"Smirch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steamy smell of dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, was sickening. Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that awful woman washed frequently. Such was the contagiousness of degradation. When she looked at Martin, she seemed to see the smirch left upon him by his surroundings. She had never seen him unshaven, and the three days' growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her. Not alone did it give him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva house, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... kind of girl, in fact, one would imagine a semi-professional gambler's daughter to be. It now seemed possible that he had misjudged Kenwardine; and he had certainly misjudged Clare. The girl's surroundings were powerless to smirch her: Dick was ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... must come on silken wings, With bridal lights of diamond rings,— Not foul with kitchen smirch, With tallow-dip for torch." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... violets. Throwing herself at full length, she buried her face in the fragrant coolness, and with her hands drew the purple heads in circling splendor about her own. And she was not ashamed. She had wandered away amid the complexities and smirch and withering heats of the great world, and she had returned, simple, and clean, and wholesome. And she was glad of it, as she lay there, slipping back to the old days, when the universe began and ended ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... to get the window open, and put out the lamp. Then mamma looked at the eggs. Alas, again! There they lay covered with fine black soot. She took up one and tried to wipe it, but succeeded only in making a smirch which she could not wipe off. She knew then that ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! — And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? [231] So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... detected the figure of a canoe crossing the river, the distance making it appear but a speck, while the number of occupants was indistinguishable. To the southwest, almost in the line of the Susquehanna, he observed a black cloud resting like a smirch of dirt against a clear, blue sky. This, he had no doubt, was the smoke from some ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... you can indulge in the luxury of honor. You will be so extremely sensitive on the point of honor that no one will dare to accuse you of past shortcomings if in the process of making your way you should happen to smirch it now and again, which I myself should never advise," he ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... wave forever in the air—do you tell me that he went from that field, where he lost his life in defense of the liberties of men, to an eternal hell? I tell you it is infamous!—and such a doctrine as that would tarnish the reputation of a hyena and smirch the fair ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... yet another way," he hissed, bending towards her. "I swear to God I will use it rather than let you go. A careless word or two shall easily suffice to smirch your fair fame. Ah! that has power to rouse you, has it? I will do it, and for very shame you shall ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... silly. His neighbouring, willy-nilly, Must smirch the Bee, the Lily, Or stain the snow-white flag. Wielder of mere stage-dagger, Loud lord of empty swagger, In peril's hour a lagger. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... On Carrion's Heirs of knavery the three have put the brand, And paid the debt the lord Cid set upon them furthermore. On that account right merry was the Cid Campeador. Upon the heirs of Carrion is come a mighty smirch. Who flouts a noble lady and leaves her in the lurch, May such a thing befall him, or worse fortune let him find. Of Carrion's Heirs the dealings let us leave them now behind. For what has been vouchsafed them now were they all forlorn. Of this ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... awhile, no doubt, the boy would be kept in merciful ignorance of the tragedy, but then, when the lad was growing into manhood, some blundering fool, or more likely some well-intentioned woman, probably his aunt, Sophy Pargeter, would feel it her duty to smirch ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... any interruption I might have been disposed to make—"you must let me tell you that I exercise some little forbearance in taking this tone at all. No slander has ever touched my reputation, and I do not intend that it shall smirch it now. I have but to say I have been deceived to establish myself in the sight of all who know me. Tell me, sir, if you have ever heard a whisper against my honor. Did ever man or woman breathe a word in your hearing with respect to ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... scandal. He thinks he has me there. And he is right. But he is mistaken if he thinks I can do nothing. I may as well go up to London and see for myself whether he is still on his feet to-morrow night. It is a mere formality, but I will do it. I might have guessed that she would try to smirch her own name, and the boys through her, if she had the chance. She will defeat me yet, unless I am careful. Oh, ye gods! why did I marry a fool who does not even know her own interests? If I had life over again ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... under a cloud. There is a smirch on my reputation. I—I ran away from New York to escape arrest, and I have lived here in the wilderness, without communicating with old friends and associates, because I did not ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... myself in poor and mean attire, And with a kind of umber smirch my face." (As You Like It, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... asserting that dona Bernarda was getting even for her husband's waywardness. But don Andres, who smiled scornfully when accused of taking advantage of the chief's influence to drive hard bargains to his own advantage, was not the man to be trifled with if gossip ventured to smirch his ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... upon him in a sudden, overmastering surge, the realization that the delight and joy of her companionship through the month that was gone was love that leaped now into fierce, jealous flame, maddened at a breath that would smirch her in the eyes of others—that he should be the cause of it! "What do people do when they're caught like this?"—in their innocence there seemed an unfathomed depth of irony in her words, but as he unconsciously repeated them they cleared his brain and brought him ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... make us stay When we have tickets for the play; But let one drop the side-walk smirch. And it's too ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law. And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The doctor almost forgets the pain ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... George and me I was cheerful—I had no compunctions of conscience, no griefs of any kind. But George was beyond speech, because he held the honor and credit of the family above his own, and he was ashamed that this smirch had been put upon it. I told him to go to bed and try to sleep it off. I went to bed myself. At breakfast in the morning when George was passing a cup of coffee, I saw it tremble in his hand. I knew by that sign that there was something on his mind. He brought ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... faltering fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life; and life Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes, And they stood wide with horror; and he seized In both his hands the dust which lay around, 700 And threw it on his head, and smirch'd his hair,— His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms; And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him; and he clutch'd his sword, To draw it, and for ever let life out. 705 But Sohrab saw his thought, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... the names of the seven "men of Mayapan" have a Nahuatl appearance. KakaltecatCacaltecatl, He of the Crow; YtzcuatItzcoatl, Smirch-faced snake; XuchueuetXochitl, the rose or flower; PantemitPantenamitl, the Conqueror of the city wall. These would seem to bear out what Landa and Herrera say, to the effect that at one period the rulers of ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... said, his voice quivering with rage. "It was time... the vermin. Because he was rich he thought he was safe. He thought he could do anything.... But I've taught him. They starve us and stamp on us—and then steal our wives and smirch our sweethearts." ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... with the squalid house into which the fair unknown had vanished. He returned with rapture to the thousand luxuries of his own rooms, and spent the evening at the Marquise d'Espard's to cleanse himself, if possible, of the smirch left by the fancy that had driven him so relentlessly ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... think much Anti-Socialism is dishonest in these matters. The tricks of deliberate falsification, forgery and falsehood that discredit a few Conservative candidates and speakers in the north of England and smirch the reputations of one or two London papers, are due to a quite exceptional streak of baseness in what is on the whole a straightforward opposition to Socialism. Anti-Socialism, as its name implies, is no alternative doctrine; it is a mental ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... with an orderly waiting, with telephone to ear, and all those rough-and-ready contrivances by which men live who have death forever at their elbow. Here, too, their faces disguised by weeks of beard and grimed with the smirch of war, were burly Russian officers, those adequate and quietly confident men who are the strength and inspiration of ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... To cherish thus a stainless name! To shun the vile, ignoble crowd, Preferring death to smirch and shame! A foul, unfriendly mob to brave, And go, unspotted, to the grave, Is not to lose one's ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... although she only half realised it herself. She is capable of stifling her powers of perception. Then David Bright died and left her in poverty. His will was a scandal, and the horror did not only smirch his good name, it reached to hers. I can't and won't try to tell you what I suffered, or how I determined to fight this hideous wrong. I went to Florence; I tried to see Madame Danterre; I engaged the detective—all before I knew of your ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... (being a blind fool ever) I cursed the world and all men in it saving only my unworthy self. And next, bethinking me of my dear lady who of her infinite mercy had stooped to love such as I, it seemed that my shame must smirch her also, that rather than lifting me to her level I must needs drag her down to mine. She, wedding me, gave all, whiles I, taking all, had nought to offer in return save my unworthiness. Verily it seemed that my hopes of life with her in England were ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the known hypocrite. The man who is a brute to his wife goes meekly to his seat; the miser, who has six days pinched his tenants or evicted them, passes the collection plate, his face benevolent; the woman whose tongue is that of the liar and the gossip, who has done her best to smirch the reputation of her nearest neighbor, lifts her eyes heavenward and follows every word of a sermon she can not comprehend; and the man or woman who has stepped aside actually believes that his or her presence in church hoodwinks every ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath |
