"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the riders. Molly's last kiss had been the key that turned in the lock of his heart and opened up to reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... were brought down to the level of the other Allies. In alliance with the city rabble, the Giovani Fiumani, Italian soldiers attacked the French: "I can state emphatically," says Mr. Ryan, "that the French guards did nothing whatever to provoke the assault, some details of which would blot the escutcheon of most savage tribes. I saw soldiers of France killed, after surrender, by their supposed Allies.... I could scarcely believe my ears when Italian officers rapped out the order to load. But they seemed to remember that Frenchmen can fight." However, he also saw an Italian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... creatures have nothing to do. We could do nothing to make amends for the ill we have done, to blot out our sins; and all the wealth we possess could not recompense God, for all things are His. But the debt has been paid for us by Jesus, he became our surety, and when we go to Him, and trust to Him, and pray to Him, as He is now ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the shrines to which we make our summer pilgrimage, and bear with the sacrilege meekly, perhaps laugh at the wicked generation of pill-venders, that seeks for places to put up its sign. But does not this tolerance indicate the note of vulgarity in us, as Father Newman might say? Is it not a blot on the people as well as on the rocks? Let them fill the columns of newspapers with their ill-smelling advertisements, and sham testimonials from the Reverend Smith, Brown, and Jones; but let us prevent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... {106a} Another untoward blot! but leaving no doubt of the word. The only doubt is whether he meant the MUZZLE of the animal itself, or one of those leathern muzzles which are often employed to coerce the violence of ferocious animals. In ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Upton do? She could not change the course of Destiny. One—especially if she is a widow with bad eyes, and in feeble health, living on the poorest place in the State—cannot stop the stars in their courses. She could not blot out the past, nor undo what she had done. She would not if she could. She could not undo what she had done when she ran away with Jim and married him. She would not if she could. At least, the memory of those three years was hers, and nothing could take it from her—not debts, nor courts, nor ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... following exhortation—'Trust ye in the Lord for ever.' But whether that be so or not, if we want an answer to the questions, How can my stained feet be cleansed so as to be fit to tread the crystal pavements? how can my foul garments be so purged as not to be a blot and an eyesore, beside the white, lustrous robes that sweep along them and gather no defilement there? the only answer that I know of is to be found by turning to the final visions of the New Testament, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... your virtue, Eusebius, that you positively love these errors of human nature? You ever say, you have no sympathy with or for a perfect monster—if such there be—which you deny, and aver that if you detect not the blot, it is but too well covered; and by that very covering, for aught you know to the contrary, may be all blot. You would have catalogued this good lady among your "right estimable and lovely women!" and if you did not think that chest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... against old age is that it LACKS SENSUAL PLEASURES. What a splendid service does old age render, if it takes from us the greatest blot of youth! Listen, my dear young friends, to a speech of Archytas of Tarentum, among the greatest and most illustrious of men, which was put into my hands when as a young man I was at Tarentum with ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... souls as true As ever battle tried; But fiercer still the conflict grew, The floor of death more wide; Ah, who forgets that dreadful day Whose blot of grief and shame Four bitter years scarce wash away In seas of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in two bodies; and, after desiring them to continue to walk in the path of duty to the imperial house of Timur, he concluded these circular-letters in the following words: "May God forbid! but if accounts of your rebelling against your Emperor should reach our ears we will blot you out of the pages ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... as to ironwork the simple-minded distribution of these colours evoked the images of simple-minded peace, of arcadian felicity; and the childish comedy of disease and sorrow struck me sometimes as an abominably real blot upon that ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... In Denmark this was at a stone circle, and the stability of these stones was taken as an omen for the king's reign. There are exceptional instances noted, as the serf-king Eormenric (cf. Guthred-Canute of Northumberland), whose noble birth washed out this blot of his captivity, and there is a curious tradition of a conqueror setting his hound as king over a conquered ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Frangipani, who were the lords of the territory. Arrested by him and handed over to Charles, they were subjected to a form of trial, and beheaded in the market-place of Naples. This act has always been regarded as an indelible blot on Charles's record. Dante couples it with the alleged murder, by his order, of St. Thomas Aquinas; and it seems to have been felt even by members of the Guelf party as something, if one may so say, beyond ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... show us the meaning of our Saviour's words already cited, about the duty of hating our friends. To hate is to feel that perfect distaste for an object, that you wish it put away and got rid of; it is to turn away from it, and to blot out the thought of it from your mind. Now this is just the feeling we must cherish towards all earthly blessings, so far as Christ does not cast His light upon them. He (blessed be His name) has sanctioned and enjoined love and care for our relations and friends: ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... that the great Nzadi, one of the noblest, and still the least known of the four principal African arteries, will no longer be permitted to flow through the White Blot, a region unexplored and blank to geography as at the time of its creation, and that my labours may contribute something, however small, to clear the way for the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... cried, "after all the pain you have given me; to blot out the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake of the nights that I spent ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... a half-wit," he had said to himself, "but she can cook and clean and seems to have the kindest heart in the world. She wouldn't be bad looking if only she did not look so all-fired foolish." Even Josie's atrocious make-up couldn't blot out entirely her ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... blasts. East wind and west wind together, and the gusty south-wester, falling prone on the sea, stir it up [86-120]from its lowest chambers, and roll vast billows to the shore. Behind rises shouting of men and whistling of cordage. In a moment clouds blot sky and daylight from the Teucrians' eyes; black night broods over the deep. Pole thunders to pole, and the air quivers with incessant flashes; all menaces them with instant death. Straightway Aeneas' frame grows unnerved and chill, and stretching either hand to heaven, he cries thus aloud: 'Ah, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... told Dr. Burney that he never wrote any of his works that were printed, twice over. Dr. Burney's wonder at seeing several pages of his Lives of the Poets, in Manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew this observation from him. MALONE. 'He wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting' (post, Feb. 1744), and a hundred lines of the Vanity of Human Wishes in a day (post, under Feb. 15, 1766). The Ramblers were ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... instead of my and thy, are used in solemn style, before a word beginning with a vowel or silent h; as, "Blot out all mine iniquities;" and when thus used, they are not compound. His always has the same form, whether simple or compound; as, "Give John his book; That desk is his." Her, when placed before a noun, is in the possessive case; as, Take her hat: when standing alone, it is in ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... not know, I was answering, body and soul. Penzance knew I must have my way when I spoke to him—mad as it seemed. When I rode through Stornham village, more than one woman screamed at sight of me. I shall not be able to blot out of my mind your sister's face. She will tell you what we said to each other. I rode away from the Court quite half mad——" his voice became very gentle, "because of something she had told me in the first ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... slave does merit 1035 To be the hangman's bus'ness, sooner Than from your hand to have the honour Of his destruction. I, that am A nothingness in deed and name Did scorn to hurt his forfeit carcase, 1040 Or ill intreat his fiddle or case: Will you, great Sir, that glory blot In cold blood which you gain'd in hot? Will you employ your conqu'ring sword To break a fiddle and your word? 1045 For though I fought, and overcame, And quarter gave, 'twas in your name. For great commanders only own What's prosperous ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... will be for them to decide. Kenneth had already established himself as a lawyer back in the old home town. I shall urge him to return to that place with Viola as soon as they are married. His mother was a Blythe. There is no blot upon the name of Blythe. My daughter was born there. Her father was an honest, God-fearing, highly respected man. His name and his memory are untarnished. No man can say aught against the half of Kenneth that is Blythe, nor the half ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'Yonder ghostly ruin stands A blot and blemish on surrounding lands; Let's fling sweet, blooming fancies everywhere.' Soon all the world in wonder ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... day is the wine thereof," said Conrad Kurzbold, rising to his feet. "Wine, blessed liquor as it is, possesses nevertheless one defect, which blot on its escutcheon is that it cannot carry over till next day, except in so far as a headache is concerned, and a certain dryness of the mouth. It is futile to bid us lay in a supply to-night that will be of any use to-morrow morning. For my part, I give you warning, Roland, that I ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... religion of God and Nature; the religion that exalts, that 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 my criticisms. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... will soon die. I will shut the door and finish my work to-morrow. But my master will ask if all is done? He need know nothing of this circumstance. But I long to get away; and may the vengeance of God fall upon this spot to-night, and blot ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... reciting the contributions of each in the cause of woman, she closed with these words from The Prince of India in reference to the last great record: "There is thy history and mine, and all of little and great and good and bad that shall befall us in this life. Death does not blot out the records. Everlastingly writ, they shall be everlastingly read; for the shame of some, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the close of his life. It led him into great distresses, and for the sake of money he painted many pictures which are not worthy of his name. He had always received generous prices for his pictures, but he left many debts as a blot upon his memory. His works are seen in the galleries of Europe, and are always admired for their ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... the lustre of whose eye Can blot away the sad remembrance Of all these things: Oh my Evadne, spare That tender body, let it not take cold, The vapours of the night will not fall here. To bed my Love; Hymen will punish us For being slack performers of his rites. Cam'st thou ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... would one day astonish the world. Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan court which led to the only blot on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... hand before his eyes to blot out the vision of that still figure on the floor, and a dry sob burst from ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... he was terribly bad. He worried his parents a lot; He'd lie and he'd swear and pull little girls' hair; His boyhood was naught but a blot. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... allegoric story of the Protestant plan of salvation, is conceived in the large, wide spirit of humanity itself. Anglo-Catholic and Lutheran, Calvinist and Deist can alike read it with delight, and find their own theories in it. Even the Romanist has only to blot out a few paragraphs, and can discover no purer model of a Christian life to place in the hands of his children. The religion of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' is the religion which must be always and everywhere, as long as man believes that he has a soul ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... reply; he was eagerly examining the coach. In that brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested the awful truth. Even the soft imprint of the Indians' moccasined feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the cavalrymen. It was these that first attracted Boyle's attention, but he thought them the marks ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... any moral break-down of ours will often nerve us to stand firm. What would my friend think of me, if I did this, or consented to this meanness? Could I look him in the face again, and meet the calm pure gaze of his eye? Would it not be a blot on our friendship, and draw a veil over our intercourse? No friendship is worth the name which does not elevate, and does not help to nobility of conduct and to strength of character. It should give a new zest to duty, and a new inspiration ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... his gloves and laid them on the inlaid bureau. He had the physique of a director of public companies, and the grave manner that impresses shareholders. He talked of the weather, drew Cornish's attention to a blot of ink on the high-art wallpaper, and then put on his gloves again, well pleased with ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... misconduct. Arms were forfeited for uncourteous demeanour, disregard of authority, falsehood, oppression, and ungentlemanly conduct; and there can be little doubt but, in a semi-barbarous age, when prowess in the field of battle was considered the highest acomplishment, that the dread of a blot on the escutcheon, or a reversal of the shield of arms, restrained many a proud baron in his tyrannical proceedings to those beneath him, and tended to keep down the insolence of the upstart favourites of royalty. Heraldry tended ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... that God is really and truly in His universe, that He is not infinitely far {43} and inaccessible but infinitely nigh, an encompassing Presence, a fresh light falls upon nature and human nature alike. Viewed in that light, and from the standpoint of this illuminating truth, "the world's no blot for us, nor blank," but the scene of Divine activity and unceasing revelation; for all nature's forces are seen to be the expression of the Divine Energy, and all nature's laws the manifestation of the Divine Will. If God Himself is the Life that stirs within ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... be expected to deal with his subject from that special point of view. Freeman's complaint, which is quite just, was that he neglected almost entirely the relations of the Crown with the Houses of Parliament and with the courts of law. The moral blot accounts for a good deal of the indignation which Froude excited in minds far less jaundiced than Freeman's. No one hated injustice more than Froude. But cruelty as such did not inspire him with any horror. No punishment, however atrocious, seemed ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... place...." Beloved Pan! My knowledge of Pan was of the vaguest, and yet more than once or twice did I utter that prayer wandering alone the playing field, or watching the evening mist roll down the Thames Valley and blot up the elm trees, thick and white, clinging to the day like a fleece. The third Iliad again I have never forgotten, nor the twenty-fourth; nor the picture of the two gods, like vulture birds, watching the battle from the dead tree. Nor, again, do I ever fail to recapture the ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... really be affected; such flaws—and what book of the kind escapes them—which can most easily be removed, would not weaken the central argument, and after the Apologist's ingenuity has been exerted to the utmost to blacken every blot, the basis of Supernatural Religion would not be made one whit more secure. It is, however, because I recognise that, behind this skirmishing attack, there is the constant insinuation that misstatements have been detected which have "a vital bearing" upon the question at issue, arguments ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... like the streaming clouds overhead, seemed to blot out Slone's sight, and then passed ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... pink and green when she moves. Robert pretended that he was too cold to take off his great-coat, and so sat sweltering through what would otherwise have been a most thrilling meal. He felt that he was a blot on the smart beauty of the family, and he hoped the Phoenix knew what he was suffering for its sake. Of course, we are all pleased to suffer for the sake of others, but we like them to know it unless we are the very best and noblest kind ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... scroll there came a blot, A space of time remembered not; When sense awoke, clouds late aglow With sunset ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... in another mans booke. How then will scoffing readers scape this marke of a maledizant? whose wits have no other worke, nor better worth then to flout, and fall out? It is a foule blemish that Paterculus findes in the face of the Gracchi. They had good wits, but used them ill. But a fouler blot then a Jewes letter is it in the foreheads of Caelies and Curio, that he sets, Ingeniose nequam, they were wittily wicked. Pitie it is but evermore wit should be vertuous, vertue gentle, gentrie studious, students gracious. Let follie be dishonest, dishonestie unnoble, ignobilitie ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... on his few belongings. Some of them had become endeared to him by years of use and association, but they had served their time. "No, I want to forget it all. I came in with nothing. I'll take out nothing. I want to blot it all ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... more of them: jolly fellows, apparently, yet somehow conveying to me the suspicion that in a saloon shindy they might prove themselves my superiors. (I was told in New York, and by the best people in New York, that Tammany was a blot on the social system of the city. But I would not have it so. I would call it a part of the social system, just as much a part of the social system, and just as expressive of the national character, as the fine schools, the fine hospitals, the superlative business organizations, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... towards these peaceful and harmless Christian Indians was utterly abhorrent, and will ever be a subject of just reproach and condemnation; and at first sight it seems incredible that the perpetrators of so vile a deed should have gone unpunished and almost unblamed. It is a dark blot on the character of a people that otherwise had many fine and manly qualities to its credit. But the extraordinary conditions of life on the frontier must be kept in mind before passing too severe a judgment. In the turmoil of the harassing and long-continued Indian war, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... magic. His sentence condemned him to be burned alive, but, resolved to carry vengeance to the utmost extent, he was made to undergo the torture, suffering pangs too horrible to think of. He was then conveyed to Poitiers, where he suffered at the stake, and by his unmerited fate left an indelible blot on the age in which such monstrous cruelty could be perpetrated, or such ignorant barbarity tolerated. He endured his torments with patience and resignation. While he was suffering, a large fly was observed to hover near his head. A monk, who was enjoying the spectacle of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland; her own jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day or other—when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies—they will blot it from their records as levelling them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head—they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... speechless fashion—in spite of the heartache and the long years between them, really and truly glad. Nothing had been spoilt; they had snatched at no stolen joys. And the rapture, (what rapture!) of meeting would blot out all that they had suffered in ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... shouted Billy Barnes, from his seat on the top of the piled up cabin roof, as the shores of Galveston rapidly receded and finally became a mere blot. "If we don't have some dandy adventures before we get back call me a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... grown out of himself. He has had a word to speak, and he has spoken it So far he has increased in strength with every book, has grown more master of his own conceptions and himself. In 'A Son of Hagar' he forced his story upon his reader in defiance of possibility; but no such blot on construction as the continued presence of a London cad in the person of a Cumberland man in the latter's native village has been seen in his more recent work. It is worth notice that even in ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... in the instance of Mr. H. but Polly is a good sort of body enough so far as I know; but that is such a blot in the poor girl's escutcheon, a thing not accidental, nor surprised into, not owing to inattention, but to cool premeditation, that, I think, I could wish Mr. Adams a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Captain Runacles. I believe that our gallant soldiers will act with a single eye to their country's welfare; and I am sure they will do nothing that can be constructed as a blot ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not! Think not '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
... Kingdome of France on their party; wherefore the Duke above all things should have created a Spanyard Pope, and in case he could not have done that, he should have agreed that Roan should have been, and not St. Peter ad Vincula. And whoever beleeves, that with great personages new benefits blot on the remembrance of old injuries, is much deceiv'd. The Duke therefore in this election, was the cause of his own ruine ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... climbed the hill. By that time they were well beyond the farthest point toward the mountains which any one else believed the child could have reached, and there were no footprints of previous searchers to perplex their eyes or blot out such traces as they might find. From the top of the hill they saw the great body of men again scattering out over the mesa, and knew that they ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... of Hinduism holds the history of some devout seekers after God, of sincere aspiration, in some cases of beautiful thought and life. This deepest blot is acknowledged and condemned by its better members. Yet in countless temples, under the brightness of the Indian sun, the iniquity, protected by vested interests, goes on and no hand is lifted to stay. Suppose each American church to ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... application, particularly as it was snowing at the time. This enabled Andy to come close up behind Gaffington without the latter being aware of it, and, looking over the shoulder of the youth, Andy saw on the fly-leaf of the volume a peculiar ink blot. ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... We gave the bottle a black eye, i.e. drank it almost up. He cannot say black is the white of my eye; he cannot point out a blot in my character. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... poorhouse, or among the tramps, or living out a 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 efficient and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... attention, after the sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just before the commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-note of the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, on beginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore," it was at last with the definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with the legend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could no longer ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... at that blot upon the waters, breeding infectious disease; the waves flung the hated burden from one to the other, disdainful of her freight of sin; the winds had no commission for fair sailing, but whistled through the rigging crossways, howling in the ears of many in that ship, as if they carried ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... human being I now saw before me. That woman was Eve; that mirror-like lake was set in the midst of the Garden of Eden; I was Adam, and not this watery-eyed antediluvian calling himself by my name, who is a familiar figure in the Anthropological Society, an authority on evolution, and a blot upon civilization. ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... appropriately made of the best galls—the time so spent, and the "letting of words," if I may use the phrase, has cooled our judgment and our passions together; and the first letter is torn: 't is too severe; we write a second; we blot and interline till it is nearly illegible; we begin a third; till at last we are tired out with our own angry feelings, and throw our scribbling by with a "Pshaw! what's the use of it?" or, "It's not worth my notice;" or, still better, arrive at the conclusion, that we ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... is in good, but not in bad. My second is in funny, but not in sad. My third is in sit, but not in stand. My fourth is in tune, but not in band. My fifth is in pan, but not in pot. My sixth is in clear, but not in blot. My whole is a ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... he had eluded the acknowledgment of his signature, fleeing his country and betraying his trust to his forefathers! Ah, miserable coward! The material success of his life, the riches acquired in a remote country, were comparatively of no importance. There are failures that millions cannot blot out. The uneasiness of his conscience was proving it now. Proof, too, was in the envy and respect inspired by this poor mechanic marching to meet his death with others equally humble, all kindled with the satisfaction of duty fulfilled, of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the difference between us. You have but a fortune to make,—I have a name to redeem; you look calmly on to the future,—I have a dark blot to erase ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun's relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... to Rome and deposit them piously in the tomb of Augustus,—that was a natural duty of filial piety,—but he also prohibited any one to name among his ancestors the great Agrippa, the builder of the Pantheon, because his very obscure origin seemed a blot upon the semi-divine purity of his race. He had the title of Augusta and all the privileges of the vestal virgins bestowed upon his grandmother Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and the faithful friend of Tiberius; he had these same vestal privileges ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... to feel in herself a capacity for satisfaction in these possessions, actual and potential. She liked to look at the great blot of green on her hand and to see the string of pearls sliding to her waist. She liked to ponder on the Jacobean house with its splendid rise of park and fall of sward. She didn't at all dislike it, either, when Franklin, as calmly possessed as ever with a clear sense of his duties, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... shouldst blot us out without a word, Our stricken souls must say we had incurred Just punishment. Warnings we lacked not, warnings oft and clear, But in our arrogance we gave no ear To Thine admonishment. And yet,—and yet! O Lord, we humbly pray,— ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... a deadly crime. Gloss it over as you may, you can never justify murder. Use all the special pleading possible, and the frightful deed is still as black in the eyes of God and man as before. I saw that soon; saw it always; see it to-day; and pray God in his infinite mercy to blot out that crime from his book—to pardon the poor weak creature who was driven to madness, and attempted to ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... betimes; therefore he makes this one argument with God, that he would blot out his transgressions, that he would forgive his adultery, his murders, and horrible hypocrisy. Do it, O Lord, saith he, do it, and "then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... his own,—told me, that, when he came to a brook which he wanted to get over, he held up one leg, and then, if his foot appeared to cover any part of the opposite bank, he knew that he could jump it. "Why," I told him, "to say nothing of the Mississippi, and other small watery streams, I could blot out a star with my foot, but I would not engage to jump that distance," and asked how he knew when he had got his leg at the right elevation. But he regarded his legs as no less accurate than a pair of screw-dividers or an ordinary quadrant, and appeared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... side of the building and began to edge himself along. Martin and the boatswain followed. Martin looked up. The window they had just climbed through was a mere black blot, the window that was their objective was a mere outline overhead and a few feet to one side. No betraying light hazarded them, there on the shed. The warehouse behind them, and the building against which they crouched, combined to drape them in black ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... bearing or upholding all things.[164] Thou art thyself capable of bearing all things. Thou art fixed and steady (without being at all unstable). Thou art white or pure (being, as thou art, without any stain or blot). Thou bearest the trident that is competent to destroy (all things).[165] Thou art the grantor of bodies or physical forms unto those that constantly revolve in the universe of birth and death. Thou art more valuable than wealth. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... are two kinds of clouds, rain-clouds and wind-clouds, and that the latter are always the most portentous. In summer they are black as night; they look as if they would blot out the very earth. They raise a great dust, and set things flying and slamming for a moment, and that is all. They are the veritable wind-bags of AEolus. There is something in the look of rain-clouds ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... betrayal of the state; so that I must still ask myself in wonderment how it has been proved to you that I have done a deed worthy of death. Nor yet again because I die innocently is that a reason why I should lower my crest, for that is a blot not upon me but ...
— The Apology • Xenophon
... of the few, who stood aloof from his homely toil. Hence his dependence upon them. Hence the multiplied injuries which have fallen so heavily upon him. Hence the reduction of his wages from one degree to another, till at length, in the case of millions, fraud and violence strip him of his all, blot his name from the record of mankind, and, putting a yoke upon his neck, drive him away to toil among the cattle. Here you find the slave. To reduce the servant to his condition, requires abuses altogether monstrous—injuries reaching the very vitals of man—stabs ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... as a usurper, but as the representative of the man who had slain her husband. 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, at about the same period, they necessarily ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... circle, as the great ship steadily attained an ever-increasing altitude in the breathless atmosphere. For some ten minutes the scientist remained thoughtfully leaning upon the rail, watching the noble expanse of park beneath him dwindle into a mere dark, insignificant blot upon the face of the country, dotted here and there with feebly twinkling lights, until the sleeping waters of the Channel came into view to the southward. Then he returned to the pilot-house, turned on the electric light once more, and glanced at the barometer. It registered ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... odds against which it was forced to contend. The odious disclosures showed that the most trifling technicalities, often only a misspelled or an interlined word, and in one instance, at least, simply an ink blot, had been held sufficient to vacate the lowest bids, the contracts afterward being assigned to other bidders at largely increased amounts. So insignificant were these informalities that in many cases the official who ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... through the hushed assemblage.. "God saith: Get thee up, O thou City of Pleasure, from thy couch of sweet wantonness,—get thee up, gird thee with fire, and flee into the desert of forgotten things! For thou art become a blot on the fairness of My world, and a shame to the brightness of My Heaven!—thy rulers are corrupt,—thy teachers are proud of heart and narrow in judgment,—thy young men and maidens go astray and follow each after their own vain opinions,—in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Scotchman to her will. Frowning in reluctant acknowledgment of his own inability to resist her, he turned over the leaves of the letter; looked at the blank place where the pen had dropped from the writer's hand and had left a blot on the paper; turned back again to the beginning, and said the words, in the wife's interest, which the wife herself had put ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... or death—tonight? Kaya." The rest was a blot. He scanned them again more closely and shook the hair from ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... beware, Nor you nor I forget— For by my father's beard I swear Your blood shall wash the blot I bear, And Ulrick pay ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... prouder mamma than Madam Cluck when she led forth her family of eight downy little chicks. Chanticleer, Strut, Snowball, Speckle, Peep, Peck, Downy, and Blot were their names; and no sooner were they out of the shell than they began to chirp and scratch as gaily as if the big world in which they suddenly found themselves was made for their especial benefit. It was a fine brood; but poor Madam Cluck had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... speaker to the end; stifling any audible expression of his re-awakened indignation, he whispered to the baronet, "My dear father! recent happy events have made us almost forget that villain's baseness; but I pray, let him not remain another week a blot upon our ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... small blot that had condemned it in Mabel's sight, as unfit to be sent to her most valued correspondent, and which she had not observed before writing the direction. Selecting another, she had thrown this back carelessly into the desk, meaning to burn it when it should be convenient, and forgotten ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... toward the east, saw the blacker blot against the blackness of the trees as the craft topped the buttressed garden wall. She saw the dim bulk incline gently downward toward the scarlet sward of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... might be able to look them in the face? How, without falsehood, to disentangle his relations with Missy? How to get out of the inconsistency of considering the private holding of land unjust and keeping his inheritance? How to blot out his sin against Katiousha? "I cannot abandon the woman whom I have loved and content myself with paying money to the lawyer to save her from penal servitude, which she does not even deserve." To blot out the sin, as he did then, when he thought that ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... of recollection, and plunged down the slope into the covert. The woods received and closed upon her. Once more, she wandered and hasted in a blot, uncheered, unpiloted. Here and there, indeed, through rents in the wood-roof, a glimmer attracted her; here and there a tree stood out among its neighbours by some force of outline; here and there a brushing among the leaves, a notable blackness, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letters became more frequent and more full of messages to the people in Lonesome Cove, and she seemed eager to get back home. Over there about this time, old Judd concluded suddenly to go West, taking Bud with him, and when Hale wrote the fact, an answer came from June that showed the blot of tears. However, she seemed none the less in a hurry to get back, and when Hale met her at the station, he was startled; for she came back in dresses that were below her shoe-tops, with her wonderful hair massed in a golden glory on the top of her head and the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... they are not moved up in the school at the set time they and their parents are for ever disgraced and their whole career blasted. Imagine the misery a wretched child must suffer before it reaches the stage of preferring to kill itself! No other nation has this blot on it. ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... The greatest blot on the character of Columbus is contained in this and a succeeding letter. Under the shallow pretense of benefiting the souls of idolators, he suggested to the Spanish rulers the advisability of shipping the natives to Spain as slaves. He appeals to their cupidity ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... awoke and cried: In sooth, There is no need of sorrow, care, and strife; For all that women beauty call, and truth, Is but a glow from hearts with fancy rife, Passing away with slowly fading youth. Gaze on them narrowly, they waver, blot; Look at them fixedly, and they ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... gorgeous array; the walls were hung with rare embroideries; the table was weighted with gold platters and richly carved goblets filled with sweet nectars. But the king himself, with his horrid, ugly head, was like a great blot on a fair parchment, and even Prince Marvel could not repress a shudder as ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... commented the Master with gentle sarcasm. He had learnt in his long life to economise anger. But he frowned as he dipped a pen in the ink-pot and made the correction; for he was dainty about his manuscripts as about all the furniture of life, and a blot or an erasure annoyed him. "Brother Copas," he murmured, "never misplaces ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which he hoped to enjoy in heaven was the society of Hampden. In the editions printed after the Restoration, the name of Hampden was omitted. "But I must tell the reader," says Baxter, "that I did blot it out, not as changing my opinion of the person. . . . Mr. John Hampden was one that friends and enemies acknowledged to be most eminent for prudence, piety, and peaceable counsels, having the most universal praise of any gentleman that I remember of that age. I remember ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their valuable, as none possessed their confidence in such a measure as he. If he had stayed still longer with Moses, people would have declared that he had absconded with all these things and fled to Moses to share it with him, and that would have been a blot on his fair name and that of Moses. Jethro had furthermore made many debts during the year in which he came to Moses, for, owing to the hail God had sent upon Egypt before the exodus of Israel, a great famine had ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... an Englishman should feel acutely sensitive to this blot in the law of England and desire the speedy disappearance of a system so open to scathing sarcasm. It is natural that every humane person should grow impatient of the spectacle of so many blighted lives, of so much misery inflicted on innocent persons—and on persons ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... hearts than the laws of their cruel and perfidious Church. No consideration, not even the fear of eternal damnation, can persuade them to declare to a sinful man sins which God alone has the right to know, for He alone can blot them out with the blood of His Son shed on ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... who art in Heaven, we bow ourselves before Thy footstool in humility and reverence. Thou art our God, our Creator, our Saviour. Bless us this day, and cause Thy face to shine upon us. Blot out our transgressions, pardon our trespasses. Wash us, that we may be whiter than snow. Hide not Thy face from the eyes of Thy children, turn not upon us in wrath. Pity us, Lord, as we kneel here prostrate before Thy majesty and glory. Let the words of ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... for ever she returns; Or rather Lethe could not blot her thence, Such as she was when first she struck my sense, In that bright blushing age when beauty burns: So still I see her, bashful as she turns Retired into herself, as from offence: I cry—"'Tis she! she still has life and sense: Oh, speak to me, my ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... "fiercer" than the flames of the piles of Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Italy, Germany, and England, in which thousands of them have been burnt to ashes? For shame! Mr. Everett. The recording angel may drop a tear upon what you have written, not to blot it out, but in compassion for the miseries for which you seem to think words ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... the ceiling so low that they had to stoop—and their hands were parted. Before she realized what he intended Harry Harry had darted down one of the half-dozen glittering passages that opened into the room and was only a vague receding blot ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... blowing up against the sky As little as a leaf: then it drew near And broadened.—'It's a bird,' said I, And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer! It grew from up a speck into a blot, And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down All crumply, and waggled such a lot I thought the thing would fall.—It was a brown Old carpet where a man was sitting snug Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew A big hole in the middle of the rug, And kept ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... along; have made them forget the dreadful consequences in which their conduct is likely to involve them; besides, they will say, that the treasures of the divine mercy are infinite; that repentance suffices to efface the foulest transgressions; to cleanse the blackest guilt; to blot out the most enormous crimes: in this multitude of wretched beings, who each after his own manner desolates society with his criminal pursuits, you will find only a small number who are sufficiently intimidated by the fears of the miserable ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... of old, and thou seest not fairly in these shadows. I know that Philip Sidney and John Nevil have come to Ferne House, and here am I, thy oldest comrade of them all. A sheet of paper close written with record of noble deeds becomes not worthless because of one deep blot." ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... remember, taken up by private suites. The palm court was built on the roof of the first floor and was a very great improvement to this part of the hotel as it removed from sight what had always been a blot and an eyesore. After the abolition of the shops, tiffin-rooms were established on the Waterloo Street side, which have since been converted ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... "there is not one of us who can say that. Every one of us has sinned again and again and again. And each sin is like a dark blot, a deep ink-stain on ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton |
