"Blindness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terrible humiliation of Olmutz, that political and moral Jena of the civil wars of the Germanic races. Very perspicuous in discerning the slightest cloud that might endanger the privileges of the monarchy and aristocracy, he was blind of an incurable blindness with respect to the discernment of the breath of life contained in the febrile agitations of new Germany, which discharged from its revolutionary tripod sufficient magnetism and electricity between the tempests, similar ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... self-defense. But at the western edge of the great Plains, it had come—what she had dreaded. Both eyes were gone! Since then she had not seen at all, and having in mind her long warning, accepted her blindness as a ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... Concerning his blindness the headman said that it was more profitable for him to hear than to see, for by sight "energy might be diverted." He had recited in every prefecture his personal experience of rural reform. He asserted ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... individual is prophet, priest, and king. In the unnumbered miracles of the Church children have often figured. Lupellus, in his life of St. Frodibert (seventh century A.D.), says: "When Frodibert was a mere child he cured his mother's blindness, as, in the fulness of love and pity, he kissed her darkened eyes, and signed them with the sign of the cross. Not only was her sight restored, but it was keener than ever" (191. 45). Of St. Patrick (373-464 A.D.) it is told: "On the day of his baptism ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... canvas the blue of the Virgin's robe or the plump flesh of the curly-haired boys that played with the Divine Lamb. Their copies were commissions from pious people; a genre that found an easy sale among the benefactors of convents and oratories. The smoke of the candles, the wear of years, the blindness of devotion would dim the colors, and some day the eyes of the worshipers, weeping in supplication, would see the celestial figures move with mysterious life on their blackened background, as they implored ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... plain unvarnished account of the late transactions in Servia, in which the true character of Russian policy, and the means by which it is carried out, have been unveiled before the eyes of Europe in a manner sufficient to enlighten those which are not closed in wilful blindness. "Europe has been apprised, if she wishes to be so," (says the Journal des Debats,) "that there is in the East, independent of Turkey, a point of resistance against the encroachments of Russia;" and this great fact derives double value from that point being found in one of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... disposition was constantly exerting itself. Mrs. Anna Williams, daughter of a very ingenious Welsh physician, and a woman of more than ordinary talents and literature, having come to London in hopes of being cured of a cataract in both her eyes, which afterwards ended in total blindness, was kindly received as a constant visitor at his house while Mrs. Johnson lived; and after her death, having come under his roof in order to have an operation upon her eyes performed with more comfort to her than in lodgings, she had an apartment ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... decree dooming men to hardness of heart or moral blindness, this state may be reached. Many are progressing towards it, many are now in it. They have turned a deaf ear to the cry of mercy, and are like the ground that has been often rained upon, but brought out only briers and thorns. The difficulty of the return of such does not ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... was extremely dark, and the lightning, by contrast, peculiarly vivid. Each flash appeared to fill the world for a moment with lambent fire, leaving the painful impression on observers of having been struck with total blindness for a few seconds after, and each thunderclap came like the bursting of artillery, with scarcely an interval between the flash and crash, while the wind blew with almost ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of sweetness, there's many a gem of earth Would thrill with bliss our being, could we perceive its worth. O beauteous is creation, in fashion and device! If I have fail'd to think thee fair, 'tis blindness is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time for vengeance, when the son Of Pepin is without his nephew's aid. Since bold Orlando is away, by none Of the hostile sect resistance can be made. If, through neglect or blindness, be foregone The glorious Fortune, which for you has stayed, She her bald front, as now her hair, will show, To our long infamy and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... new-found, totally unbelievable happiness. Once before she had ridden that road with him alone in her thoughts; now she realized that she had loved him then as she must have loved him always, and marveled at such blindness. Once, on that other day, she had told herself that all ignoble and unworthy comparisons of herself and him were done and gone. Now she did not need such reassurance, when ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... complete. There was one influence she feared for the child and still secretly combated; that was my lord's; and half unconsciously, half in a wilful blindness, she continued to undermine her husband with his son. As long as Archie remained silent, she did so ruthlessly, with a single eye to heaven and the child's salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excepting themselves, until it was detected by Messrs. Sumner, Chase, and company. But these have, at last, discovered it, and now see it as in a flood of light. Indeed, they see it with such transcendent clearness, with such marvellous perspicacity of vision, as to atone for the stupidity and blindness of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of two different writers, on which to found a charge of contradiction. Thus, if one writer says that a certain person was present at a given time or place, when another says that he and two more were there; or that one man was cured of blindness, when another says that two were,— such a thing is often alleged as a contradiction; whereas, in truth, it resents not even a difficulty—unless one historian be bound to say not only all that another says but just so much, and no more. Let such objections be what ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... absence of my advice, would have certainly destroyed the health and life of the little ones. Moreover, at an early age a defect may be easily overcome, which at a later period would ripen into a permanent deformity, such as defects of vision, color blindness, defects of speech, stammering, stuttering, lisping, defects of walk, and every other defect caused by a deficient development ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... have some knowledge of the conditions to which he was exposed, in the period between conception and birth,—for of course a modification which takes place during that time is as truly an acquired character as one that takes place after parturition. Blindness, for example, may be an inborn defect. The child from conception may have lacked the requisites for the development of sight. On the other hand, it may be an acquired character, due to an ill-advised display of patriotism on July 4, at some time during childhood; or even to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... long: 'You are reaping what you have sown,' that was what it said. 'Why do you grumble at your harvest—there is no ripening without sunshine? Young hearts must be won by love and not severity; it is your own fault, your own obstinacy, your own blindness'—that is what it has been saying over and ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his prevision. Thus, reflecting that the understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, I find the soul's repose only in ignorance. For it is better both for the Catholic Faith and for Philosophic Faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives. I do not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned men who [101] stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the immobility and the sovereign and eternal ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the wind did reap the whirlwind," it would be well. But the mischief is that the blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the capital with a mist that was impervious. Everybody went about their affairs, made or received visits, met, and parted, without speaking, or, I suppose , thinking of this event as of a matter of any importance. My own participation in this improvident blindness is to myself incomprehensible. Ten years I had lived under the dominion of Bonaparte; I had been in habits of intimacy with many friends of those who most closely surrounded him; I was generously trusted, as one with whom information, while interesting ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... madame, inasmuch as I am only your agent. But are you ignorant of the degree of blindness to which Madame de Rochefide has brought your son-in-law? I know it from Canalis and Nathan, between whom she was hesitating when Calyste threw himself into the lioness's jaws. Beatrix has contrived to persuade that serious Breton that she has never loved any one but him; that she ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... returned to St. Petersburg. Towards the close of his life he became virtually blind, being obliged to dictate his thoughts, sometimes to persons entirely ignorant of the subject in hand. Nevertheless, his remarkable memory, still further heightened by his blindness, enabled him to carry out the elaborate ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... off-hand friendliness of manner that I rather think was characteristic of my habits at that day, got to love me as a brother or comrade. It is not easy to describe the affection of an attached slave, which has blended with it the pride of a partisan, the solicitude of a parent, and the blindness of a lover. I do think Neb had more gratification in believing himself particularly belonging to Master Miles, than I ever had in any quality or thing I could call my own. Neb, moreover liked a vagrant life, and greatly encouraged ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... in botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was afflicted with blindness, and this in spite of the fact that he exercised undue economy in the spacing of lines. Toward the close of his life the old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost uncanny: it has been said that he could tell at once the colour of a ribbon placed between his fingers. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... sin, the way to meet it is not to forsake the human law, but so to obey it as to thank God for it. To leave the world and go into the desert is not thus to give thanks: it may have been the only way for this or that man, in his blameless blindness, to take. The divine mind of George Herbert, however, was in the main bent ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... of naming colors and sorting cards by color and discriminating colors as in a test for color blindness 24 In finding and checking small visual details such as letters 33 In spelling 33 In school "marks" in English 35 In school "marks" in foreign languages 40 In memorizing for immediate recall 42 In lowness of sensory thresholds 43 In retentiveness 47 In tests of speed ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... brother to that fearful grave, Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies, And Faith's white blossoms never wave To the soft breath of Memory's sighs; Which sent a spirit marred and stained, By fiends of sin possessed, profaned, In madness and in blindness stark, Into the silent, unknown dark? No, from the wild and shrinking dread, With which he saw the victim led Beneath the dark veil which divides Ever the living from the dead, And Nature's solemn secret hides, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of darkness, the whirl of the seething snows; Day after day of blindness, the swoop of the stinging blast; On through a blur of fury the swing of staggering blows; On through a world of turmoil, empty, inane ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... his awe had grown, an awe full of a deep pity. Youth is the true age of intolerance and for the simple reason that it is the age of ignorance. In its abundant strength, its sense of growth and development, its vigorous, unfailing elasticity, its blessed want of knowledge of the ills of life, its blindness to the inevitable coming of these ills, it is impatient of a caution it calls cowardice, or a frailty it neither understands in another nor anticipates for itself. But in the rare instances when it takes thought its sympathies ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... old Fan, about your words, "there would be a good deal to give and take if you came home for a time;" less perhaps now than before I was somewhat tamed by my illness. I see more of the meaning of that petition, "from all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of leaving Florence and very tame and inoffensive, and we bore it very well considering. He sent us a new literary periodical of the old world, in which, among other interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own 'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned with humane regret. Well! and what more news is there to tell you? I have been out once, only once, and only for an inglorious glorious drive round the Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls, and in again at the Cascine. It was ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... hands as the one pre-eminently good man who had been associated with the Soudan, Gordon addressed himself to the hard task he had undertaken, which had been rendered almost hopeless of achievement by the lapse of time, past errors, and the blindness of those who should have ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... happy seem natural enemies of the miserable, and Ann was passing through them. As she sat there in her gloomy isolation of widowhood, her black veil and her dark thoughts coloring her whole outlook on life, she felt a sudden fury of blindness against all who could see. Had she been younger, she would have given vent to her emotion like Jerome. Her son seemed the very expression of her own soul, although she ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wedded to her grave.—If my brother brings you hither, I cannot help it—and if your coming prevents bloody and unnatural violence, it is so far well.—But by my consent you come not; and, were the choice mine, I would rather be struck with life-long blindness, than that my eyes should again open on your person—rather that my ears were stuffed with the earth of the grave, than that they should ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... wait upon lords fall into three mistakes. To speak before the time has come is rashness. Not to speak when the time has come is secrecy. To speak heedless of looks is blindness. ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... us of a singular overstatement by Sir Henry Maine of the blindness of the privileged classes in France to the approach of the Revolution. He speaks as if Lord Chesterfield's famous passage were the only anticipation of the coming danger. There is at least one utterance of Louis XV. himself, which shows that he did not expect things to last ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... humor that proceeded from not being of sound mind; yet such a person might perform his ordinary duties, and discharge the usual and customary requirements of life: but they considered one that was raving as afflicted with a total blindness of the mind, which, notwithstanding it is allowed to be greater than madness, is nevertheless of such a nature that a wise man may be subject to raving (furor), but cannot possibly be afflicted by insanity (insania). But this is ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... their wages, he was deliberately going to cause privation, and even suffering where there were large families. She felt the most unqualified dissent and indignation, and all the love which she had for the man only intensified it. Love, with a girl like this, tended to clearness of vision instead of blindness. She judged him as she would have judged herself. As she stood working at her machine, stitching linings to vamps, she kept a sharply listening ear for what went on about her, but there was very little to hear after work had fairly ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was called Meles or, according to different accounts, Melesigenes or Altes. Some authorities say he was called Homer, because his father was given as a hostage to the Persians by the men of Cyprus; others, because of his blindness; for amongst the Aeolians the blind are so called. We will set down, however, what we have heard to have been said by the Pythia concerning Homer in the time of the most sacred Emperor Hadrian. When the monarch inquired from what city Homer ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... forget what successful hypocrites we have been. Our numerous passions, the complexities of our desires, the tenacity of their grasp, and the pleasant gentleness of its touch explain an infinity of temptations followed by wilful successes in blindness, all of which are nothing less than guilty acts ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the succeeding day Miss Bailey's imagination reverted again and again to the two little ones keeping house in Mrs. Mowgelewsky's immaculate apartment. Even increasing blindness had not been allowed to interfere with sweeping and scrubbing and dusting, and when Teacher thought of that patient matron, as she lay in her hospital cot trusting so securely to her Christian friend's guardianship of her son and home, she fretted herself into feeling that it was her duty to go ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Murderous monster!" cried Manfred, "can assassins forgive? I took thee for Isabella; but heaven directed my bloody hand to the heart of my child. Oh, Matilda!—I cannot utter it— canst thou forgive the blindness ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... to convulsions as before. Mesmer persisted that she was cured. Like the French philosopher, he would not allow facts to interfere with his theory.[71] He declared that there was a conspiracy against him; and that Mademoiselle Paradis, at the instigation of her family, feigned blindness in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer darkness, and the worm that dieth not—and that all the hell of the reprobate, is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the blindness of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases to eat out his eyes, is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the consolations, at least, the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have constantly to fight up against, is a fear, that if ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... death; 'tis the necessary object of our aim, which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on't; but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must bridle ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... came more often, and sometimes stayed to dinner with us. I won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I thought it good for Eilie. Can there be anything more odious," he burst out, "than such a self-complacent blindness? There are people who say, 'Poor man, he had such faith!' Faith, sir! Conceit! I was a fool—in this world one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ere the sun set; and more than that, he supplied us with such food as he could spare to strengthen us for our journey inland to the spot he advised us to seek, where we might remain in safety. Yes, my friends; there is the man who did this noble deed— there is the man whom you were, in your blindness, about so cruelly ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... that have grown up during the decline of these old ones, the most important is the systematic culture of the powers of observation. After long ages of blindness, men are at last seeing that the spontaneous activity of the observing faculties in children has a meaning and a use. What was once thought mere purposeless action, or play, or mischief, as the case might be, is ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and owl lairs. In several cases these creatures themselves were disturbed, the lively squirrels to run chattering up the higher branches, the owls lumbering away into the forest, bumping against the trees in their blindness, and hooting mournfully at the disturbers of their peace. All this time Crow Wing continued with an unmoved face. Not an interstice in the roots of the trees escaped his eye and to Enoch, who could not imagine what he was looking for, his actions seemed without reason. But ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... armies that governments have become alarmed as to its effects upon the health and morale of the troops. College men have been reckless in sowing wild oats, and have suffered serious physical consequences. Most pathetic is the suffering that is caused to innocent wives and children in blindness, sterility, and frequent abdominal disease. This is a subject that demands the attention of every person interested in human happiness ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... moments when the part of even one's best friend is silence, blindness. Howard turned aside, and Stafford went on slowly, with a kind of enforced steadiness, to the billiard-room. While Howard, with dismay and apprehension, was looking after him, he heard "Mr. Howard!" called softly, mockingly, from the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... of peace," continued Jasper. "If any one should seek to slay me, I would not do him any harm. I would forgive him, and pray that his blindness might go from his soul, and that he might see a better life. You welcome me, you are true to me, and, whatever may happen, I will be ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... neighbours' interests, we have also been blind to our own; whenever we have hurt others, we have hurt ourselves still more. Let us, at this blessed Whitsuntide, ask forgiveness of God for all acts of malice and uncharitableness, blindness and hardness of heart; and pray for the spirit of true charity, which alone is true wisdom. And let us come to Holy Communion in charity with each other and with all; determined henceforth to feel for each other and with ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... with the assiduity of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she cleaned and swept; then a little closer as she spread his table and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Fairfax, Cromwell, and Sir Henry Vane; and of these the best is, perhaps, the sonnet written on the massacre of the Vaudois Protestants—"a collect in verse," it has been called—which has the fire of a Hebrew prophet invoking the divine wrath upon the oppressors of Israel. Two were on his own blindness, and in these there is not one selfish repining, but only a regret that the value of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... founding of metals, or by some other reasons, in a short time robbed him completely of the sight of his eyes; wherefore he ceased to work about the year 1550, and to live a few years after that. Benedetto endured that blindness during the last years of his life with the patience of a good Christian, thanking God that He had first enabled him, by means of his labours, to live ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... said, lifting his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead. "My dear mother, your mental blindness on many points, is really deplorable. It's all Edith's fault—all; one of the few fixed principles of my life, is never to quarrel with anybody. It upsets a man's digestion, and is fatiguing in the extreme. Our first meeting," continued Mr. Stuart, stretching himself ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... loveliness, to stand Again in the dull world of earthly blindness? Pained with the pressure of unfriendly hands, Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness? Left I for this thy shades, were none intrude, To prison wandering thought and mar ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave yet barely closed, and what indeed they are still saying—commonly too without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at secondhand bad ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... Archie. And your blindness to Sophy's real feelings is one of the most remarkable things I ever saw. Can you not look back and see that ever since she married you she has regretted and fretted about the step? Her heart is really with ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... too," said Houston, "that Santa Anna may now send Mr. Austin back to us. He does not know how well informed we are, and doubtless he will believe that such an act will keep us in a state of blindness." ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the capacity to grasp the whole coup d'oeil, or from a natural endowment for certain kinds of stoicism, women are cooler than men in critical situations of the passive form. Probably, in Elfride's case at least, it was blindness to the greater contingencies of the future she was preparing for herself, which enabled her to ask her father in a quiet voice if he could give her a holiday soon, to ride to St. Launce's ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... scenes at the close. Nevertheless with an instinctive genius which Zola would have envied, Mrs. Stowe embodies in men and women the vast and ominous system of slavery. All the tragic forces of necessity, blindness, sacrifice, and retribution are here: neither Shelby, nor Eliza, nor the tall Kentuckian who aids her, nor John Bird, nor Uncle Tom himself in the final act of his drama, can help himself. For good or evil they are the products and results of the system; and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... blindness, and mad with the rage The gods gave to all whom they wished to destroy, You would act a new Iliad, to darken the age With horrors beyond what is ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... viewing, espial, descrying, beholding; discernment, observation, comprehension; sight, vision. Antonyms: imperception, blindness, connivance. See sight. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... day after his arrival dawned, and he had not yet perceived, in his blindness of heart, the difference of position between the Elizabeth of his dreams and the Elizabeth of reality. Could the crisis be ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... as early as possible, and see for himself how matters were progressing. His whole fortune was locked up in this new enterprise, and his compeers were strangers, or acquaintances of a recent date. To have acted with so much blindness was unlike Markland; but it was like him to wish to know all about any business in which he was engaged. This knowledge he had failed to obtain in New York. There his imagination was constantly dazzled, and while he remained there, uncounted, treasure ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved me as I love you, we should throw everything else to the winds for the sake of belonging to each other. We should break all these mistaken ties that were made in blindness, and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... his nature to feel anger long; it evaporates almost in the speaking; he soon returns to the kind and charitable construction which, except for reasons of argument, he was always the foremost to assume. No man who lived was ever more forgiving. And it is this, and not moral blindness or indifference, which explains the glaring inconsistencies of his relations to others. It will follow from this that he was pre- eminently fitted for the oratory of panegyric. And beyond doubt he has succeeded in this ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... defence of its ideal so jealous and implacable that the least step from the straight path means exposure and ruin, it is almost impossible by any extravagance of misconduct to provoke society to relax its steady pretence of blindness, unless you do one or both of two fatal things. One is to get into the newspapers; and the other is to confess. If you confess misconduct to respectable men or women, they must either disown you or become virtually your accomplices: that is why they are so angry ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... actual invasion of Judah by the Assyrian hosts under Sennacherib. Not the splendid prosperity of Hezekiah, little short of that enjoyed by Solomon,—not his allegiance to Jehovah, nor his grand reforms and magnificent feasts averted the calamities which were the legitimate result of the blindness of his father Ahaz. Sennacherib, the most powerful of all the Assyrian kings, after suppressing a revolt in Babylon and conquering various Eastern states, turned his eyes and steps to Palestine, which had revolted. Hezekiah, in mortal fear, made humble submission, and consented to a tribute ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... don't think that is better," said Father Payne, "because it means a sort of blindness. It is very curious in the case of Browning, because he learned exactly how to do things. He had his method, he fixed upon an abnormal personality or a curious incident, and he turned it inside out with perfect fidelity. But after a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... MAY.—The Prophetic Faculty: War and Peace Clearing away the Fog The Danger of living among Christians: A Question of peace or war Legislative Quackery, Ignorance, and Blindness to the Future Evils that need Attention What is Intellectual Greatness Spiritual Wonders—Slater's Tests; Spirit Pictures; Telegraphy; Music; Slate Writing; Fire Test MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE—Erratum; Co-operation; Emancipation; Inventors; Important Discovery; ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... not; we can not determine the moment at which he rolled away the stone from the tomb and the reanimated Savior came forth; no one witnessed it, and the only persons of whom we are told that they might have been able to see it with their bodily eyes were smitten with blindness. And in like manner, neither do we know how the soul, lying, so to speak, in the tomb of self-destruction, is wrought upon by the angel of the Lord in order to call forth the life of God in it. It arises unseen in that grave-like silence, and can not be perceived until it is ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... I do fear him," she said at last with a sigh. Then her face suddenly lit up with an angry glow. "I fear him as any girl would fear the man who, in defiance of her expressed hatred, thrusts his attentions upon her. I fear him because of father's blindness. I fear him because he hopes in his secret heart some day to own this ranch, these lands, all these splendid cattle, our fortune. Father will be gone then. How? I don't know. And I—I shall be Jake's slave. These are the reasons why I fear Jake, Mr. Tresler, since ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... be directed by the opinions of others. Hence has arisen the swarm of critics and reviewers, those clouds that obscure the fair light that would beam on the mind of man, by his individual reflection, and through his existence degrade him, by a submission to assumed authority;—a voluntary blindness, that excludes him from the observation of nature, and through indolence and credulity render his noblest faculties feeble, assenting, and lethargic; and delude him to barter the inheritance of his intellect for a mess of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... harmless, and I shall not fetter him. One thing is certain. His manipulations will never poison anybody, as many a regular physician's prescription has done, and he shall not be molested. He has voluntarily sought an ordeal which will determine his position before the world. If he cures the blindness of my little protege, Therese, I shall give in my adherence with the rest; for he who restores the blind to sight, holds his skill ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... perceiving either the discord or harmony thus produced. Is it because we are farther off from those times, and have, consequently, a greater range of vision? Will our descendants have a wonder about us, such as we have about the inconsistency of our forefathers, or a surprise at our blindness that we do not perceive that, holding such and such opinions, our course of action must be so and so, or that the logical consequence of particular opinions must be convictions which at present ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... notwithstanding, nor assents to their honesty without it. He is taken with their miracles yet doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, yet it seems too empty and naked. He prefers their charity, and commends our zeal, yet suspects that for blindness, and this but humour. He sees rather what to fly than to follow, and wishes there were no sides that he might take one. He will sometimes propend to us upon the reading a good writer, and at Bellarmine recoils ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... cat. There is nothing so bad as it looks to our half-sight, our blinding perceptions. My father used to say we are all walking in a spiritual twilight, and are all more or less affected with twilight blindness, as some people are physically. Percivale, for one, who is as brave as any wife could wish, is far more timid than I am in crossing a London street in the twilight; he can't see what is coming, and fancies he sees what is not coming. But then he ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... intelligible. The sense, as it strikes me, is, that however we may desire things which we have not, the means we already possess are sufficient for our security; and even our defects prove serviceable. Blindness, for instance, will make a man more careful of himself; and then the other faculties he enjoys will secure ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... patient's use of a nightcap with earlaps, if the room is not sufficiently warm. Inflammation of the eyelids is an occasional complication. The heart is sometimes attacked by the toxins of the disease, and permanent damage to the organ, in the form of valvular trouble, may result. Blindness and nervous disorders are among the rarer sequels including paralyses ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... in Rome, and dined with our friends the Duca and Duchesa di Sermoneta. We were grieved at his blindness, but found ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... elders, that surely, if indirectly, brought their doom upon them. "A doctor is not infallible, he may make mistakes." Quite so, and if a mistake of his should kill a few thousands, why, that is the act of God (or of Fate) working through his blindness. But if it does not happen to have been a mistake, if, for instance, all those dead, should they still live in any place or shape, could say to me, "James Therne, you are the murderer of our bodies, since, for ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... daily growing, and trembled for the peace of both. She wondered at the blindness of the doctor, who did not perceive what was so plain to her own vision. Daily she looked to see the eyes of the doctor open and some action taken upon the circumstances; but they did not open to the evil ahead, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... a poor impresario to do? He longed to grasp her by the shoulders and shake the voice out of her; his hands fairly itched to get hold of the obstinate little piece of humanity, who, in her childishness, her helplessness, her blindness, thus defied him, and set all his cherished plans ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... 17, 18. That ye walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... me, I have a way of seeing two sides of a question at once, even when my own interests and those of another are violently opposed. This is a kind of moral colour-blindness; for to be colour-blind means merely that your eyes give you an impression of red and green at the same tune, so that you can with difficulty tell which is which. Both kinds of colour-blindness, moral and physical, handicap you for success in life. On the whole, I think the moral sort is the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will; and so establishing ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... breast indeed might throb the Sacred Heart. And from the lips, so holily dispart, The dying murmur breathes "Forgive! Forgive!" O wide-stretched arms! "I perish, let them live." Under the torture of the thorny crown, The loving pallor of the brow looks down On human blindness, on the toiler's woes; The while, to overturn Despair's repose, And urge to Hope and Love, as Faith demands, Bleed, bleed the feet, the broken side, the hands. A poet, painter, Christian,—it was a friend Of mine—his attributes ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... face, and listened to the low sweet laughter with the incredulous amazement of one who has suddenly received his sight after a spell of blindness. "Bat," indeed, Peggy had rightly named him, since he had lived for months in the same house as this delightful creature, and never realised her charm. When they were resting together on a garden bench under the shade of a tree, Arthur cast surreptitious glances at Eunice, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... on November 5 to a clerical correspondent who had written to him on the distinction between sheretz and rehmes, and accused him of "wilful blindness" in ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... daily. Very few seamen could distinguish between one whale and another of a different species, or give an intelligible account of the most ordinary and often-seen denizens of the sea. Whalers are especially to be blamed for their blindness. "Eyes and no Eyes; or the Art of Seeing" has evidently been little heard of among them. To this day I can conceive of no more delightful journey for a naturalist to take than a voyage in a southern whaler, especially if he were allowed to examine at ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... heavily built, shaggy-bearded man, his face burned to a brick-red and such part as the beard did not hide covered with fine lines like a veil. His wife was a tall and graceful woman who showed nothing in her clear, wide-open eyes of her blindness which for so many years had set her apart from ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... concerning feminine intelligence. They are, however, only indirectly connected with it, and are as unintelligible as the fact that left-handedness is more frequent and color- blindness less frequent among women than among men. If, however, we are to explain feminine intelligence at all we must do so by conceiving that women's intellectual functioning stops at a definite point and can not ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... same manner here, in these diversions of ours, blindness has fallen upon us, and we do not see the split stick with which we have pitched all those people who ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... not a very good reader, and, what with blindness and spectacles, and poor light, would sometimes lose his place. But it never troubled him, for he always knew the sense of what was coming, and being no idolater of the letter, used the word that first suggested itself, and so recovered his place without ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... gratitude, as stated above (Q. 106, A. 6), inclines to return something more. Wherefore ingratitude is properly denominated from being a deficiency of gratitude. Now every deficiency or privation takes its species from the opposite habit: for blindness and deafness differ according to the difference of sight and hearing. Therefore just as gratitude or thankfulness is one special virtue, so also ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... mountain or down a bottomless chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him. One must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some porters, to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments, and also blanket bags for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... five-and-twenty, and she breaks my heart. Such a match, too! Ten thousand to her fortune, the best blood in the north, a most advantageous person, all the graces, the finest sensibility, excellent judgment, the Foster walk; and all these go positively a-begging! The men seem stricken with blindness. Why, child, when I came out (and I was the dear girl's image!) I had more swains at my feet in a fortnight than our Dorothy in——O, I cannot fathom it: it must be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cheerful world in spite of the darkness in which I linger on. I'd take it over again and gladly any day—the pleasure and the pain, the light and the darkness. Why, I sometimes think that my present blindness was given me in order that I might view the past more clearly. There's not a ball of my youth, nor a face I knew, nor even a dress I wore, that I don't see more distinctly every day. The present ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... aloof and alone from all his kind. It may seem a paradox, but it might be that she admired and venerated him almost too much for love. Still her pleasure in his society was so evident and unequivocal, her deference to his opinion so marked, she sympathized in so many of his objects, she had so much blindness or forbearance for his faults (and he never sought to mask them), that the most diffident of men might have drawn from so many symptoms hopes the most auspicious. Since the departure of Legard, the gayeties of Paris lost their charm for Evelyn, and more than ever she could appreciate ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the beauty of things" goes ever so much deeper than mere blindness. It is a form of antagonism, and is essentially Satanic. A most strange form of demonology in otherwise good people, or shall we say in "good people"? You know we are not good at ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... and preservation of the said Plantations; but chiefly for the advancement of the true Protestant religion, and further spreading of the Gospel of Christ[77] among those that yet remain there, in great and miserable blindness ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... which I explain to myself, without wounding my vanity, my father's carelessness in this important particular. My father, although he has no reason for doing so, begins to regard himself already in the light of Pepita's husband, and to share in that fatal blindness with which Asmodeus, or some other yet more malicious demon, afflicts husbands. Profane and ecclesiastical history is fall of instances of this blindness, which God permits, no doubt, for providential purposes. The most remarkable ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... would have noted only that white tulle and pearls spun witchery, and her skirt possessed the charm of a Hawaiian girl's dancing costume. Even at this juncture he recalled and smiled at past blindness. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with—had long had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness—but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, first generally, as at Iconium (Acts xiv. 3), during the whole tour through the Upper Asia (xiv. 27; xv. 12), at Ephesus (xix. 11, 12); secondly, in specific instances, as the blindness of Elymas at Paphos, (Acts xiii. 11.) the cure of the cripple at Lystra, (Acts xiv. 8.) of the pythoness at Philippi, (Acts xvi. 16.) the miraculous liberation from prison in the same city, (Acts xvi. 26.) the restoration of Eutychus, (Acts xx. 10.) the predictions ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... side, and reached out his hand gropingly, and in very pity of his blindness she took it. Questions were asked him, to which he responded and similar questions were asked her, to which she made no reply. The whole ceremony was a farce, and she had agreed to it only because it gave her a little extra time, and every minute counted. From the moment the magistrate pronounced ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... little or no impression on English official indifference. American Governors were at any rate resident, or mainly resident, and a few were good and popular administrators, though the information which most of them supplied to the Home Government showed a blindness to what was going on under their very eyes which would be incomprehensible if we did not know by experience that it is the invariable result of irresponsible rule over white men, whether at home or abroad. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... week in April the reflection of light from the snow became so strong as to create inflammation in the eyes, and notwithstanding the usual precaution of wearing black crape veils during exposure, several cases of snow-blindness ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... have appeased these doubts ere this; but every occasion I find calls them forth with unabated vigour. Surely this mental blindness must be the result of neglect. Had we but the will, the determination, it might be removed. Oh how reprehensible ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... in his presumption challenged the Muses to a trial of skill, and being overcome in the contest, was deprived by them of his sight. Milton alludes to him with other blind bards, when speaking of his own blindness, "Paradise Lost," ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... through her blindness, she heard Photogen give a low exultant laugh, and the next wit herself caught up: she who all night long had tended and protected him like a child, was now in his arms, borne along like a baby, with her head lying on his shoulder. But she was the greater, for, suffering ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0 |
