"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transmission, worked but mildly. Shakspere violated the unities; his plays were neither right comedies nor right tragedies; he had small Latin and less Greek; he wanted art and sometimes sense, committing anachronisms and Bohemian shipwrecks; wrote hastily, did not blot enough, and failed of the grand style. He was "untaught, unpractised in a barbarous age"; a wild, irregular child of nature, ignorant of the rules, unacquainted with ancient models, succeeding—when he did succeed—by happy accident and the sheer force of genius; ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... who shall dare To struggle in the solid ranks of truth; To clutch the monster error by the throat; To bear opinion to a loftier seat; To blot the era of oppression out, And lead a ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Another glorious cloudless day is dawning in yellow and purple and soon the sun over the eastern peak will blot out the blue peak shadows and make all the vast white ice prairie sparkle. I slept well last night in the middle of the icy sea. The wind was cold but my sleeping-bag enabled me to lie neither warm nor intolerably cold. My three-months cough is gone. Strange ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... male. It was wild to see him rush up and down in the back yard, barking and bouncing at the wall, when there was some dog out beyond, but when the very littlest one there was got inside of the fence and only looked at Peter, Peter would retire to his Anna and blot ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... Switzerland, that I received a long, overflowing letter, full of flamboyant oddities, written from London. Two or three hours later came a telegram. "Burn letter. Blot it from ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... which he had felt at first against the traitor, he could find nothing but the gray ashes of a long-expired flame. The wrong had been suffered, and he loved his old friend still. Yes, there was that in his heart for John Saltram which no ill-doing could blot out. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the Isles of Shoals before nine and in the middle of the forenoon Steve pointed through the haze to where an indistinct blot against the sky line proclaimed Boon Island. After that the cruisers kept well toward shore, for, although the drizzle had stopped, the navigators feared that a fog might take its place, and that one experience in Vineyard Sound had been sufficient to last ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... be considered fortunate. The country is, indeed, subject to much bad weather, and it has been ascertained that twice as much rain falls here as in many parts of the island; but the number of black drizzling days, that blot out the face of things, is by no means proportionally great. Nor is a continuance of thick, flagging, damp air, so common as in the West of England and Ireland. The rain here comes down heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear, bright ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... with Opinions and Notions as to make it thrive with true piety, Godlike purity and spiritual understanding"; and in a very happy passage, he reminds us that there are other ways of propagating religion besides writing books: "They are not alwaies the best Men who blot the most paper; Truth is not so {318} voluminous nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our Bookes doe. Those minds are not alwaies the most chaste that are the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations. Purposes, therefore, at once just and pacific will be significantly marked in the conduct of our foreign affairs. I intend that my Administration shall leave no blot upon our fair record, and trust I may safely give the assurance that no act within the legitimate scope of my constitutional control will be tolerated on the part of any portion of our citizens which can not challenge a ready justification ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... She never alluded to his existence, and had always contrived, in her rides and walks, to avoid any point from which she could obtain so much as a distant view of the square, ugly house which formed a blot on the fair landscape. She still spoke of the estate as if it extended to its original boundaries, and ignored absolutely the very existence of Zephaniah Whitefoot, and all that belonged to him. But when her son and Jabez grew to man's estate, ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... sufficient refutations of this charge. Osborne opened his shop for the inspection of the books on Tuesday the 14th of February, 1744; for fear "of the curiosity of the spectators, before the sale, producing disorder in the disposition of the books." The dispersion of the HARLEIAN COLLECTION is a blot in the literary annals of our country: had there then been such a Speaker, and such a spirit in the House of Commons, as we now possess, the volumes of Harley would have been reposing with the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... you could," she said, "if the child needed it. The world was cruel, cruel, Adam; I used to wonder sometimes why God did not blot it all out, as He has blotted it out now. Once in another club, a big, swell affair, there was a Humane Society programme. One woman, in a Persian lamb jacket, spoke on the evils of the overcheck; you know how they get that wool? And women ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... the island under Spanish rule, appears to have been an energetic magistrate, and to have ruled affairs with intelligence. He did not live, however, in a period when justice erred on the side of mercy, and his harsh and cruel treatment of the natives will always remain a blot upon his memory. Emigration was fostered by the home government, and cities were established in the several divisions of the island; but the new province was mainly considered in the light of a military station by the Spanish government ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... with her employers—the great financial head of her house included—wherein she had learned all that the coming war meant personally to herself. She would have given worlds at that moment to have been able to blot out that memory. But she had no power to do so. It loomed almost tragically in its significance in the presence ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the ladder to the foredeck and tied his arrowhead to the fish line wound in the reel on his bow. He nocked the arrow and got ready to shoot. He looked up at the two pretty girls standing above him. "Let out a yell if you see a dark blot." ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... We had to drop it, ourselves. Not until we'd lost ten thousand dollars in advertising, though, and gained an extra blot on our reputation as being socialistic and an enemy to capital and all that ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The blot was now near enough for him to distinguish its outline. As Meta said, no one was visible. It was drifting. Against his wish his gaze fastened on the approaching boat. It hesitated, appeared to swing away, and then ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Grecian and Roman eloquence; in which we are told that such as were baffled bestowed rewards upon the best performers, and were obliged to compose speeches in their praise: but that those who performed the worst, were forced to blot out what they had written with a sponge or their tongue, unless they preferred to be beaten with a rod, or plunged over head and ears ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and then, as they did not turn back, and the Boy stood waiting, she took him into the drying-room and into the ironing-room, and then returned to the betubbed apartment first invaded. There was only one blot on the fairness of that model laundry—a heap of torn and dirty canvas in ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... he, "is right down there in Hell Slew. It's all pretty wet; but I think you've got the wettest part of it; the best duck ponds, and the biggest muskrat-houses. This slew is the only blot in the 'scutcheon of this pearl of counties, Mr. Vandemark—the only blot; and you've got the blackest ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... miserable existence in the slums of our cities, bent over, uncouth, rough, slovenly, has possibilities slumbering within the rags, which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and scar, had he only been fortunate enough early in life to have come under ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... 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
... turned on him with a snarl, for the fellow had foolishly put up his hands. A few blows passed and then—Jerry told what happened rather apologetically—"It was a pity, Roger. It wasn't altogether his fault, but he is a bounder. My fist struck his face, seemed to smear it, literally, all into a blot of red. It wasn't like hitting a man in the ring, it was like—like poking a bag full of dirty linen. The whole fabric seemed to give way. He toppled back, turned ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... back under him, and he again had the little basket of figs on his knees, and clasped it with his big knotty hands as though it were something fragile and rare which the slightest jolting might damage. His cassock showed like a huge blot, and in his coarse ashen face, that of a peasant yet near to the wild soil and but slightly polished by a few years of theological studies, his eyes alone seemed to live, glowing with the dark flame of a devouring ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and Max had evidently been at work on their letters, but had all evidently pulled up suddenly, for each displayed a blot as a full stop. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... terrible. Twice she resumed the pen; twice she flung it down in passionate though transient determination not by her own act to alienate her child's inheritance and blot her own fair name. But every time the memory of her favourite, her loving little Richard, rose up before her, and she could not utter the refusal which would deprive her of him for ever. Perhaps she might even yet have held ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... vines that lightly tap Against the window-pane, Throw shadows on the white-washed walls To blot them out again. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... has had upon our persons and features, I cannot but observe that there are daily instances of as great changes made by marriage upon men's minds and humours. One might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty. One might produce an affable temper out of a shrew, by grafting the mild upon the choleric; or raise a jack-pudding from a prude, by inoculating mirth and melancholy. ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... intellectual habits as you teach me of your genial feelings. This 'Pathfinder' (what an excellent name for an American journal!) I also owe to you, with the summing up of your performances in it, and with a notice of Mr. Browning's 'Blot on the Scutcheon,' which would make one poet furious (the 'infelix Talfourd') and another a little melancholy—namely, Mr. Browning himself. There is truth on both sides, but it seems to me hard truth on Browning. I do assure you I never saw him in my life—do not know ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... 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 ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... sufficiently energetic expression. She momentarily forgot that what she looked on was merely superphysical, but regarded it as something alive, something that ought to have been a child, comely and healthy as herself—and she hated it. It was an outrage on maternity, a blot on nature, a filthy discredit to the house, a blight, a sore, a gangrene. It turned over in its sleep, the cover was hurled aside, and a grotesque object, round, pulpy, webbed, and of leprous whiteness—an object which Letty could hardly associate with ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... isolate few remembered that time of chaos a season ago—but it was fleeting recall at best, as somatic responses rose to blot it out. ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... victory, are still the same shifty, cruel, unpleasant people; and the Powers must feel a good deal ashamed that the only result of their diplomacy has been to put fresh power into the hands of people who are a blot on the face of Europe, and who would much better have been driven back into Asia among peoples who are more in sympathy with ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Buckinghamshire. He built Buckingham House, where is now the palace, and there his wife, who was a left-handed descendant of the Stuart king, used to sit dressed in weeds on the anniversary of Charles the First's execution, and thus call attention to the royal blot upon her escutcheon. In the choir aisle another ugly memorial perpetuates her want of taste and the {98} forgotten fame of her pet doctor, one Chamberlain. Near his is a tablet to her other medical friend, the really notable ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... as to keeping low and motionless had been issued and we had just to hope for the best. The Yeomanry were also Corps reserve at Lala Baba where they were safe. But when they advanced, supposing they had to, they would have to cross a perfectly open plain under shell fire. This was the special blot on the scheme but there was no getting away from it. There was no room for them in the front line trenches and communication trenches to the front ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... crockery dreaming her sunny dreams, building her little castles to the clink of enameled tin cups, weaving her romances to the clatter of cutlery, smiling upon the mentally conjured faces of her boys amidst the steaming odors of greasy, lukewarm water. The one blot upon her existence is perhaps the Chinese cook, with whom she has perforce to associate. She dislikes him for no other reason than that he is a "yaller-faced doper that ought to been set to herd with a menagerie of measly skunks." But even this annoyance ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the mettle of the keenest thinkers and the most eager reformers. And even so early as the beginning of this second period there was to be seen on the social horizon a small cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, which was to grow and grow till in a few years it was to blot out of sight all other matters of public concern. This was the movement for the abolition of slavery. Till that national anachronism was at least politically and legally cleared out of the way, there ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... (Dillingham's own words.) The prisoner is clearly guilty. Why, the fellow practically confesses it. We ought to put some stop to the killing and general rascality up there in the settlement. Our section is fast becoming a monstrous blot on the fair name of the Commonwealth! (Dillingham again.) What is there left for us to do but carry out the law? What is there left for——' My voice died away weakly. Something in the Colonel's face effectually blasted ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... for the generation before them, then will they in turn have no reverence for their fathers. Let them be taught that the sins of their ancestors involve their own honour so little that they need not take any trouble to clear the blot off the scutcheon, but may safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, 'Very likely it is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what matter?'—Then those young people are being bred up in a habit of ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... to the others, all the rarest qualities of the mind, accompanied by such grace, industry, beauty, modesty, and excellence of character, as would have sufficed to efface any vice, however hideous, and any blot, were it ever so great. Wherefore it may be surely said that those who are the possessors of such rare and numerous gifts as were seen in Raffaello da Urbino, are not merely men, but, if it be not a sin to say it, mortal gods; and that those who, by means of their works, leave an honourable name ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... reality. We shall come across a good deal of "acosmistic" philosophy in our survey of Christian Platonism; and the sentimental rationalist is with us in the nineteenth century; but neither of the two has any right to appeal to St. John. Fond as he is of the present tense, he will not allow us to blot from the page either "unborn to-morrow or dead yesterday." We have seen that he records the use by our Lord of the traditional language about future judgment. What is even more important, he asserts in the strongest ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... in destiny's dark womb, Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb! 'Tis his to blot them from the book of fate, Or, like a second Deity, create; To dry the stream of being in its source, Or bid it, widening, win its restless course; While, earth and heaven replenishing, the flood Rolls to its Ocean fount, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... intimidate the Mexicans from making any 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 upon Spanish honor. ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... must pass—fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... by adding to it the splendor of another equally illustrious. My own marriage was arranged for this end. Again I remind you, my father, that nothing but necessity would have forced me to permit a usurer's son to dare to aspire to the hand of my niece. It is a horrible degradation—the first blot ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... beggar says I saved his life; but it was really through carrying a fat letter from his sister—not even his sweetheart. We chaff him at missing such a romantic chance. He got off with a flesh wound, but there is a great blot of red ink on the letter. You may imagine we were not anxious to let our comrades go unavenged. My superiors being sick or otherwise occupied, I was allowed to make a night-march with thirty-five men on a farm nine miles away—just to get square. It was a nasty piece of work, as we ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... have always thought your objection to church-going a blot upon an otherwise estimable character. Hitherto I have been too busy to attend ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... outward Nature here assumed aspects of beauty so surpassing, man, as if to lend her the emphasis of contrast, appeared in the sorriest shape. I name him here, that I may vindicate his claim to remembrance, even when he is a blot upon the beauty around him. I will not forget him, even though I can think of him only with shame. To remember, however, is here enough. We will go back to Nature,—though she, too, can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... side of it had melted into the darkness beyond the moon. I bent over the bed. Sami was there—Sami, rolled shapelessly in the concealing bedclothes, his round face hidden in the pillow, his black hair just a blot of darkness on the white.... It might have ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... he says: "Est plane stultus et elleboro indiget." Tartaglia's name is there, and he, according to Cardan, was forced to eat his words; "but he was ashamed to do what he promised, and unwilling to blot out what he had written. He went on in his wrong-headed course, living upon the labour of other men like a greedy crow, a manifest robber of other men's wealth of study; so impudent that he published as his own, in the Italian ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... let not any light fancy or bad counsel of mine enemies withdraw your princely favour from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Silius. Pliny tells us that Silius had risen by acting as a delator (informer) under Nero, who made him consul 68 A.D. He goes on to say 'He had gained much credit by his proconsulship in Asia (under Vespasian, circ. 77 A.D.), and had since by an honourable leisure wiped out the blot which stained the activity of his former years.' Martial also, who has the effrontery to speak of him as a combined Vergil and Cicero, tells us of his luxurious and learned retirement in Campania, and ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... assurance, denounces the responsible Ministry for having provoked a most unjust war against a totally inoffensive people, whose only fault consisted in asserting its love of freedom, and for thus plunging the entire British nation into blackest guilt deserving universal reprobation, a blot and stigma ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... name of God from the British Constitution.' Assuredly, thought we, we have the elements of no commonplace engagement here. 'Multifarious hosts,' fairly mustered, and 'battling' amid 'waves' in 'commotion' to 'blot out a name,' would be a sight worth looking at, even though, like the old shepherd in the Winter's Tale, their zeal should lack footing amid the waters. But though detained in the course of our search by the happinesses of the reverend ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... my advantage. Right at her back there was pen, ink, and paper laid out. I wrote: 'I love you'; and before I had time to write more, or so much as to blot what I had written, I was again under the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... herself into his arms sobbing hysterically. For the moment she was very happy, and she looked into the dream of the long day she was going to spend with Montgomery, afraid lest some untoward incident might rob her of her happiness. But nothing fell out to blot her hopes, everything seemed to be happening just as she had foreseen it, and trembling with pleasurable excitement the twain hurried through the town inquiring out the way to the Wesleyan Church. At last it was found ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... It was a blot rather than a pool and under his electric lamp Mark perceived a trail of other drops extending irregularly toward the back of the cavern. From the mark of the fallen body a ridge ploughed through the shingle extending rearward, and he judged that one of the two men had certainly felled ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... portrait. I am in great want of Cameron of Lochiel, or Lord Nithsdale, or Derwentwater; for Claverhouse is the only Jacobite leader I can find a portrait of, and I am afraid the blood of the Covenanters is a blot on his escutcheon, a stain on his ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... although it is not easy in these days to get the world to believe it. And when it does happen it is marvellous to see how men, through their own unaided efforts, will redeem their character and wipe out the blot upon their life. But many offenders pass through little or no change of mind, and unless delivered from their surroundings they will continue to fall. Here, however, comes in the difficulty. Many of these people love their surroundings; ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... that incarnate fiend, Monster of Nature, spectacle of shame, Blot and confusion of his familie, False-seeming semblance of true-dealing trust, I meane Fallerio, bloody murtherer: Hath he confest his cursed treacherie, Or will he stand to ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... the act of state policy consummated on the Manchester gibbet. In fine, the country was up in moral revolt against a deed which the perpetrators themselves already felt to be of evil character, and one which they fain would blot ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... could not be called a very well written one; there were several mistakes in the spelling, and here and there, a great blot could tell that a good deal of his heart had gone into it; but whatever it was, it was ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... gone down on one knee, cursing, and there was a fresh blot of crimson on a dark-stained shirt. We four had the advantage now, for we had come to no harm but a few bruises and an aching head or two, when suddenly there was a howl from the fellow last down, "El ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... set off, he wondered, looking up to the sun; but then those boys seemed to be in an uproarious state such as did not suit his present mood, nor did he think Mr. Cope would consider it befitting. He would have let them go by, feeling himself such a scare-crow as they might think a blot upon them; but he remembered that Charles Hayward had his ticket, and as he looked at himself, he doubted whether he should be let into ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "the golden exhalations of the dawn" began to warm the gray of the plain. The sun was in the roots of the grass. Four miles away the lights of Larned twinkled. The only blot on a fair landscape was the mule—in the middle distance. But there was a wicked gleam in the eye of the footsore young man in ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot; Who do thy work, and know it not: May joy be theirs while life shall last! And Thou, if they should totter, teach ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Blanc's modestly denominated Societe Anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Etrangers made it a point to proffer a railway ticket to any impending wreck, such as himself, who might drift like a stain across its roads of merriment, or leave a telltale blot upon one of its perennially beautiful and ever-odorous flower-beds. But now, as he reviewed those past weeks of hesitation and inward struggle, a sense of relapse crept over him. As he recalled the picture of the clear-cut profile between the floating purple curtains, a vague ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... at the inrunning of a little brook, Sat by the river in a cove and watch'd The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes And saw the barge that brought her moving down, Far off, a blot upon the stream, and said, Low in himself, 'Ah, simple heart and sweet, You loved me, damsel, surely with a love Far ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... water-gruel cure gout" (I always wondered what "gout" might be) and "Little girls should be seen and not heard" (which I thought unkind). These were written many times over, and I had to present the pages to him, without one blot or smudge, at ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... were loudest in its praise are now loudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite! What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this Expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... gladness entered my being. I felt that the voyage would be an eventful one to me, and I tramped the poop with a light step. Occasionally the sallow features of Leith persisted in rising before my mental vision to blot out the dream face that was continually before me, but I resolutely put the Professor's partner from my mind and fed myself upon the visions bred by the splendour of ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Law) in its smallest point, is himself guilty of departing therefrom. He who should give breath stifleth him that could breathe. The land that ought to give repose driveth repose away. He who should divide in fairness hath become a robber. He who should blot out the oppressor giveth him the command to turn the town into a waste of water. He who should drive away evil himself committeth ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and lean, and lined, and corded, and a trifle grizzled; and his Sabbath countenance was even saturnine. On that day we made a procession to the church, or (as I must always call it) the cathedral: Maka (a blot on the hot landscape) in tall hat, black frock-coat, black trousers; under his arm the hymn-book and the Bible; in his face, a reverent gravity:- beside him Mary his wife, a quiet, wise, and handsome ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the fire of the little wine shop, thinking that his forbearance had been well-nigh thrown away, and that his character would never be cleared in Eustacie's eyes, attaching, indeed, more importance to the blot than would have been done by ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fashion, be they who they 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 have so ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... speed her rapid course The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, Well pleas'd to leave so cruel sea behind; And of that second region will I sing, In which the human spirit from sinful blot Is purg'd, and for ascent to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... to content me—but to gratify himself. A gratification he might never more desire, never more seek—an hypothesis in every point of view approaching the certain; but that concerned the future. This present moment had no pain, no blot, no want; full, pure, perfect, it deeply blessed me. A passing seraph seemed to have rested beside me, leaned towards my heart, and reposed on its throb a softening, cooling, healing, hallowing wing. Dr. John, you pained me afterwards: forgiven be every ill—freely forgiven—for ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... poison hath encompassed the roots; No marvel though the leprous infant die, When the stern dam envenometh the dug. Why then, give sin a passport to offend, And youth the dangerous rein of liberty; Blot out the strict forbidding of the law; And cancel every canon that prescribes A shame for shame or penance for offence. No, let me die, if his too boisterous will Will have it so, before I will consent To be an ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Federal forces. "If we could get at the true story of his connection with that woman," said the colonel, "I am satisfied he has only been indiscreet, not treacherous. He is one of my best, most trusted officers, and his arrest is a blot on the regiment. If he will tell anybody, he will tell you. Can you go to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... . . Whether the parties will become reconciled or quieted, so as to live together in peace, is doubted . . . . Such a series of outrages and bold violations of law as have marked the history of Hancock County for several years past is a blot upon our institutions; ought not to be endured by a civilized ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... conversion takes place after they are grown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has preceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an obliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence. St. Paul felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was haunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he was the least of all the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... or word or date that he wishes to make permanently his own. It is easy. It is a matter of habit. If you will, you can photograph an idea upon your cerebral gelatine so that neither years nor events will blot it out or overlay it. You must be clearly and distinctly aware of the thing you are putting into your mental treasure-house, and drastically certain of the cord by which you have tied it to some other thing of which you are sure. Unless it is worth ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... question Macartney replied: "I would meet Gordon exactly as Gordon met me. It is true that Gordon did me an injustice, but I am quite ready to blot it out from my memory if Gordon will admit it. Gordon acted under a strong feeling of excitement when he was not master of himself, and I have no more thought of holding him strictly responsible for what he wrote at such a moment than ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the others accused, or had he at the last moment, before judgment was pronounced, applied, with competent legal advice and assistance, for a new trial, he would have been unhesitatingly and honourably acquitted. We cannot blot out this dark page from our legal and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... way into society by her art and perseverance,—and who did not even pretend to have a relation in the world! That such a one should have influence enough to intrude herself into the house of Omnium, and blot the scutcheon, and,— what was worst of all,—perhaps be the mother of future dukes! Lady Glencora, in her anger, was very unjust to Madame Goesler, thinking all evil of her, accusing her in her mind ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the supreme head of the Christian world? Would Mary suffer him to pass unpunished who had displaced her mother from the nuptial bed, and pronounced her own birth to be stained with an ignominious blot, and who had exalted a rival to the throne? And Gardiner and Bonner, too, those bigoted prelates and ministers who would have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... in the east next morning, when we again scrambled through the dwarf beechwood to the precipice above the lake. Like an ink-blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were all there now—cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... match the bookcases support portfolios containing allegorical designs by Relszch, Blake, and Albrecht Durer. On a writing desk, that was once Vittoria Colonna's, a little Parian angel holds my ink for me, kneeling as if to ask a blessing upon it, and to entreat me to blot no pages with it in the souls whereon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is a recognition of a surface that has so many additions that there is use in a climax. This does not mean steadying and despair, it means no more than the tiniest the very tiniest example of a blot and a simple exercise in righteousness and ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... Abu Bekr, Omar and Othman, however, occupied this position before him, and it was not until 656, after the murder of Othman, that he assumed the title of caliph. The fact that he took no steps to prevent this murder is, perhaps, the only real blot upon his character. Almost the first act of his reign was the suppression of a rebellion under Talha and Zobair, who were instigated by Ayesha, Mahomet's widow, a bitter enemy of Ali, and one of the chief hindrances to his advancement to the caliphate. The rebel army was defeated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was his strongest passion; but along with the wanderer's restlessness marched the zest of exploration, and whilst wandering was in any case a necessity of his existence, he preferred to roam in untrodden ways where mere adventure might be dignified by geographical service. There was a "huge white blot" on the maps of central Arabia where no European had ever been, and Burton's scheme, approved by the Royal Geographical Society, was to extend his pilgrimage to this "empty abode," and remove a discreditable blank from the map. War among ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... managing director of the White Star Line his responsibility was greater even than Captain Smith's, and while granting that his survival might still be explained, they condemned his apparent lack of heroism. Even in England his survival was held to be the one great blot on an otherwise ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... I am brau'd, and must perforce endure it? Warw. This blot that they obiect against your House, Shall be whipt out in the next Parliament, Call'd for the Truce of Winchester and Gloucester: And if thou be not then created Yorke, I will not liue to be accounted Warwicke. Meane time, in signall of my loue to thee, Against prowd Somerset, and William ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... eye produces vision. In short, cause ever precedes effect; effect does not produce cause, but cause produces effect. Now, if good works do not make a Christian, do not secure the grace of God and blot out our sins, they do not merit heaven. No one but a Christian can enjoy heaven. One cannot secure it by his works, but by being a member of Christ; an experience effected through faith in the Word ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not have found a native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her husband's—one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... carefully written out, he was surprised to find the study empty. The doctor's chair was pushed back from the table as though he had risen hastily, and his pen was lying across his paper, where it had made a great blot of ink. ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... the crater seemed to have been blown up into the air with a most terrific noise, while a dense mass of smoke, steam, and ashes was hurled upwards, and seemed to blot out the sky. Twilight, which had been deepening, was converted into blackest night in a moment, and darkness profound would undoubtedly have continued, had it not been for the lurid glare of the fires which flashed at intervals from the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... contrivances to prevent shocks, and to secure an equable motion, are admirable and perfectly effectual. In one hour we had passed over the thirty-one miles which separate Manchester from Liverpool; shooting rapidly over Chat Moss, a black blot in the green landscape, overgrown with heath, which, at this season of the year, has an almost sooty hue, crossing bridge after bridge of the most solid and elegant construction, and finally entered Manchester by a viaduct, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... workman plants with curious hand, As I with needle draw each thing on land, Even as he list: some men like to the rose Are fashion'd fresh; some in their stalks do close, And, born, do sudden die; some are but weeds, And yet from them a secret good proceeds: I with my needle, if I please, may blot The fairest rose within my cambric plot; God with a beck can change each worldly thing, The poor to rich, the beggar to the king. What, then, hath man wherein he well may boast, Since by a beck he lives, a ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew together black and sharp to a little blot at ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... of the four faces. A strange reticence seemed to blot out expression. The reticence changed to reminiscence, to a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... there was no reply, for it was evident that the poor fellow had sunk into a complete state of stupor, and he was soon aware that he was fast following his friend's example. For the soft black spots began to float before his eyes, growing larger and larger, till they seemed to blot out the objects that had begun to ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... received. "We admit," was the reply, "that there is much wrong here, but we do not admit the right of your country to rebuke it. There is a system now with you, worse than any thing which we know of tyranny—your SLAVERY. It is a disgrace and blot on your free government and on a Christian State. We have nothing in Russia or Hungary which is so degrading, and we have nothing which so crushes the mind. And more than this, we hear you have now a LAW, just passed by your National Assembly, which would disgrace the cruel ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... ennobles man. Were not you to send me your Zeluco in return for mine? Tell me how you like my marks and notes through the book. I would not give a farthing for a book, unless I were at liberty to blot it with ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the Viscount's attention quickened into eagerness, an eagerness deepened by the tender interest that always hangs round the names of those whom we have known in happier and younger days. The happy memories recalled by hearing of his old tutor seemed to blot out his present misfortunes. With French excitability, he laughed and ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 'tis pity moves me; but a blot The martial honor of our house will stain, If, when I might have ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... made by Roosevelt. I have seen no evidence that Mr. Hay was consulted at the last moment. When the stroke was accomplished, many good persons in the United States denounced it. They felt that it was high-handed and brutal, and that it fixed an indelible blot on the national conscience. Many of them did not know of the long-drawn-out negotiations and of the Colombian premeditated deceit; others knew, but overlooked or condoned. They upheld strictly the letter of the law. They could not deny ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... could not blot out Jack Ramsey from his memory. There was a "reason," he would say, for ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... ultra-horrible, I have watched them for hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of my life is to assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation—and thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Rachel, but I did not see the dinner-table, nor the people sitting at it. They thought I was shy or proud, and did not trouble me with conversation. A sound was in my ears, which I thought was like the rushing of a storm in an Indian forest. All my life lay before me like a blot of ink on a bright page. Why must I give trouble, and carry a sore heart? Why was I left behind to come to Hillsbro'? Why did not my father and mother take me with them that I might have died of their fever and been buried in ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... the memory of the other, and King Constantine acquired a new and imperishable title to the gratitude of the nation. If all the efforts made in the past to blast his glory or to belittle his services had only heightened his popularity, all the efforts made since to blot out his image could only engrave it still deeper on the hearts of the people. His very exile was interpreted, symbolically, as the enchanted sleep whence he would arise to ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... make me lukewarm in the performance of my duties, lest I should fall into my former scepticism without strength to struggle out of it. More than half my life is spent; I have barely time to make good use of what is left, to blot out my faults by my virtues. If I am mistaken, it is against my will. He who reads my inmost heart knows that I have no love for my blindness. As my own knowledge is powerless to free me from this blindness, my only way out of it is by a good life; and if God ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
