"Smirch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flames like to the prince of fiends, Do with his smirch'd complexion all fell feats Enlink'd to waste and desolation? What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! —And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... journeyed night and day. Ho! in Valencia with the Cid the Campeador they stand. On Carrion's Heirs of knavery the three have put the brand, And paid the debt the lord Cid set upon them furthermore. On that account right merry was the Cid Campeador. Upon the heirs of Carrion is come a mighty smirch. Who flouts a noble lady and leaves her in the lurch, May such a thing befall him, or worse fortune let him find. Of Carrion's Heirs the dealings let us leave them now behind. For what has been vouchsafed ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... to twenty-six years of age, who idled his life away: his courage was undoubted, and being as credulous as an old libertine, he was ready to draw his sword at any moment to defend the lady whose cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint there was a smirch on her virtue. Being deaf to all reports, he seemed one of those men expressly framed by heaven to be the consolation of fallen women; such a man as in our times a retired opera-dancer or a superannuated professional beauty would welcome with open arms. He had only one fault—he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... way," said Waldeaux stoutly. "And if there were, I should not look for it. I am sorry that there is any smirch on Lisa's birth. But even her mother, I fancy, was not altogether a bad lot. Bygones must be bygones. I love my wife, mother. She's worth loving, as you'd find if you would take the trouble to know her. Her dead mother shall not ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Svanhild, not to-night, wait till to-morrow! To-night we gather our young love's red rose; 'Twere sacrilege to smirch it with the prose Of common day. [The door into the garden-room opens. Your mother's coming! Hide! No eye this night shall see ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong; no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere—in any company—without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been—what you are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the same wish to ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... reflected he must have seen that no other result could have followed his narrative at White's last night; and yet it was a case in which reflection would not have stayed him. Hortensia Winthrop's fair name was to be cleansed of the smirch that had been cast upon it, and Justin was the only man in whose power it had lain to do it. More than that—if more were needed—it was Rotherby himself, by his aggressiveness, who had thrust Mr. Caryll into a position which almost made it necessary for him to explain himself; ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... but not now. After years of such honorable service as yours, go because you have reached the fullness of years and have earned your rest. Don't let these fellows smirch your name and the name of the Service. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... wore, Useless ... no head-cloth ... too unlike my fellows. Yet he turns miser for a tiny coif. It would cut into many golden coifs And dim some women in their Irish clouts— But no; I'll shape and stitch it into shifts, Smirch it like linen, patch it with rags, to watch His silent anger when he sees my answer. Give me thy ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... to him and back again. The steamy smell of dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, was sickening. Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that awful woman washed frequently. Such was the contagiousness of degradation. When she looked at Martin, she seemed to see the smirch left upon him by his surroundings. She had never seen him unshaven, and the three days' growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her. Not alone did it give him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva house, inside and out, but it seemed to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... and Benedict gazing at the surroundings and then looking at the delicate face of his lovely wife was reminded of a white flower he had once seen growing out of the blackness down in a coal mine, pure and clean without a smirch of soil. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... applause the great dancer, on whose account one of the American artistic bright lights had been extinguished forever, and in ten seconds was inwardly thanking Vandeford for extracting Miss Adair before she had felt the blighting smirch of the big number. While Mr. Farraday watched the exhibition before him, Mr. Vandeford was amusing the child of their joint solicitude by letting her look at the white lights. While waiting at the curb before the Big Show for the large dignitary in uniform to summon Valentine, he had directed ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... four blessed evangelists which the mendicant howled behind him. So dreadful are his execrations that the frightened lad thrust his fingers into his ear-holes, and ran until the fellow was but a brown smirch upon the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not think much Anti-Socialism is dishonest in these matters. The tricks of deliberate falsification, forgery and falsehood that discredit a few Conservative candidates and speakers in the north of England and smirch the reputations of one or two London papers, are due to a quite exceptional streak of baseness in what is on the whole a straightforward opposition to Socialism. Anti-Socialism, as its name implies, is no alternative doctrine; ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... a boon more humble crave. And minister to him who serves a slave; Be sure you fasten on promotion's scale, Even if you seize some footman by the tail: 70 The ascent is easy, and the prospect clear, From the smirch'd scullion to the embroider'd peer. The ambitious drudge preferr'd, postilion rides, Advanced again, the chair benighted guides; Here doom'd, if Nature strung his sinewy frame, The slave, perhaps, of some insatiate dame; But if, exempted from the Herculean toil, A fairer field ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... I would have escaped and could not for the snares about my feet. Marry me and face this, if you will, and I will believe you love me, for you will stand a disgraced woman for all time. Marry me not, and I will make your way easy with gold, and your mother shall tell her own tale, and not a smirch on your name and fear not but another rich man will give you all I could, and not a spot on it. Choose now once and for all. I have seen and I know how my coronet will sting you with shame—with shame set ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... have chanced to hear, by eavesdropping, doesn't concern me now," Louise answered coldly. And then she shut her lips, and would say no more. She was wiser than she had been a week ago: she refused to hand her past over to him in order that he might smirch it with ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... affairs do not concern me," said the priest at last, lowering the large lids over his eagle eyes to veil his emotions. ("Ho! ho!" thought he, "you can't compromise me. Thank God, those damned lawyers won't dare to plead any cause that could smirch me. What do these Listomeres expect to get by ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... he—yes, it seemed to sweep upon him in a sudden, overmastering surge, the realization that the delight and joy of her companionship through the month that was gone was love that leaped now into fierce, jealous flame, maddened at a breath that would smirch her in the eyes of others—that he should be the cause of it! "What do people do when they're caught like this?"—in their innocence there seemed an unfathomed depth of irony in her words, but as he unconsciously repeated them they cleared his brain and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... doubt, why we shouldn't," he said. "Endless. It's wrong in the eyes of most people. For many of them it will smirch us forever.... ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... reputation will suffer. I have always been honest, and I have paid every debt I owed, though sometimes it took a little while to do it. Now if this comes to smirch my character, I don't know ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... one wife in Colina while he eloped with one of his head-liners. He's not in one scrape after another with a woman, until he's a joke in the coast newspapers, and every woman he features in his shows has got a black smirch on her—" ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... published a letter denying Judge Parker's statements as "unqualifiedly and atrociously false." If Judge Parker's attack had any effect on the election it was to reduce his own votes. Later, Edward H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, tried to smirch Roosevelt by accusing him of seeking Harriman's help in 1904, but this charge also ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... lash, a poor wretch for spiteful Fortune's buffets. Hereupon (being a blind fool ever) I cursed the world and all men in it saving only my unworthy self. And next, bethinking me of my dear lady who of her infinite mercy had stooped to love such as I, it seemed that my shame must smirch her also, that rather than lifting me to her level I must needs drag her down to mine. She, wedding me, gave all, whiles I, taking all, had nought to offer in return save my unworthiness. Verily it seemed that my hopes of life with her in England were but ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... differ utterly in essential particulars. One of these may turn up fifty years from now, and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossip goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a moment's contemporary publication. But by-and-by it may all be used to smirch or brighten unjustly some one's character. Suppose a man in the Army of the Potomac had recorded daily all his opinions of men and events. Reading it over now, with more light and a juster knowledge of character and of measures, is it not probable that he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... buy us grace, If it rings on the plate of the church: And money can neatly erase Each sign of a sinful smirch.' For I saw men everywhere, Hotfooting the road of vice; And women and preachers smiled on them As long as they paid ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a smirch o' pouther on your breast, "Below the left lappel?" "Oh! that is fra' my auld cigar, "Whenas ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... thing. It's like a spreading poison in this country, and the beastly root of it is just selfishness. It will choke the very life out of the nation if it isn't stopped. It's a weapon that no self-respecting man should smirch his hands with. I know very well there are heaps of reforms needed, heaps of abuses to be stopped, but you don't cure evil with evil. You're only feeding the monster that will devour you in the end, and you're feeding him with human sacrifice moreover. Have ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... verdict. Meanwhile Boucicault married, and in the eyes of the world he was a bigamist. This experience, it is interesting to add, taught Charles Frohman never to engage stars on whom there was the slightest smirch of scandal ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... after doing a poor job, after botching your work. You cannot be just to yourself and unjust to the man you are working for in the quality of your work, for, if you slight your work, you not only strike a fatal blow at your efficiency, but also smirch your character. If you would be a full man, a complete man, a just man, you must be honest to the core in the quality of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... spot, blur, defect, dishonor, reproach, stain, brand, deformity, fault, smirch, stigma, crack, dent, flaw, soil, taint, daub, disfigurement, imperfection, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald |
