"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so done; and five minutes later they had got the man—the only occupant of the wreckage as it proved—safe aboard the boat, and were pulling back towards the brig, now barely discernible as a small, faint, indistinct dark blot against the blue-black, star-spangled sky, with her anchor light hoisted to the gaff-end as a guide to the returning ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... perisheth. Oh! may God bless the thousands of unflinching, disinterested abolitionists of America, who are labouring through evil as well as through good report, to cleanse their country's escutcheon from the foul and destructive blot of slavery, and to restore to every bondman his God-given rights; and may God ever smile upon England and upon England's good, much-beloved, and deservedly-honoured Queen, for the generous protection that is given ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... of slavery today for the people to solve. The question is: "How shall the warfare against White Slavery be waged to blot out this cloud upon civilization expeditiously?" Over two years ago I learned that there was a gigantic slave trade in women, and with a handful of people we began to fight the traders. That a system of slavery, debasing and vile, had grown ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... 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,— Put back again Thy righteous Judgment Day! Have patience ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... noiselessly that when he opened his eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the little embroidery frame at the window. Finding himself alone, he sat up in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it could. For a little space the walls of the room became as the interior of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rushing of many waters. After the surroundings had resumed ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... thought, "and his daughter shares it. Some secret, perhaps, of shame and disgrace—some bar sinister in their shield; and, good heavens! I am mad enough to love her—I, a Kingsland, of Kingsland, whose name and escutcheon are without a blot! What do I know of her antecedents or his? My mother spoke of some mystery in his past life; and there is a look of settled gloom in his face that nothing seems able to remove. Lord Ernest Strathmore, too—he must come to complicate matters. She ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... 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, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... more," he said, "for you will never beat that. For pure richness and whimsical humour it stands alone. During the past seven weeks you have been endeavouring in your cheery fashion to blot the editorial staff of this paper off the face of the earth in a variety of ingenious and entertaining ways; and now you propose to sue us for libel! I wish Comrade Windsor could have heard you say that. It would have ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... afterthoughts, it does seem likely that here for the first time some moral strength deserted the monarchy. The character of Henry's second son John (for Richard belongs rather to the last chapter) stamped it with something accidental and yet symbolic. It was not that John was a mere black blot on the pure gold of the Plantagenets, the texture was much more mixed and continuous; but he really was a discredited Plantagenet, and as it were a damaged Plantagenet. It was not that he was much more of a bad man than many opposed to him, but ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... a rapidly widening 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. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the blot in the past of this woman from the East, bought in the bazaar of Adrianople for the Emperor of Morocco, then sold, when he died and his harem was dispersed, to the young Bey Ahmed. Hemerlingue had married her when she passed from this new seraglio, but she could not be ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... gentleman of courteous temper, highly agreeable manners, and convivial nature. He had served in the recent war with Mexico; he had never given a vote or written a sentence that the straightest Southern Democrat could wish to blot; and he was identified with the slave-power, having denounced its enemies as the enemies of the Constitution. William R. King, at the time president pro tempore of the Senate, was nominated for Vice-President, receiving every vote ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... was the knowledge that the catastrophe was unnecessary, that it might have been avoided. My men and I have been cold and have been near to starvation in the Arctic, when cold and hunger were inevitable; but the horrors of Cape Sabine were not inevitable. They are a blot upon the record ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... the memory of the recent interview she had had 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 Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... his wife's nephew and sister's grandson, and make him his heir and successor. By this time, Dion and his wife and sister began to suspect what was doing, and from all hands information came to them of the plot. Dion, being troubled, it is probable, for Heraclides's murder, which was like to be a blot and stain upon his life and actions, in continual weariness and vexation, declared he had rather die a thousand times, and open his breast himself to the assassin, than live not only in fear of his enemies but suspicion of his friends. But Callippus, seeing the women very ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... a little to look at Lord Mark's conviction as if it were a blot on the face of nature. "Do you mean because you had appeared to him to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective, is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot believe that Raphael added it of his own motion; rather it must have been placed there at the dictation of some meddling cardinal or learned humanist who, knowing nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space should not be filled ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Arnaud tries to blot out thought by sketching in and erasing again fanciful figures twisted into a peculiar position; he cannot adjust the pose of the unknown murderer. So in ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... had dropped like a stone from a height that forbade hope of escape. Would she be conscious and would he be in time to give and receive a last message of love before her splendid young life was quenched in the black blot of death? Besides grief there was fury in the runner's heart, wrath against Owen for encouraging this foolish and dangerous caprice, against the unfortunate driver who had failed to preserve his precious freight, and against nature who condemns every living thing by one means or ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... of poems, and it is difficult to choose among them. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is always a favorite with the young people, as are "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "Herve Riel," and "Ratisbon." His most popular poems are "Pippa Passes," "The Ring and the Book," "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," and "Saul." ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... as they have always rejected the greatest. Read the early careers of the actresses the world now worships! But I am a hundred times more determined than before. The public shall treasure the dust my feet have trod on. They shall look back on to-night as a blot on their lives. My genius shall triumph! My genius shall force them ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... when I'd come on deck to mark, wi' envy in my gaze, The couples kittlin' in the dark between the funnel stays; Years when I raked the ports wi' pride to fill my cup o' wrong — Judge not, O Lord, my steps aside at Gay Street in Hong-Kong! Blot out the wastrel hours of mine in sin when I abode — Jane Harrigan's an' Number Nine, The Reddick an' Grant Road! An' waur than all — my crownin' sin — rank blasphemy an' wild. I was not four and twenty then — Ye wadna judge a child? I'd seen the Tropics first that run — new ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... the tear-streaming words that fall and founder in the dark room from that obscure blot on the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and who ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... like a coward. Kate, the American wife, and Suzuki meet in the garden. The maid is asked to tell her mistress the meaning of the visit, but before she can do so Butterfly sees them. Her questions bring out half the truth; her intuition tells her the rest. Kate (an awful blot she is on the dramatic picture) begs forgiveness and asks for the baby boy that her husband may rear him. Butterfly says he shall have him in half an hour if he will come to fetch him. She goes to the shrine of Buddha and takes from it a veil and a dagger, reading the words ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would not have been very ridiculous. He was an unit of the British Empire—nothing could blot out that fact before heaven! Had anything been left undone that ought to have been done, or done that had well been left undone, or were better to be undone now? Of a truth that was worth ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... cursed by night; cursed when he lieth down, and cursed when he riseth up; cursed when he goeth out, and cursed when he cometh in; the Lord pardon him never; the wrath and fury of the Lord burn upon this man, and bring upon him all the curses which are written in the Book of the Law. The Lord blot out his name under heaven. The Lord set him apart for destruction from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the Book of the Law. There shall no one speak to him, no man write to him, no man show him any kindness, no man stay ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... also in Thee that Thou wilt direct my steps. Thou givest wisdom liberally to all who ask Thee—give it to me, my Father. My family is Thine. They are in the best hands. Oh! be gracious, and all our sins do Thou blot out. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... for the purpose of discovering how many words he can strike out of it that give him no requisite ideas, no relevant ones that he cares for, and no reasons for the rhyme beyond its necessity, and he will see what blot and havoc he will make in many an admired production of its day,—what marks of its inevitable fate. Bulky authors in particular, however safe they may think themselves, would do well to consider what parts of their ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped, and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound, and lay a dark and huddled blot on ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... with an oath, "Jack, your sister may be so-and-so, but by Jove my wife shan't!" and swords were drawn, and blood drawn too, until friends separated them on this quarrel. Few men were so jealous about the point of honor in those days; and gentlemen of good birth and lineage thought a royal blot was an ornament to their family coat. Frank Esmond retired in the sulks, first to Tangier, whence he returned after two years' service, settling on a small property he had of his mother, near to Winchester, and became a country gentleman, and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... A boon, your majesty! 'T would blot our honor To send him from us thus! We shall be plunged Anew in wars, for Husak will avenge it! I am thy most unhappy subject, and Thou'lt ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... is this blot on Archie's name, and he is living in exile, and that Moy is revelling in prosperity. Nothing! Why don't you publish it to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... revolution to be an accomplished fact saw it menaced by the formidable league which proposed to bring the King's brothers back in triumph from Coblentz, and which threatened, in the extraordinary language to which Brunswick put his name, to blot Paris from the map of Europe if any injury were done to the King, who had already formally accepted the constitution that the Revolution had created. Paris went mad with fear and rage. The September massacres, the attacks upon the Tuileries, the proclaimed ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... would think it right to turn the fertilizing Nile from its bed and leave its shores dry, because, from time to time, it destroyed fields and villages in the excess of its overflow? "This day and its deeds of shame," he went on sadly, "are a blot on the pure and sublime book of the History of our Faith, and every true Christian must bitterly bewail the excesses of a frenzied mob. The Church must no less condemn Caesar's sanguinary vengeance; it casts a shade on his honor and his fair name, and his conscience ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all must pass—fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... well if our writers had also copied the decorum which their great French contemporaries, with few exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the English plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There was no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole system of human ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feature, and, in order to obtain this in its highest perfection, the culinary abilities of the lady participants are necessarily called into action—those talents which have fallen somewhat into disrepute, notwithstanding Professor BLOT'S magnanimous efforts to restore the glories of the once honored culinary art. Therefore a picnic may be considered as a great moral agency in promoting domestic happiness; for what is so likely to touch the heart and arouse the slumbering sensibility of a husband and father, as a roast of beef done ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... in us that time can never tame; And life will always seem a careless game; And they'd better far forget — Those who say they love us yet — Forget, blot out ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... We have such a reluctance to part with them, that we are content to see them continued by any fiction, through any indirections, rather than to dispense with old names. In your country, I suppose, there is no such reluctance; you are willing that one generation should blot out all that preceded it, and be itself the newest and only age ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enquiry I learnt that Hodson had gone a second time to Humayun's tomb that morning with the object of capturing these Princes, and on the way back to Delhi had shot them with his own hand—an act which, whether necessary or not, has undoubtedly cast a blot on his reputation. His own explanation of the circumstance was that he feared they would be rescued by the mob, who could easily have overpowered his small escort of 100 sowars, and it certainly would have been a misfortune ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Agatha's name, he endeavored to resume his habitual calmness. He passed his hand over his eyes, as if to blot out the remembrance of the passion which yet burned within him, and gradually regained, in voice and manner, ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... to destroy and silence the opposing batteries, and give opportunity for a well-arranged storm. But, instead, not a gun of the enemy appeared to suffer, and our own firing too high was not discovered till" too late. "Such a failure in this boasted arm was not to be expected, and I think it a blot on the artillery escutcheon."] On the other hand, the old sea-dogs and trained regulars who held the field against them, not only fought their guns well and skilfully from the beginning, but all through the action kept coolly correcting their faults and making more sure ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... This microscopic blot on the Duke's escutcheon, as well as other more commendable details of his life, were duly noted down by the zealous Mr. Eames who, in addition, had the good fortune to receive as a gift from his kindly but unassuming friend Count Caloveglia a quaint portrait of the prince, hitherto unknown—an ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that was filled gloriously with noble, and even with royal names, till at last she stopped short, and covering one medallion with her finger, she said, "Pass over that, dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great uncle John's: what could he expect by marrying into that family, where, you know, all the men were not sans peur, and none ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... wandering from my story. Would that I might forever wander from it—that I might at once blot from memory's page, the fearful recollection that must follow me to my grave! Yet, painful as it is to rehearse the past, if I can but awaken your sympathy for other sufferers, if I can but excite you to efforts for their deliverance, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... minute!" I exclaimed, seizing the inky paper. "I want to see whether I am doing right or not to sign. If that is a butterfly I am right, and if anything else, no matter what, I am wrong." I took the sheet, doubled it in the middle of the enormous blot, and pressed it firmly together. Emile Perrin thereupon began to laugh, giving up his mannikin attitude entirely. He leaned over to examine the paper with me, and we opened it very gently just as one opens one's hand after imprisoning a fly. When the paper ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... restraint upon herself. At home she had indulged in a scene of furious jealousy with her lover, without caring if her daughter heard; and Luce had learned that her mother was with child. For her this was like a blot that extended to herself, whose entire love, whose love for Pierre was polluted thereby. That is why when Pierre had approached her she had repulsed him; she was ashamed of herself and of him.... ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... indemnity allowed them was irrevocably fixed at 150,000! The transaction is a disgrace to the egotistical and venal nation which thus allowed the life and liberty of a people to be trifled with, a lasting blot ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... terminated abruptly. There was a blot and a smudge. The pen lay where it seemed to have rolled—on the floor. The ink was not yet dry. Francis ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ritualism, if such a calamity should ever threaten the little community, and very ready to join, more or less furtively, in the excitements of Dissenting revivals. Jerry Timmins and his set represented the only serious blot on what the pious Clough Endian might reasonably regard as a fair picture. But this set contained some sharp fellows—provided outlet for a considerable amount of energy of a raw and roving sort, and, no doubt, did more to maintain ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and was silent. After some moments, he opened his eyes, half-smiled, and motioning to Labouchere to come close, whispered: "But, Labby, the past can not be wiped out by a resolution of Parliament. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on, nor all your tears shall blot a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... bustling; the flower market at the base of the Palazza Strozzi was gay with pinks and carnations and early roses. They drove out of the city, passed innumerable villas, out into the open country where the only blot upon the fair landscape was a funeral train, the coffin borne by those gruesome beings, the Brothers of the Misericordia, with their black robes and black face cloths pierced only ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... availed aught? No, it is the will of God that in due time this land and this people shall be put into the melting-pot. And when the season appointed shall come, sorrow and death, rebellion and treachery shall stalk through the land, and naught shall stand of its present kingdoms; the pagans shall blot out the holy memory of God and Christ, and shall turn the fanes of prayer into the lairs of wolves, and owls shall rest where hymns of praise have been sung. And no wars of goodly knights may hinder these things of dreadful ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... shriek, or splash, or groan, or sigh! Could zitch a zwimmer ever die In wActer?—Yet we gaz'd in vain Upon thic bright and wActer plain: All smooth and calm—no ripple gave One token of the zwimmer's grave! We hir'd en not, we zeed en not!— The glassy wActer zim'd a blot? While Evans, he of coward core, Still paddled as he did bevore! At length our fears our silence broke,— Young as we war, and children Acll, We wish'd to goo an zum one cAcll; But Evans carelissly thus spoke— "Oh, Cox is up the river gone, Vor sartain ool be back anon;— He tAclk'd ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... father, thoughtfully; "but you might take a billhook and cut back a little of the overgrowth, for we must not be beaten. George, my boy, we must go back and make the place more beautiful than it was before; for it is a beautiful land, if man would not blot it with his cruelties and ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... piece of information. He had been Julia's guardian ever since she was left an orphan, ten years old; but I had never known that there had not been a formal and legal settlement of her affairs when she was of age. Our family name had no blot upon it; it was one of the most honored names in the island. But if this came to light, then the disgrace ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... my soul for ever she returns; Or rather Lethe could not blot her thence, Such as she was when first she struck my sense, In that bright blushing age when beauty burns: So still I see her, bashful as she turns Retired into herself, as from offence: I cry—"'Tis she! she still has life and sense: Oh, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... assaults, but he has never been able to suppress them completely, because the soldiers are abandoned by their officers, and because of lack of example on the part of the latter; they do not understand that it is a great blot when they commit these abuses, since when they discover the goods or house of a Spaniard they believe they have a right to appropriate everything which ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... swept the range of vision. Out of an orchard into the stubble of a wheat-field broke a panicky mass; a score or more of men who had lost their officer and their heads presumably. They were the nail under the hammer, a brown blot, a target. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... another garrison. After a repulse at Fredrikstad, soon followed by a severe mauling at Bothaville, from which he broke out as a fugitive, he placidly and confidently trekked southwards unopposed for 150 miles, magnetically attracting to himself a force sufficient to blot out Dewetsdorp in the presence of a bewildered enemy, who, though in overwhelming numbers, was feebly strung out in lengths without breadth. The British Army had still to learn, not only in the Free State, but also elsewhere, the elemental ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... 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 ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 'tis pity moves me; but a blot The martial honor of our house will stain, If, when I might have bled, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... never found flying so easy before; and the thunder of the following wings that held persistently on his track made it dangerous for him to slacken up for more than a minute here and there. The earth became a dark blot beneath him, while the moon, rising higher and higher, grew weirdly bright and close. How black the sky was; how piercing the points of starlight; how stimulating the strong, new odours of these lofty regions! He realised with a thrill of genuine awe that he ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... continue to exist. It is said that Mr. Lincoln would have given this notice earlier but for the gloomy state of military affairs. The day comes. The proclamation goes forth that all persons held as slaves in the rebellious sections "are and henceforth shall be free." The blot which had so long stained our national banner was wiped away. The Constitution of course does not expressly authorize such an act by the President, but Mr. Lincoln defended it as a "necessary war measure," "warranted by the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and rockers for Polish cradles! The pink of Becky's cheeks spread all over her face like a blot of red ink on a piece of porous paper. Shosshi's face reflected the color in even more ensanguined dyes. Becky rushed from the room and Shosshi heard her giggling madly on the staircase. It dawned upon him that he had displayed bad taste in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... me. A young and innocent half-portion like me, it appears, is absolutely incapable of suspecting the true infamy of the dregs of society. You aren't fit to speak to the likes of me, being at the kindest estimate little more than a blot on the human race. I tell you this in case you may imagine you're popular with ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... well try to blot the sun out of the heavens as to blot this truth out of the Word of God. It is heaven's eternal decree. The law has been enforced for six thousand years. Did not God make Adam reap even before he left Eden? Had not Cain to reap outside of Eden? A king on the throne, like David, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... Signory of Venice on his bended knees, as a return for services rendered by him to the State, that no public punishment should be inflicted on the culprits. He could not bear, he said, to be the cause of bringing a blot of infamy upon his religion, or of ruining the career of any man. Fra Giovanni Francesco afterwards redeemed his life by offering weighty evidence against his powerful accomplices. But what he revealed is buried in the oblivion with which the Council of Ten in Venice chose ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... written of Samuel (Ecclus. 46:23): "He lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy to blot out the wickedness of the nation." Therefore other saints can likewise be called prophets ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... way I feel to you, Norma," he said, quietly, "is that it seems to blot every other earthly consideration from view. I see nothing, I think nothing, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... was. Harrison told me so the same night. I was proud, James, to see that you had the spirit of the Barringtons, and that I had an heir whose gallantry might redeem the family blot which I have striven so hard to cover over. Then came the day when your mother's kindness—her mistaken kindness—gave you the means of ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Oh, don't be entirely heartless. Wouldn't a cup of tea blot it out? With a Peak & Frean?" She advances beseechingly upon him. "Come, I will give you a cup ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... it. You're mistaken in saying we never thought of it. I have; and been searching for it everywhere. But it's gone; and what's become of it, I know not. They may have thrown it overboard before forsaking the ship—possibly to blot out all traces. Still, it's odd too, De Lara leaving these ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... This letter, as it was originally written, was one of Clement's happiest compositions.[407] He abstained in it from using any expression which could be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character, which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the blessings, Edward, with 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, Edward. I hope they will set it on the Scotch gate though, that I may look, even after ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that is throttling him now; that he will no more write senseless proclamations, will give up the attempt to save slave-holders, and will march straight to the great task of crushing the rebellion and rebels. He will blot slavery, that Cain's mark on the brow of the Union; blot it and throw it into the marshes of the parishes of Louisiana. I rely upon Banks's sound common sense. He will come out from among ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... desperate men, they had sunk with their vessel. We fished up about one half of the unhappy blacks, but the direst necessity compelled us to leave the rest of them, as it was impossible for us to take them on board. Oh that I could for ever blot this scene from ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... of this kingdom, and read aloud to crowds in every political parlour, beer-shop, news-room, and secret or open place of assembly, frequented by the discontented working-men; and that no milk-and-water weakness on the part of the executive can ever blot them out. Great things like that, are caught up, and stored up, in these times, and are not forgotten, Mr. Hood. The public at large (especially those who wish for peace and conciliation) are universally obliged ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... went backward to his last Sunday evening in the cathedral at home. He had known why the old rector had chosen that time-worn hymn for a recessional; he could still feel the stir of the congregation as he passed them, still see the scarlet blot of color made by his own hymnal against his stiffly starched cotta, still see his mother, erect and pale, staring at him with a resolute bravery which matched his own. Since then, he had been inside no church until to-day. It was a far cry from worshipping in the Gothic cathedral ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Let thy shadowy hair, Blot out the pages That we cannot share; Be ours the one last leaf By ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... and fearful,' said he musingly—'a terrible blot seems to rest upon this house; I must abandon the hope of ever having it occupied, as I presume you now desire to remove from it, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... that is America." (Stefan heard himself.) "Look!" And rapidly he drew a bird flying high above the blot, with its head pointed to the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... ungenially 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 ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... receives us when we seek His forgiveness. If I, His poor little creature, feel so tenderly towards you when you come back to me, what must pass through Our Lord's Divine Heart when we return to Him? Far more quickly than I have just done will He blot out our sins from His memory. . . . Nay, He will even love us more tenderly ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... favored napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... as they conversed with all the ease of cordial and guileless friendship, how did Valerie rejoice in secret that upon that friendship there rested no blot of shame! and that she had not forfeited those consolations for a home without love, which had at last settled into cheerful nor unhallowed resignation,—consolations only to be found in the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ordinary run of pulpit ministrations because I feel that to-day all of us, whatever may be our political or ecclesiastical relationships and proclivities, are one in thanking God for the monarch whose life has been without a stain, and her reign without a blot. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nevarre! Then the banker he say, 'And you will go and blab, I suppose?' And then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache—so! and I say: 'Pardon, senor, you haf mistake, The Saltillo haf for three hundred year no stain, no blot upon him. Eet is not now—the last of the race—who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and dishonor!' And then it is that the band begin to play, and the animals stand on their hind leg and waltz, and behold, the row ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... creed, and doubting not She read it well from Nature's scroll, She found no line or word to blot; But, from her woman's modest soul, Thanked her Creator ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... then send to the Game Commissioner at Fredericton for a permit, and sell the good soul to the agent for some Zoological Garden, where she would be appreciated and cared for. As for Carrots, his conduct was irreproachable, absolutely without blot or blemish, but MacPhairrson knew that he was quite unregenerate at heart. The astute little beast understood well enough the fundamental law of the Family, "Live and let live," and he knew that if he should break ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... dropped the sheet of pigs upon the desk, but at that unfortunate moment, the paint-brush slipped from her grasp and spilled a great, scarlet blot on the teacher's fresh white waist. Dismayed, Peace could only stare at the ruin she had wrought, having forgotten all about her drawing in wondering what punishment would follow this second calamity; and Miss Peyton had to speak twice before she came to her senses enough to know that ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... will tear away the leaf Wherein it's writ; or, if fate won't allow So large a gap within its journal-book, I'll blot ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... as 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 noble display of ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... careful to stock the world 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 most parturient ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... terribly real, and for whose welfare, with all the generous truth of a sister's feeling, they would barter everything, yet who were in an unending danger! Think of them, with this skeleton behind the door of their hearts, fearful at every moment! Does it seem good in the scheme of existence, or a blot there, that those who are themselves innocent, but who are yet the real sufferers, whether punishment to the culprit fall or fail, should be made thus poignantly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... I picked up the letter, I found a big blot of the yellow from the hens' eggs on it. I hope it doesn't show in the picture. I had all I could do to keep from laughing when I thought of Mr. Switzer in ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving as dangerous precedents than during the war itself. Thus it may truly be said of him not only that under his guidance the republic was saved from disruption and the country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that, during the stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all things that concern the rights and liberties of the citizens. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... lies prostrate. And those who 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? ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... shepherd's pipe or the song of the lark; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines, and make the notes run into each other; and when I try to blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which, turned into sound by good father Louis the Dominican, will tell you, if you can only hear it aright, what is not to be told in any human speech; not even that of Plato, or Marcus Aurelius, or Erasmus, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... coal works cover only a few acres of the surface; but underground there are long passages bored beneath the pleasant pastures and the yellow cornfields. From the mountains, Botfield looks rather like a great blot upon the fair landscape, with its blackened engine-house and banks of coal-dust, its long range of limekilns, sultry and quivering in the summer sunshine, and its heavy, groaning water-wheel, which pumps up the water from the pits below. But the colliers ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... intentional, untruth.'—Whether traceable to descent, or to the evil influence of Buckingham and the intriguing atmosphere of the Spanish marriage-negotiations, this defect in political honesty is, unquestionably, the one serious blot on the character of Charles I.—Yet, whilst noting it, candid students will regretfully confess that the career of Elizabeth and her counsellors is defaced by shades of bad faith, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... have seen it," the girl retorted, with a note of grimness in her tone, "when it was a great deal more like the other place—stillness that seems almost to stifle you, grey mists that choke your breath and blot out everything; nothing but the gurgling of a little water, and the sighing—the most melancholy sighing you ever heard—of the wind in our ragged elms. I am talking about the autumn and ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such on the newly created earth that God resolved to blot out mankind, excepting only Noah's family, which was spared to repeople the earth after the Flood, but the unity of language that man had formerly possessed was lost. At the appointed time, preceded by many prophetic visions among the ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armour 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 60 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,— So he tossed him a piece of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... force Prelacy upon the people of Scotland; and he let his bloodhounds loose, to hunt the followers of the Covenant from hill to hill, to murder them on their own hearths, and, with the blood of his victims, to blot out the word conscience from the vocabulary of Scotchmen. The Covenanters sought their God in the desert and on the mountains which He had reared; they worshipped him in the temples which His own hands had framed; and there the persecutor ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... something enormous blot out the smaller shadow of the guard. Then both figures disappeared. A moment later a silhouette cut across the lines of the grille. Unoiled hinges screeched; the bars lifted. A rope uncoiled from above ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... as glad as he was. How could he know? Would he ever know? Would he always have this craving—this pang like hunger, somehow, to make Janey so much part of him that there wasn't any of her to escape? He wanted to blot out everybody, everything. He wished now he'd turned off the light. That might have brought her nearer. And now those letters from the children rustled in her blouse. He could have chucked them ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... hand he felt the bundle of papers which were piled up in the open drawer. "Nay, more than that," he continued, "I remember the paper as if I saw it; it is thick, somewhat crumpled, with gilt edges; Mazarin had made a blot upon the figure of the date. Ah!" he said, "the paper knows we are talking about it, and that we want it very much, and so it hides itself out ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... later the answer came, and when Paul read it his heart was filled with black rage. It contained only a few words, but they seemed to blot out the sun from his horizon. Without saying so in so many words, Judge Bolitho treated the proposal made in his letter with thinly veiled scorn and contempt. He made him feel, although he did not say so, that what he had said was an ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... leave me this angel still a little while that I may blot out my wrong by love and adoration. As a daughter, she is sublime; as a wife, what word ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... welfare. For example, we now have it within our power to eradicate from the face of the earth that age-old scourge of mankind: malaria. We are embarking with other nations in an all-out five-year campaign to blot out this curse forever. We invite the Soviets to join with us in this great ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... cried Captain Belton, laying his hand on his son's shoulder. "There are things that we all like to forget as soon as we can—this is one of them. Let's blot it out." ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... God! I won't forget that look! And as I started out of the room—he blotted out.... I mean—I thought I saw him blot out; ... then I left the photograph on the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... looking at each other, we too, Germain and I, 'How happy we are! O, God, how happy we are!' and, naturally, your name follows directly after these words. Excuse the scrawl there is just here, my lord, and the blot; I had written without thinking, M. Rudolph, as I used to say, and I have scratched it out. I hope, by the way, that you will find my writing has improved much, as well as my orthography, for Germain always shows me how, and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... her not cry out to Thee in vain! Be Thou as a wall about her, as a light before her, as a firm path beneath her feet. Do Thou as Thou wilt with me. Lo! I offer up myself as ransom for her—myself—all I have! Take her from me, deny mine eyes the sight of her for ever, blot me wholly out of her heart, yield me over to the wrath of mine enemies, and to Thine unknowable vengeance thereafter; but save her, Great God! save ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... said Olly, the besom-maker. "And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do I say?—why, almost without a desk to lean their ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... formal waters, haunted the formal gardens, overshadowed all the leafy pleasant places. There is no getting very far from history at Versailles no matter how hard one may try to. But we had no intention to let the dead past blot out the new life rekindling—to give its chill to the young spring day and its sadness to the foolish young people out for a holiday—to wither the fresh beauty that makes it good just to be alive, just to have eyes to see and ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the mere proximity of the railroad with its accompanying associations served constantly to bring to mind all that I had fled to the mountains to escape. Yet I cannot bring myself to agree with those who profess to brand a railroad "a blot on the landscape." The enormous engines which pull the overland trains up the heavy grades of the Sierra Nevada impress one by their size, strength and suggestion of reserve power, as not being out of harmony with the forces of Nature they are ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... 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
... "very good! but I am afraid that this Pyrot business may lose its beautiful simplicity. It was limpid; like a rock-crystal its value lay in its transparency. You could have searched it in vain with a magnifying-glass for a straw, a bend, a blot, for the least fault. When it left my hands it was as pure as the light. Indeed it was the light. I give you a pearl and you make a mountain out of it. To tell you the truth I am afraid that by wishing to do too well ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... pair of four-year-old brown eyes were full enough of tears to break the heart of a policeman of many years' standing, and the little, crushed master of the dead King Charles spaniel went to sleep sobbing and believing that policemen were the greatest blot upon the civilization ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... estate. (Hear, hear.) In Colombia, all castes and all colors are free and unshackled. But how I like to contrast him with the far-famed Northern heroes! George Washington! That great and enlightened character—the soldier and the statesman—had but one blot upon his character. He had slaves, and he gave them liberty when he wanted them no longer. (Loud cheers.) Let America, in the fulness of her pride wave on high her banner of freedom and its blazing stars. I point to her, and say: There is one foul blot upon it: you ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... don't let the papers get hold of it - she is of no family. None, they say; literally a common woman. Of course, we have out-islanders, who MAY be villeins; but we give them the benefit of the doubt, which is impossible with Helen of Vailima; our blot, our pitted speck. The pitted speck I have said is our precentor. It is always a woman who starts Samoan song; the men who sing second do not enter for a bar or two. Poor, dear Faauma, the unchaste, the extruded Eve of our Paradise, knew only two hymns; but Helen ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forget that at the moment," answered Maxton, while the blood mounted to his forehead. "It is the foulest blot upon my country's honour; but I at least am guiltless of upholding the accursed institution, as, also, are thousands of my countrymen. I feel assured, however, that the time is coming when that ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... heart. Pictures drawn on pictures, show Strange confusion to the view: Second beauty finds no base, Where a first has taken place: Then Dulcinea still shall reign Without a rival or a stain; Nor shall fate itself control Her sway, or blot her from my soul: Constancy, the lover's boast, I'll maintain whate'er it cost: This, my virtue will refine; This will stamp ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... untouchability is no part of Hinduism. It is rather its excrescence to be removed by every effort. And there is quite an army of Hindu reformers who have set their heart upon ridding Hinduism of this blot. Conversion, therefore, I hold, is ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... which his great fortune was laid. He took the front rank among successful financiers, and his honorable course in that crisis established his fame as an honest man, in whom it would be safe to confide. Years of earnest and active business life have not changed that character, nor allowed a blot or stain to cloud ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... "Evolution of Man" (Anthropogenie), is generally accepted as being his most important production. Published in 1874, at a time when the theory of natural evolution had few supporters in Germany, the work was hailed with a storm of controversy, one celebrated critic declaring that it was a blot on the escutcheon of Germany. From the hands of English scientists, however, the treatise received a warm welcome. Darwin said he would probably never have written his "Descent of Man" had Haeckel published his ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Quickly did the darkness blot out all trace of land. Back some little distance, it was true, they could still glimpse feeble lights, marking the location of Dunkirk. The French no longer feared to illuminate to a limited extent since ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... one gent who was a blot on the whole affair. He was tall, shabbily dressed, and with no manners at all. He seemed all the time to be sneering at the rest. But didn't Madame make up to him just. She kept heaping up his plate and filling his glass. When the others got to cards, he sat down by my ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... a claim in society which shall not be sacrificed. Her father, Ralph, did not descend to the hovel of the miserable peasant, choosing a wife from the inferior grade, who, without education, and ignorant of all refinement, could only appear a blot upon the station to which she had been raised. Her mother, sir, was not a woman obscure and uneducated, for whom no parents ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... soul I hate thee as the night, which is thy color; To blot thee out from the fair light of day An irresistible desire impels me. Who art thou? Raise thy visor. I had said That thou wert Talbot had I not myself Seen warlike ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rites are the Virgins fair, For none but a Virgin may enter there. 'Tis a custom of old and a sacred thing; Nor rank nor beauty the warriors spare, If a tarnished maiden should enter there. And her that enters the Sacred Ring With a blot that is known or a secret stain The warrior who knows is bound to expose, And lead her forth from the ring again. And the word of the warrior is a sacred by law; For the Virgins' Feast is a sacred thing. Aside with ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... with his books under his arm, and his exercise 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 ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... but lapsed into a moody silence afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them—a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!—if she was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... which had separated before the battle and were on their way to Cap Francais. These, and two small vessels with them, were the sole after-fruits of the victory. Under the conditions of England's war this cautious failure is a serious blot on Rodney's military reputation, and goes far to fix his place among successful admirals. He had saved Jamaica for the time; but he had not, having the opportunity, crushed the French fleet. He too, like De Grasse, had allowed the immediate ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... has always most charm, and least pain, to the poet or the artist when men are hidden away under their roofs. Then they do not break its calm with either their mirth or their brutality; then the vile and revolting coarseness of their works, that blot it with so much deformity, is softened and obscured in the purple breaths of shadow, and the dim tender gleam ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, 10 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 them ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... affair. You, my dear friend, are well aware how I do hate Salzburg, not only on account of the injustice shown to my father and myself there, which was in itself enough to make us wish to forget such a place, and to blot it out wholly from our memory. But do not let us refer to that, if we can contrive to live respectably there. To live respectably and to live happily, are two very different things; but the latter I never could do short of witchcraft,—it would indeed be supernatural ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... gone, Bob felt very lonely. He wanted to get away from his sad thoughts, wanted to blot from his memory the facts which had seemingly blighted his life. He was alone in London; he had no friend to whom he could go. Of course a hundred places of amusement were open, but he did not feel in the humour to go to them. He dreaded the ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... a sorry story, and a blot on the scutcheon of the poet, who, good-hearted as he usually was, was cursed by the gift, refined to a rare degree, of alienating his friends, more often than not for some fancied slight. Addison he lampooned, and from Dennis and Philips he parted company. "Leave him as soon as you ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, he could wish to blot. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... 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 write an English romance, but must give the book mainly an American coloring again. There ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... note the delicate adjustment which Mr. Jones found necessary in order to adapt the theme to dramatic uses. In the first place, not wishing to plunge into the depths of tragedy, he left the heroine unmarried, though on the point of marriage. In the second place, he made the blot on her past, not a theft followed by an attempt to shift the guilt on to other shoulders, but an error of conduct, due to youth and inexperience, serious in itself, but rendered disastrous by tragic consequences ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... if in future years One wretch should turn and fly, Let weeping Fame Blot out his name From Freedom's hallowed sky; Or should our sons e'er prove A coward, traitor race,— Just heaven! frown In thunder down, T' avenge ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... a blot of ink upon the palm of the hand, at the point where the hole appears to be, and again observe as before. Unless the attention be strongly concentrated upon objects seen through the tubes the ink-spot will be visible within the tube (apparently), but that part of the hand upon ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various |
