetarian ticket. So finally you get your members duly elected without the blighting interference of the Caucus and the party wire-pullers generally. You see that, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... period of her marriage—so that notwithstanding the dissipated habits of the husband and father they still possessed a home, although many of the comforts of former days had disappeared before the blighting influence of the demon of intemperance. After being dismissed by his employers Mr. Harland seemed to lose all respect for himself, as well as for his wife and children, and, but for the unceasing toil of ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... the next witness. The crowd hung breathless on his words. Stumping up on his crutches, Dan took the chance of a lifetime to vent his hatred of Job. Keen, shrewd, too wise to speak out plainly, but wise enough to know the blighting influence of suggestion, Dan talked, insinuated and lied till the nails were driven one by one into poor Job's heart and the pain was almost more than he could bear. Insidiously, indirectly, he gave them all to understand that Jane Reed loved him and again ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... cannot be too deeply deprecated, nor too strongly reprobated. Every true friend of honest life insurance among insurance journals will demand that this great business, of all businesses, must be kept free from the contagion of corruption that has shamed finance, is covering commerce with a blighting mildew, and threatens our whole land with disaster ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... labour of our hands; we've changed The giant forest, that was erst the haunt Of savage bears, into a home for man; Extirpated the dragon's brood, that wont To rise, distent with venom, from the swamps; Rent the thick misty canopy that hung Its blighting vapours on the dreary waste; Blasted the solid rock; across the chasm Thrown the firm bridge for the wayfaring man. By the possession of a thousand years The soil is ours. And shall an alien lord, Himself a vassal, dare to venture here, ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... intellectual direction to the new movement, guided its philanthropic efforts, and brought to noble issue its spiritual philosophy. Early in the year 1804, Joseph Stevens Buckminster was settled over the Brattle Street Church; and, though he preached but a little over six years before a blighting disease took him away, yet he left behind a tradition of great pulpit gifts and a wonderfully attractive personality. Another to die in early manhood was Samuel Cooper Thacher, who was settled at the New South in 1811, and who was long remembered for his scholarship and his zeal in the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... times—and it was when the assumed airs and affected importance of the musician and their hostess rose to the most extravagant excess—he observed that Fenella dealt askance on them some of those bitter and almost blighting elfin looks, which in the Isle of Man were held to imply contemptuous execration. There was something in all her manner so extraordinary, joined to her sudden appearance, and her demeanour in the King's presence, so oddly, yet so well contrived to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... origin and nature of devils, who, under Satan, their prince, produce diseases, irregularities of the air, plagues, and the blighting of the blossoms of the earth, who seduce men to offer sacrifices, that they may have the blood of the victims, which is their food. They are as nimble as the birds, and hence know every thing that is passing upon earth; they live in the air, and hence can spy what is going ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... weakness, that she was unable to walk unless supported by two persons, usually her maid and her mother or her father. The terrible influence of the Evil Eye had made too deep and deadly an impression ever, she feared, to be effaced; for, although removed from Woodward's blighting gaze, that eye was perpetually upon her, through the medium of her strong but diseased imagination. And who is there who does not know how strongly the force of imagination acts? On this subject she had now become a perfect hypochondriac. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... chair, and was forced to vote on a material motion which was favorable to the bill. The wealth of Wiley, and Charlton's equivocation, attached suspicion to his motives, and brought down upon him the wrath of Jackson, blighting all his future aspirations. As a member of the bar he attained eminence, and all his future life was such as to leave no doubt of his purity, and the cruel wrong those suspicions, sustained by the frown ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Suburbs?" said he, giving the constable a look of blighting scorn; and, swaggering by like a mighty conqueror, joined Cleek at the compartment door. "Nailed it at the second rap, guv'ner," he said in an undertone. "Fell down on Gamage's, picked myself up on Loader, Tottenham Court ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... dull silence breaking With a lightning flash, a word, Bearing endless desolation On its blighting wings, I heard; Earth can forge no keener weapon, Dealing surer death and pain, And the cruel echo ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... Of the blighting and exterminating effects produced upon simple and untutored races, by the advance of civilization upon them, we have many and painful proofs. History records innumerable instances of nations who were ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... is a providential characteristic of our as yet defective nature; for thanks to it few men or nations carry out to their complete logical results erroneous opinions and metaphysical speculations. Common sense in Japan has served more or less as an antidote for Buddhistic poison. The blighting curse of logical Buddhism has been considerably relieved by various circumstances. Let us now consider some of the ways in which the personality-destroying characteristics of Buddhism have been lessened by other ideas ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the change? Is the blight natural and permanent? or has it been caused by accidental and artificial circumstances which may be only temporary? Doubtless, each ruin has its tale of horror, but all trace their destruction to Islamism, and especially to the blighting and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... love," answered the low, deep voice of Ernest; "but my mother is coming to awaken you with a cold and icy hand. I have scattered roses over you while you slept, but her blighting touch ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... holds the whip over her own flesh and blood, who have to spend their very babyhood in tying feather-flues or pulling out bastings. Home-work, this unnatural product of nineteenth-century civilization, as an agency for summarily destroying the home is unparalleled. Nor do its blighting effects end with homes wrecked, and children neglected, stunted and slain. The proud edifice of modern industry itself, on whose account homes are turned into workshops, children into slaves, and mothers into slave-drivers, is undermined and degraded by this illegitimate competition, the most ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... coffee, as found in "skimmings." "Black jack" is a term applied to coffee that has turned black during the process of curing, or in the hold of a ship during transportation; or it may be due to a blighting disease. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... that? When a young lady interests herself in an undergraduate's soul, it is a pretty sure sign she likes the looks of him. But perhaps you don't want to be converted; if so, keep clear of her. 'Bar the fell dragon's blighting way; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a miracle. Through summer's withering heats and blighting droughts His own hands gave the thirsty roots to drink. In spring the first pale growth of tender green Thrilled him with scarcely less delight than mine At my babe's earliest glance of answering love. Daily he fed the tame free birds that went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... favoured as indigenous plants by the suitableness of soil and climate, outgrow the grain both in breadth and height. The outspread leaves and branches of the weeds constitute a thick screen between the ears of corn and the sunshine. Under that blighting shadow, although the stalks may grow tall and the husks develop themselves in their own exquisite natural forms, no solid seed is formed or ripened. On the spot which the thorns usurped, the reaper gathers only straw ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... his worst, he is no worse than the higher average of the ordinary novelist, but he ought always to be very much better, for he began better, and he is of that race which has, first of all, to get rid of the cakewalk, if it will not suffer from a smile far more blighting than any frown. He is fighting a battle, and it is not for him to pick up the cheap graces and poses of the jouster. He does, indeed, cast them all from him when he gets down to his work, and in the dramatic climaxes and closes of his story he shortens his weapons and deals his blows so absolutely ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... but I had turned altogether aside from them into a still region, where each miner in solitude was grubbing for himself, and confiding to none his finds or disappointments. Agriculture restores and beautifies, mining destroys and devastates, turning the earth inside out, making it hideous, and blighting every green thing, as it usually blights man's heart and soul. There was mining everywhere along that grand road, with all its destruction and devastation, its digging, burrowing, gulching, and sluicing; and up all along the seemingly inaccessible heights were holes with their ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Donatello, painted on by Fra Angelico. And it is not the wood's fault, but the fault of Florence in not taking proper care of it, that the panel of Sandro Botticelli's loveliest picture has cracked, (not with heat, I believe, but blighting frost), a quarter of an inch ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... restrained with that restraint which is put over the feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, trembling at ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that he would use, the curses he would utter, spun deliriously in his head, and as he went on he found himself speaking his phrases aloud to the darkness, trying upon the silence the effect of each blighting sentence. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Weather impossible—much wind and drift from south. Wind turned to S.E. in afternoon—temperatures low. Went for walk to Cape Armitage, but it is really very unpleasant. The wind blowing round the Cape is absolutely blighting, force 7 and temperature below -30 deg.. Sea a black cauldron covered with dark frost smoke. No ice can form in ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... not only that the nervous impulse in plant and in man is exalted or inhibited under identical conditions but carried the parallelism very far and pointed out the blighting effects on life of a complete seclusion and protection from the world outside. "A plant carefully protected under glass from outside shocks", says Sir Jagadis "looks sleek and flourishing; but its higher nervous ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... Isn't she blighting? You don't know anything about him, you know. It's only because he called you a frump, but never mind, he has to be back to tea to look after some work for father, and then he'll see! If you are going to be friends with us, you mustn't begin by disliking our brother. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "UMMU-KHUBUR" at once spawned a brood of devilish monsters to help her in her fight against the gods. Nothing is known of the origin or attributes of UMMU-KHUBUR, but some think she was a form of TIMAT. Her brood probably consisted of personifications of mist, fog, cloud, storm, whirlwinds and the blighting and destroying powers which primitive man associated with the desert. An exact parallel of this brood of devils is found in Egyptian mythology where the allies of Set and Aapep are called "Mesu betshet" i.e., "spawn of impotent ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... population, who would have combined fishing with the cultivation of the soil. It was a departure from this policy, and a determination, at the behest of selfish monopolists, to make the island a mere fishing-station, that postponed for many weary years the prosperity of the colony, blighting the national enterprise, and paralyzing the energies of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... confidence in railway property. But the greatest and the immediate cause of the crisis was the over-building of railways; and hard indeed are likely to be the fortunes of the unfinished enterprises of this character arrested by its blighting influence; for capital for years to come will be very slow in finding its way into the bonds of roads to be built by the proceeds of their sale. It was a false and dangerous system—and the event has proved its unsoundness—for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... day acceptances were sent to the invitation of the Bachelors, and little did that happy circle dream that this ball, about which they laughed and joked, would be the means of blighting that ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... and my fascinating self; but you needn't be so blighting. I enjoyed every moment, and they were angelically kind. Janet ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Providence, who had bestowed an expensive family with one hand, and with the other had taken away the means of supporting it. Dick was sixty-four now, an unhappy moment in a dashing and artless career, with the shadow of advancing old age blighting and reproving the still ardent enjoyment of the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... months, with terrors rife, The pending of her precious life I watched o'er; and the danger, at last, The kind Physician said, was past. Howbeit, for seven harsh weeks the East Breathed witheringly, and Spring's growth ceased, And so she only did not die; Until the bright and blighting sky Changed into cloud, and the sick flowers Remember'd their perfumes, and showers Of warm, small rain refreshing flew Before the South, and the Park grew, In three nights, thick with green. Then she Revived, no less than flower and tree, In the mild ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... a single word can do! Making life seem all untrue, Driving joy and hope away, Leaving not one cheering ray, Blighting every flower that grew— What ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... spread out and covered, so that each one is surrounded by fresh earth, they are jammed just as they are (or often with an additional squeeze) into a rigid socket, and small wonder if the conjunction of the two results in blighting and a lingering death rather than the ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Not forgetting Saxon faith, Not forgetting Norman scath, Not forgetting William's word, Not forgetting Cromwell's sword. Let the Union's fetter vile— The shame and ruin of our isle— Let the blood of 'Ninety-Eight And our present blighting fate— Let the poor mechanic's lot, And the peasant's ruined cot, Plundered wealth and glory flown, Ancient honours overthrown— Let trampled altar, rifled urn, Knit his ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Friend or foe, stranger or native of Ballybraggan, are all the same to Mr. O'Crowley. Each and every one is received with the same hearty welcome. He is a man whom we think of in our hours of suffering, whether it be on the scorching heat of a summer's day or the blighting cold of a winter's night. It is my earnest wish, and I am sure that I am only expressing the sentiments of the whole of Munster, that the success which has attended Mr. O'Crowley in all the ventures of his useful life will be doubled in ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... brother of the King when the most memorable of his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771, at Brighton—a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded her widow's weeds, and was arrayed for ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... what she is like now! A wreck, a poor derelict woman, with no life to call her own. The life of an actress which I gave her, and which was so beautiful, wrecked; and the life of a nun, which she insisted on striving after, wrecked." A cold, blighting sorrow like a mist came up, it seemed to penetrate to his very bones, and he asked why she had left the convent—of what use could she be out of it?... only to torment him again. Twenty times during the course of the evening ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... blow an alarm in every place—for the blasting and for the blighting, for the locust and for the caterpillar, and for the evil beast, and for the sword, they blow an alarm over them, because ...
— Hebrew Literature
... debt of the nation; a reduction of taxes as rapidly as the requirements of the country will admit; reductions of taxation and tariff, to be so arranged as to afford the greatest relief to the greatest number; honest and fair dealings with all other peoples, to the end that war, with all its blighting consequences, may be avoided, but without surrendering any right or obligation due to us; a reform in the treatment of Indians and in the whole civil service of the country; and, finally, in securing a pure, untrammeled ballot, where every ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... much strength. The war came, and in October, 1862, hoping, but vainly, for health from a sea-voyage and from the Pacific climate, she sailed from New York to California. When about to return, in 1866, with vivacity of body and spirit, she was thrown from a carriage in a fearful manner; blighting all the high hopes of resuming her school under the glowing auspices she had anticipated, as she saw the Rebellion and the hated system tumbling to pieces. She arrived in New York, in August of that year, in a most shattered condition of body, though with the fullest confidence ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... centuries, whatever extravagances of doctrinal zeal attended it, dealt with themes of grave importance; and controversy was often waged by men of high ability and moral worth. After that time, there succeeded to the tempest an intellectual stagnation, under the blighting breath of despotism, coupled with the effect of a lassitude, the natural sequel of the long-continued disputation. But, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a new controversy took place, which convulsed ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... insincerity. But it does result not merely from what some imply, but from what they say. For certain of these doughty Pacifists having told you how much their one object is to secure peace, then proceed to tell you that this thing which they hope to secure is a very evil thing, that under its blighting influence nations wane in luxury and sloth. And of course they imply that our own nation, about a third of whom have not enough to eat and about another third of whom have a heart-breaking struggle with small means and precariousness of livelihood, ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... horses know little of the blighting experiences of the foot-plodders: and when Norah went a-hunting everything ceased to exist for her except the white-and-black-and-tan hounds and the green fields, and Brunette under her, as eager as she for the first long-drawn-out note from ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... origins of the doctrine of the Fall. Right through Christian history the tendency has run to look upon the world as the ruins of a divine plan marred by man's perversity and self-will. It is time we got rid of it, for it has had a blighting, deadening influence upon hopeful endeavour for the good of the race. It is not integral to Christianity, for Jesus never said a word about it and did not even allude to it indirectly. It implies a view of the nature and dealings of God with men which is unethical and untrue. ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... acts, after taking possession, was the inclosing a small triangular corner of one of the fields within a stone wall. The corner cut off—and which still remains cut off—was the "Goodman's Croft"—an offering to the Spirit of Evil, in order that he might abstain from ever blighting or damaging the rest of the farm. The clergyman of the parish, in lately telling me the circumstance, added, that my kinsman had been, he feared, far from acting honestly with Lucifer, after all, as the corner ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... fell upon both the men, blighting the joy with which they welcomed her back to life. She took her father's head between her hands, and kissed his bruised face. "I thought you were dead; and I thought that mamma—" She stopped, and they waited breathless. "But that ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... that the apparent sincerity with which the accommodation man pleaded, had its effect on the weak-minded man. He loved dearly the girl, but poverty hung like a leaden cloud over him. Poverty stripped him of the means of gratifying her ambition; poverty held him fast locked in its blighting chains; poverty forbid his rescuing her from the condition necessity had imposed upon her; poverty was goading him into crime; and through crime only did he see the means of securing to himself the cherished object of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... steps of the house. Young, happy, fondly attached to each other, raised securely above all the sordid cares of life, what a golden future was theirs! Married with the sanction of the Family and the blessing of the Church—who could suppose that the time was coming, nevertheless, when the blighting question would fall on them, in the spring-time of their love: Are ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, they did not soften the austere nature of the bleak and blighting criticism which was ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... word to Mrs. Delancey, that she would breakfast without him; and two hours passed before he again stood in the presence of his anxious wife. None might know what fearful storms, what blighting whirlwinds, what earthquakes of passion, had passed over that strong heart in those two short hours. However fierce had been the struggle, it had been conquered, not by prayer and pleading at that Throne whence ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... recited, under the same circumstances, by any irrational, as well and better, than by any rational being, if, to recite well, mean to repeat without missing a syllable. How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets, Gray, Goldsmith, Thomson, Pope, Dryden, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... was located was alkali land, and bottom land, without any drainage. The result of constant irrigation was that the alkali rose to the surface in larger and larger quantities, until no good crop could be raised. The only salvation was to drain the land and thus rid it of the blighting alkali. This meant an expense of from $30.00 to $40.00 an acre. At the present time draining is being rapidly pushed forward and is proving very beneficial, but it can be easily seen what a discouragement ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... sunk beneath the burden of its strangeness. Its beauty made no appeal to him. He felt lost and dazed in its iron-ringed ruthlessness, dry as a skeleton by daylight, at night transformed by witchfires of enchantment. The man and woman, in whom vitality was strong, combatted its blighting force, refused to be broken by its power. They desired with vehemence to assert themselves, to rebel, not to submit to the sense of their nothingness. They turned to one another hungry for the life that now was only within themselves. They had passed beyond the limits of the accustomed, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... about these disturbers of society to lead them to become upright citizens? Or, will it fall upon the crushing, cruel, vindictive course, the process of making them more debased, sordid, revengeful? Do you prefer manhood-producing with its benign effects, or money-making attended with the blighting of the higher aspirations of the soul? This subject has been taken up in the narrative form, that the writer could the more easily, by incidents, and in the briefest way, bring out the peculiarities of the two ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... imagination ran voluptuous riot. But upon such things as history or poetry she had a somewhat blighting influence. The flowers in the school Anthology withered under her fingers, and the flesh and blood of heroes crumbled into the dust of dates. As for the philosopher under the roofs, who he was, and what was his philosophy, and how he ever came to be under the roofs at all, ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... that when some one has suggested that "the baby has the 'go-backs,'" the following process is gone through: "The mother then must go alone with the babe to some old lady duly instructed in the art or science of curing this blighting disease. She, taking the infant, divests it of its clothing and places it on its back. Then, with a yarn string, she measures its length or height from the crown of the head to the sole of the heel, cutting off a piece which exactly represents this length. This she ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... repute in Plymouth in the last century. It was said that she had taken pay for luring a girl into her old farm-house, where a man lay dead of small-pox, with intent to harm her beauty; she was accused of blighting land and driving ships ashore with spells; in brief, she was called a witch, and people, even those who affected to ignore the craft of wizardry, were content to keep away from her. When the Revolution ended, Southward Howland demanded Dame Crewe's house and acre, claiming under law of entail, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... soul sinks in shame. Instead of expanding our nature and bringing us into a finished and satisfactory condition, and setting our life in right relations with other men, we find the new gift to be a curse to us, hampering us, cutting us off in unexpected ways from our usefulness, thwarting and blighting our ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... with: "Explosion in a Larder: Cook and Policeman Blown to Bits"; "The Girl That Poisoned Half a Parish"; "Weather Harder And Death Rate Rising"; "Poacher Brains an Earl"; Why blazon blackly forth such blighting news, Nor give a glimpse of life's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... exchanged few words during the ride to the Circle Bar. The heat—the eternal, scorching, blighting heat—still continued; the dust had become an almost unbearable irritation. During the trip to the ranch the two men came upon an arroyo over which Hollis had passed many times. At a water hole where he had often watered his horse they came upon several ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... out the dismal strain which meant disgrace for him and the blighting of all his hopes, he sat his horse with rigid face and eyes from which all life had fled. He had been taught the lesson of ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... hands; we've changed The giant forest, that was erst the haunt Of savage bears, into a home for man; Extirpated the dragon's brood, that wont To rise, distent with venom, from the swamps; Rent the thick misty canopy that hung Its blighting vapors on the dreary waste; Blasted the solid rock; across the chasm Thrown the firm bridge for the wayfaring man. By the possession of a thousand years The soil is ours. And shall an alien lord, Himself a vassal, dare to venture here, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... boys were marching out for the dinner hour, satisfied at last all was well, that Joel seemed suddenly to recollect, and he called after Ted, blighting the poor youth's new-born happiness and filling his small soul with a ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... she had found a grouse's nest among the dead fern, and, contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg; and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blighting wind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed her insensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and coolly ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Montaigne's inconsistent thoughts, which, unable to place us in sound relation to the Universe, only succeed in making men pass their lives in subtle reflection and unmanly, sentimental inaction. Shakspere, intending to avert the blighting influence of such a philosophy from the best and foremost of his country, wrote his 'Hamlet.' As a truly heaven-born poet he bound for ever, by ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... presents a sad and dark picture in the history of womanhood. An intemperate woman, through the blasting and blighting influence of liquor, leaving her home, and like the prodigal, spending her substance in riotous living, and at length being compelled to feed on the husks. A fallen woman seeking pleasure away from home with all its endearments. Alas! alas! "There is no peace saith my God unto the wicked. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... explain the general putting of mills in Lancashire and Lanarkshire on short time, the fall in the value of all kinds of stock and general decline in the vent for all kinds of manufactured produce. It is in the home markets that the real and blighting deficiency is experienced. And what is the cause of this decline in the home market? The Free-Traders are the first to tell us what has done it. It is the famine in Ireland. The total manufactured produce of the island is certainly not under L200,000,000[10] annually, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... man of Mr. Lovelace's penetration. Nor with any man; since if love has not taken root deep enough to cause it to shoot out into declaration, if an opportunity be fairly given for it, there is little room to expect, that the blighting winds of anger or resentment will bring it forward. Then my poor sister is not naturally good-humoured. This is too well-known a truth for me to endeavor to conceal it, especially from you. She must therefore, I doubt, have appeared to great disadvantages ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... not strange that in this icy atmosphere the growth of any young friend in the Christian life was stunted. Such influences are like the dreaded north wind that at times sweeps over the valleys of California in the spring and early summer, blighting and withering the vegetation it does not kill. The brightness of his hope was dimmed, and his soul knew the torture of doubt—a torture that is always keenest to him who allows himself to sink in the region of fogs after he has once stood upon the sunlit summit of ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... hate or scorn arise?— 45 Yes! one more sharp there is that deeper lies, Which fond Esteem but mocks when he would heal. Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise, But sad compassion and atoning zeal! One pang more blighting-keen than hope betray'd! 50 And this it is my woeful hap to feel, When, at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid With face averted and unsteady eyes, Her truant playmate's faded robe puts on; And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reaper Take the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper Wails manhood in glory. The autumn winds rushing Waft the leaves that are serest, But our flower was in flushing When blighting was nearest. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... during the last few weeks," he said to March. It had, oddly, the effect of a set speech. "If she had not been, I'm sure she would have told you, as I do now ..." He stumbled there, evidently from the sudden blighting sense that he was talking like an actor—or an ass. "This isn't the time for you to come here," he went on. "This house isn't the place for you to come. When my father's well enough to take matters into his own hands again, he'll do as he sees fit. For the present you will have ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and we supposed them to be impregnable; and laying as they did in the centre of the continent, and in proximity to one another, we hoped yet to withstand them. But, alas! we had another foe to encounter. Gaunt hunger and famine came with their ghastly forms and bony arms, blighting the strong and the brave. But it could not make traitors or cowards of us, and dying we hurled defiance at our foes. The walls of our cities unmanned, were scaled—the gates thrown open; and our streets filled with the murderers whom we had reared to exterminate us. A few were found alive, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... was Hon. B. K. Bruce, who, living to manhood under the blighting influences of slavery, by honesty, native ability and persevering study, placed his name in the forefront, leaving his career as a model. With an astuteness of perception for the retention of friends, he had suavity of manner for the palliation of foes; with diligence and faithfulness ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... "wandering voice?" What the distinguishing trait which has made this wily attendant on the spring notorious from the times of Aristotle and Pliny? Think of "following the cuckoo," as Logan longed to do, in its "annual visit around the globe," a voluntary witness and accessory to the blighting curse of its vagrant, almost unnatural life! No, my indiscriminate bards; on this occasion we must part company. I cannot "follow" your cuckoo—except with a gun, forsooth—nor welcome your "darling of ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... with which he formerly contended for the liberty of his country will have vanished and fled, for the remembrance of his family's fate must ever remain uppermost in his mind, and the reflections they will produce must leave a blighting scar, which no future kindness can remove, sympathy eradicate, or consolation destroy. I am done. On your good judgment and the strength of my assertions, which can be proven, if necessary, I rely for ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... perform a share of household work, with a pensive resignation which excited tenderness in her family and inspired even strangers with pitying deference. Her heartstrings had not broken, but they gradually withered and dried up, under the blighting influence of this life-long sorrow. It was mild October weather, when she lay down to rise no more. Emma had outgrown the trundle-bed, and no one occupied it; but it remained in the old place. When they led her into the bedroom for the last ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... murmured, with dulcet passion. There was in her voice a suggestion of desolation—a desolation that was the blighting effect of letting the cherished ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... ever anxious that the Indian converts should at once be made to understand all the duties and responsibilities of the new life on which they were entering, he was a fearless man, and boldly declared unto them the whole counsel of God. Knowing the blighting, destroying influences of the "fire water" upon the poor Indian race, he made the Church a total abstinence society, and, as all missionaries should, he set them the example of his own life. Then, as regards the keeping of the Sabbath, he took his stand on the Word of God, and preached ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... perceived unmistakable evidences of the blighting effect which was being steadily produced upon certain members of the community by the consciousness—which I think some of them were only now beginning to fully realise—that industry and individual effort were to count for nothing, and that the lazy, useless units were ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... fate. He would torture her for years with doubts and doubts, and drive her implacably to a repentant grave. Nor would Aunt Martha escape. Some day, a century hence, when his mother was dead, he would write to his Aunt Martha, and point out her part in the blighting of his life. For one blow against him now he would, in time, deal back a thousand—aye, ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Besides this danger—this blighting influence of the evil eye which environed the years of childhood—there was also this other danger, already mentioned, that of being spirited away by fairies. The danger from this source was greater when ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... known real sorrow," persisted Shirley, her elbows on the table, her fingers interlocked, her chin resting idly upon them. "He's traveling in an effort to forget a blighting grief," the girl ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... beauteous than they were? And can that opium do more than God To waken beauty in a human brain? Is this the real, the cold, undraperied truth— A skeleton admitted as a guest At life's loud feast, wearing a life-like mask? No, no; my heart would die if I believed it. A blighting fog uprises with the days, False, cold, dull, leaden, gray. It clings about The present, far dragging like a robe; but ever Forsakes the past, and lets its hues shine out: On past and future pours the light of heaven. The Commonplace is of the present mind. The Lovely is the True. The Beautiful ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... gypsies, who in all probability would have very genial manners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in the lane Maggie actually saw the little semi-circular black tent with the blue smoke rising before it, which was to be her refuge from all the blighting obloquy that had pursued her in civilized life. She even saw a tall female figure by the column of smoke, doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided the tea and other groceries; it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... firm of Machlin & Company, to the last few years, when he had come to be regarded almost superstitiously as the saviour of sinking properties, he had moved quietly, cautiously, and unswervingly in one direction. The blighting panic of ten years before had hardly touched him, so softly had he ventured, and so easy was it for him to return to his little deals and his diet of crumbs. They were bad times, those years, alike for rich and poor, for ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... such as affords all alike an opportunity to cultivate and expand the intellect, the poor as well as the rich, is, beyond all question, one of the greatest blessings that any nation can enjoy. Such a system had its birth in America while it was yet comparatively free from the blighting influence of a religio-political corporation whose whole history is one uninterrupted and relentless war upon every system of education which broadens the intellect and causes people to think. In America was born ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... several centuries and have come to be known, taken collectively, as the "Witchcraft Persecutions." The Devil, with his subordinate demons and the human beings who sold their souls to him, were supposed to be both capable and guilty of blighting the crops; causing the lightning; bringing destructive storms; withholding the rain; drying up cows; killing domestic and wild beasts; afflicting the nations with pestilence, famine, and war; causing all manner of diseases; betwitching men, women, and children; planting doubts ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... thee, I'll think of thee, When raging tempests wildly blow, Mid storm and darkness—wond'rous powers! Heaping the stainless, virgin snow Above thy fragile form, that bowed Beneath the blighting frost that fell, Scattering o'er earth those gorgeous hues, Thy ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... it. For more than a week the thermometer fell below -60 deg., and on one night the minimum showed -71 deg., and on the next -77 deg.. Although in this fearful cold the air was comparatively still, occasional little puffs of wind eddied across the snow plain with blighting effect. 'No civilized being has ever encountered such conditions before with only a tent of thin canvas to rely on for shelter.' Records show that Amundsen when journeying to the N. magnetic pole met temperatures of a similar degree, but he was with ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... has no recorded standard of guiding principles of government, it matters not by what name it may be called—Empire, Republic, Oligarchy, or Democracy—it may fall under the blighting influence of the tyranny of a single individual, or a wealthy ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... would undoubtedly have inflicted, a wound on the Castilian pride. But surely the pride which a nation takes in exercising over other nations a blighting and withering dominion, a dominion without prudence or energy, without justice or mercy, is not a feeling entitled to much respect. And even a Castilian who was not greatly deficient in sagacity must have seen that an inheritance claimed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unsteady restless souls, who are incited by their youthful aspirations and by the depression and utter loss of happy confidence which such a conviction would entail upon them, to struggle against a distrust so blighting! When such wavering spirits are engaged in the bitter combat with the harsh alternatives of life, or tempted at every turn by its insinuating seductions, what a profound discouragement seizes upon them when they are induced to believe that the hearts devoted to ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... placed the means of a perfect restoration to full mental, bodily and sexual vigor within the reach of all, and no man has any right now to enter either blindly or wilfully into so sacred and important a relationship as marriage, and to lower and stultify its ends by blighting the happiness of a fair young wife, exhausting his own vitality in the vain attempt to have offspring, or in having such as shall be a curse to him ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... of those terrors which she had hitherto surmounted; she cast her mantle hastily around her head, as if to shroud her sight from some blighting vision, and tripping back to the cabinet, with more speed and a less firm step than when she left it, she directed Gillian to lend her assistance in conveying Eveline to the next room; and having done so, carefully secured the door of communication, as if ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... curtains, and the morning sun gave it a rosy glow and a crusting sparkle as of diamonds. The sight of the frost had broken poor Andrew Brewster's heart when he saw it, and reflected how it might have meant death to his little tender child out under the blighting fall of it, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... could not know where their strength lay, and therefore could not turn it to account, nor by his example call it forth or cherish it; but that, if his future conduct should be in the same spirit, he must be a blighting wind wherever his influence was carried: for he had neither felt the wrongs of his Allies nor been induced by common worldly prudence to affect to feel them, or at least to disguise his insensibility; and therefore what could follow, but, in despite of victory ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... but not necessarily post-Augustan. The goddess Crataeis (from the eleventh Odyssey), v. 67, is a novelty. The frivolous and pedantic object of the poem (to set right a confusion in the myths), makes it possible that it was produced under the blighting government of Tiberius. Its continual imitations make it almost ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... observed from far. The newspapers are abusing you; don't read them, if you cannot conceal the emotion which they cause you. Don't do what I did, with my blind man of the Pont de la Concorde, that frightful clarinet-player, who for the last ten years has been blighting my life by playing all day 'De tes fils, Norma.' I have tried everything to get him away from there—money, threats. Nothing has succeeded in inducing him to go. The police? Ah, yes, indeed. With modern ideas, it becomes quite a business to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... audience humbly remonstrated upon the injustice done him and the cruelty of thus sporting with his feelings by setting him at liberty, and, as it were, tempting him into dreams of home and restored happiness only for the purpose of blighting them, the good-natured prince disclaimed 10 all participation in the affair, and went so far in proving his sincerity as even to give him permission to effect his escape; and, as a ready means of commencing ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey |
