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adjective
Obliterate  adj.  (Zool.) Scarcely distinct; applied to the markings of insects.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Obliterate" Quotes from Famous Books



... evils were proved against transportation, the labor it afforded had been long employed. Habit had reconciled the minds of many to its inferiority; and the means of supplying its place were confessedly contingent and remote. A new society, having no disabilities to remove, no moral stain to obliterate, and formed of elements in natural proportion, could not hesitate a moment. Economical experience would dictate the rejection of slaves. But to clear away the refuse of a long-existing social state, and to build anew, was a ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... are recommended as permanent, because water will not remove them, while it does immediately obliterate others, may not be permanent as against time. These inks may be the best for monetary purposes, but, owing to an excess of acid in them, may be dangerous in time ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... many Rayes as one will, without their being sensibly distant from one another; to the end, that by applying to it a stronger Eye-glass, there may be still Beams enough to see the Object, and to obliterate the small specks and imperfections of the Eye-glass. And if Mr. Hook hath this Invention, I esteem it one of the greatest, that can be found in the matter of Telescopes. If he please to impart ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... dust on top mingled with the underlying white, the blend of colors on the whole forming a slate-colored patch with creamy edges, marking the boundaries of the footprints; and here, in this horrible canyon, where rains would never erode nor winds obliterate, the tracks would show for years until the magic of the desert had again wrought its spell on the landscape and the ghostly white tracks had faded and blended again into ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... that in order to ensure this he bound his own son to the top of it. A close examination of the hieroglyphics reveals the curious fact that the name of the god Amen wherever it occurs, is more deeply carved than the other figures, in order to obliterate the name of some other deity which had previously occupied its place. It is supposed that this circumstance indicates a theological revolution which happened in the history of Egypt when Amenhotep III., ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... singing and whizzing of those big shells was bizarre, to put it mildly. One did not know whether to get up or efface one's self in the blankets. I remember having the utmost confidence in the headboard of my bed, which was toward the window. But that did not obliterate the siren whistle of those big shells and the moment of suspense between the lightning and the thunder. After each deafening burst I kept reiterating to myself, "Saved again," as one would repeat a chronological table ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... whose passions had been the means of leading her gradually to the commission of a crime, from the prophecy of which in her early years she would have recoiled in horror, and exclaimed—that it could not be!—a crime, which whole years of repentance and of the severest penance had not been able to obliterate from her conscience. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... reflection of its own being, which has been strengthened by exercises. And it must not only recognize this by correct reasoning, but must have arrived at such a cultivation of the will that it is able at any time to put away and obliterate the images from ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... earnestly that I knew it as surely as I knew that the earth was under my feet; and went on comforting him as one comforts a dying man. But he never spoke again; and we buried him in the hot sand at sundown. The first wind will obliterate the little mound we raised over him, and none will ever cross this hideous desert again. So that he will have as quiet a ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... seldom happens, that study terminates in mere pastime. Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot, at pleasure, obliterate ideas: he that reads books of science, though without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the ideas which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... is the law of symbolism, and symbolism, rightly understood, is the one Divine language of Mother Nature, a language wherein all can read, a language that defies the united efforts of both time and space to obliterate it, for symbolism will be the language of Nature as long as spirit expresses itself to the Divine ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... about some three years ago, while I was in school. I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago. He won my love. I cannot deny it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate again. He was even more despicable than my stepfather. Without the faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance Rosalie could have had for restitution. Time began to prove to me that he was not the man I thought him to be. His nature revealed itself; and I found I could not marry him. Besides, my mother was beginning ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to obliterate such a false impression. "Anything ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... been a very dirty little Kingdom, and a good scouring by soldiers is the only thing to obliterate the numerous Greece spots with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... see that Mendouca was pretty thoroughly ashamed of himself, for despite his utmost efforts, there was a perceptible shrinking and embarrassment of manner apparent in him during the progress of the meal. Nevertheless, he exerted himself manfully to obliterate the exceedingly disagreeable impression that he knew had been made upon me by his late conduct; and it was evident that he was sincerely desirous of re-establishing friendly relations between us, whether from any selfish motive or not I cannot of course say, but I think not—I believe ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... happy; I see that now. A woman with a secret,—and my heart held a woful and desperate one,—should never feel that that secret lacks power to destroy her because it has long lain quiescent. I thought my child safe, and rejoiced as any woman might rejoice, and as I would rejoice now, if Fate were to obliterate that secret and emancipate us all from the ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... condition than to express interest in his patient. She answered quietly, and was met by a surprise and curiosity which evinced that he was greatly drawn towards her case. This alarmed her. She did not wish to be the object of any one's notice. On the contrary, she desired to obliterate herself; to be counted out so far as all these people were concerned. But above all, she was anxious not to rouse suspicion. So she stopped and talked as naturally as she could about Miss Huckins's accident and what the prospects were for the night. These were favourable, or so the doctor declared, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... because they are not in harmony with the fundamental assumption of the positive philosophy that all knowledge is confined to phenomena perceptible to sense. Now it were just as easy to cast the Alps into the Mediterranean as to obliterate from the human intelligence the primary cognitions of immediate consciousness, or to relegate the human reason from the necessary laws of thought. Comte himself can not emancipate his own mind from a belief in the validity of the testimony of consciousness. How can he know himself ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... throughout the then-known world. By her political organization she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and government throughout the Empire that Christianity built firmly on the Roman foundations, and the German barbarians, who later swept over the Empire, could neither destroy nor obliterate them. The Roman conquest of the world thus decisively influenced the whole course of western history, spread and perpetuated Greek ideas, and ultimately saved the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... courtesy receive him, rise and bow, And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave, Then lay before him all thou hast. Allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate Thy soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be, Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles, to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... not long before Count Louis had a fresh opportunity of proving his loyalty to Savoy, an opportunity doubtless welcomed by him to obliterate the memory of his former and enforced opposition; for when the warlike margrave of Saluzzo revolted from his allegiance to Savoy, Count Louis practically organized an army of Bernois and Savoyards ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... companion as disreputable as himself, is what makes the scene so grotesque, and yet in a sense so impressive, because it shows a lurking standard of conduct which no pitiableness of degradation could obliterate. I think that is a good illustration of what I mean by humour, because in the presence of such a scene it is possible to have three perfectly distinct emotions. One may be sorry with all one's heart that men should fall to such conditions, and feel ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... it on my soul that she will say yes, for I have sure information of her mind; and for her precontract, a word from Henry to his Holiness, now that they are in the heyday of their reconciliation, will obliterate the name Hugh from the parchment, and insert Damian in ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... but in the form of electrically connected lyddite stores and gasoline bombs it drives those who believe in a supernation to a literal interpretation of the above widely popular philosophy. And, as demonstrated at Louvain and Rheims, it goes far to obliterate the memorials of a past which Nietzsche thought so contemptible a check upon the prowess of the "blonde Bestie" as ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... her; dying where she has lived, surrounded by her companions, her last hours soothed by their prayers and tears, sure of their vigils for the repose of her soul, and above all, sure that neither pleasure nor vanity will ever obliterate her ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... absence of sturdy independence in the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the Greek-speaking provinces, made the final downfall inevitable. The lesson has its warning for modern theorists who wish to obliterate the sentiment of nationality, the revival of which, after a long eclipse, has been one of the achievements of modern civilisation. For it was not till long after the destruction of the Western Roman Empire that nationality began to assume its ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... tissues and mental failure, and anatomically by atrophy of the thyroid gland. The symptoms of myxedema, as given by Ord, are marked increase in the general bulk of the body, a firm, inelastic swelling of the skin, which does not pit on pressure; dryness and roughness which tend, with swelling, to obliterate the lines of expression in the face; imperfect nutrition of the hair; local tumefaction of the skin and subcutaneous tissues, particularly in the supraclavicular region. The physiognomy is remarkably altered; the features are coarse and broad, the lips thick, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... the priest repeated, in a melancholy voice; "they can never, never sleep! repentance cannot obliterate them,—years of penance—fastings, and vigils, and wanderings, cannot wear them from my remembrance! Look at me, my son, and may this decaying frame, which time might yet have spared, teach thee the vanity of human hopes, and lead thee to resist the impulses of passion, and to mistrust ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... servitors of gaiety as proficient as these importations were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and plants and roped vines were brought from afar—not, however, until the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate the interior structure of the big house, in the Amberson way. It was the last of the great, long remembered dances that "everybody talked about"—there were getting to be so many people in town that no later than the next year there were too many for "everybody" to hear of even such ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... to subsist between 'the lesser group of witnesses.' Is it not plain on the contrary that at a very remote period there existed a fierce conflict, and consequent hopeless divergence of testimony about the present passage; of which 1,700 years[571] have failed to obliterate the traces? Had [Symbol: Aleph]B been our only ancient guides, it might of course have been contended that there has been no act of spoliation committed: but seeing that one half of the missing treasure is found with their allies, ACD, Clement Alex., Chrysostom, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a poem, for instance—its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture—the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape—should be nothing without the form, the spirit, of the handling; that this form, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... their ancient Ural-Altaic language. In China the Manchus retained their separate nationality and semi-military organization. It was not until the early years of the 20th century that steps were officially taken to obliterate the distinction between the two races. The Manchus are a more robust race than the inhabitants of central and southern China, but resemble those of northern China save that their eyes are horizontally set. They are a lively and enterprising people, but have not in general the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... but he had only put it as a term of endearment; he had no suspicion of the truth if it were truth; and yet why should he not know? Could anything obliterate the memory of a child, if there had been one, Jerrie asked herself, as her eyes wandered in that direction of the park, which had once seemed ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... of coloured nurses. If you are half as tired of the sameness and stupidity of the conversation of my southern female neighbours as I am, I pity you; but not as much as I pity them for the stupid sameness of their most vapid existence, which would deaden any amount of intelligence, obliterate any amount of instruction, and render torpid and stagnant any amount of natural energy and vivacity. I would rather die—rather a thousand times—than live the lives of these Georgia ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... to whether Venus is accompanied by a satellite. If Venus were attended by a small body in close proximity, it would be conceivable that in ordinary circumstances the brilliancy of the planet would obliterate the feeble beam of rays from the minute companion, and thus the satellite would remain undiscovered. It was therefore a matter of great interest to scrutinise the vicinity of the planet while in the act of transit. If a satellite existed—and the existence of one or more of such bodies has often ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... pressure, and felt very little and miserable indeed. So that Charles-Norton, dropping like an archangel out of the sky, found always upon her cheek the trace of an erasure made completely enough to show a determination to hide tears, but not quite enough to obliterate the determination; and leaving in the morning, he felt her eyes wistful upon him in a humble and unspoken reproach which all day followed him, stubborn as his own shadow, the shadow which he could never escape. He fought well, did Charles-Norton. He tried hard not to see ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... 'In one of these Lancashire weavers dying with hunger there is more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical amount of misery and desperation, than in whole gangs of Quashees.' He maintained, too, that a strain of sentiment about criminals was very prevalent in his day, which tended seriously to obliterate or diminish the real difference between right and wrong. He hated with an intense hatred that whole system of philosophy which denied that there was a deep, essential, fundamental difference between right and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... exist even a person of the same name as Mr. Day,' says Mr. Edgeworth, who concludes his letter philosophically, as the father of twenty children may be allowed to do, by expressing a hope that to his nurses, Mrs. Ruxton and her daughter, 'the remembrance of their own goodness will soon obliterate the painful impression of his miserable end.' During their stay at Clifton Richard Edgeworth, the eldest son, who had been brought up upon Rousseau's system, and who seems to have found the Old World too restricted a sphere for his energies, after going to sea and disappearing for some ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and Tezcuco. Some were burnt or destroyed during the sieges of the cities, some perished by mere neglect, but the great mass was destroyed by archbishop Zumarraga, when he made an attempt—and, to some extent, a successful one—to obliterate every trace of heathenism, by destroying all the monuments and records in the country. One of the picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived white men, their ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... great leveller, is not permitted to obliterate, among Christians, the distinction of caste, or to rescue the lifeless form of the colored man from the insults of his white brethren. In the porch of a Presbyterian Church, in Philadelphia, in 1837, was suspended a card, containing the form of a deed, to be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... we had entered the Imperial domain all was most scrupulously well kept. Not a gravel stone was out of place. Gangs of men were, indeed, kept to rake over instantly the gravel drives so as to obliterate the track of the wheels ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... met in all haste, and in a full assembly reviled his memory in the most bitter terms; ordering ladders to be brought in, and his shields and images to be pulled down before their eyes, and dashed in pieces upon the floor of the senate-house passing at the same time a decree to obliterate his titles every where, and abolish all memory of him. A few months before he was slain, a raven on the Capitol uttered these words: "All will be well." Some person gave the following interpretation of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... us that, if we really loved people as Jesus does, if we understood them as sympathetically and cared as much for them, the cross would be far more intelligible to us? But if, in plain fact, we do not see why we should bear the cross for others, why we should deny and obliterate self on this scale for the salvation of men—how, I ask, to people of such a mind should Jesus be intelligible? It is not to be expected. In no other sphere would one dream of it. When a man avows that he does ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... and cruel endurance! He is old now who recalls you. Long ago he has forgiven and blest the soft hand that wounded him: but the mark is there, and the wound is cicatrized only—no time, tears, caresses, or repentance, can obliterate the scar. We are indocile to put up with grief, however. Reficimus rates quassas: we tempt the ocean again and again, and try upon new ventures. Esmond thought of his early time as a novitiate, and of this past trial as an initiation before entering ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... written at some length on the two paths which lie before us, for we have arrived at a parting of ways. One path leads, and has already led many Irishmen, to obliterate all nationality from their work. The other path winds upward to a mountain-top of our own, which may be in the future the Mecca to which many worshippers will turn. To remain where we are as a people, indifferent to literature, to ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... selfish craving for continuity—to be remembered. By a fallacy of thought, perhaps, but by a very noble one, he transferred the ambition to those for whom he laboured. His own terror that Time might obliterate ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... events, it's worth trying," said Ralston. "For it's the only chance left to try. If we could sweep away the effects of the last few years, if we could obliterate his years in England—oh, I know it's improbable. But help me and let ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... it is not enough to will. A man must humiliate himself before the unknown God, who fiat ubi vult, who blows where and when He listeth, love, death, or life. Human will can do nothing without God's. One second is enough for Him to obliterate the work of years of toil and effort. And, if it so please Him, He can cause the eternal to spring forth from dust and mud. No man more than the creative artist feels at the mercy of God: for, if he is truly great, he will only say what the Spirit ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... Church was controlled from Constantinople. In 1767 the independent patriarchates were abolished, and from that date the religious control of the Greeks was as complete as the political control of the Turks. The Greeks did all they could to obliterate the last traces of Bulgarian nationality which had survived in the Church, and this explains a fact which must never be forgotten, which had its origin in the remote past, but grew more pronounced at this period, that the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... absolutely nothing about the most rudimentary use of water colors. Somehow, Field made a worse botch in mixing and applying the colors than did either Ballantyne or I. They would never produce the effects intended. He made the most whimsical drawings, only to obliterate every semblance to his original conception in the coloring. To prevent his going on a strike, I ransacked Chicago for colored inks to match those required in the pictures that had been assigned to him. This inspired him with renewed enthusiasm, and he devoted himself to the task of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... through her disordered hair, pressed her handkerchief into her eyes, and hastily tried to obliterate every trace of her recent agony. She bade ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... will not live a week if I pass that door under the name of Georgian Ransom. Mr. Harper, I am sure of it; Roger, I beg you to believe what I say. It may not come here—but it will come. The mark has been set against my name. Death only will obliterate this mark. But the name—that is already a dead one—shall it not stay so?—It is the ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... Bible)—whatever may be the current language on the subject—that man's spirit is in its nature capable of anything like permanent separate existence.[1] Man is essentially one; and when the physical change called death passes over him, it does not utterly obliterate the whole being. The non-material element is not affected any more than it is by the sleep of every night; and the man will be ultimately raised, not a spiritual or immaterial form, but provided, as before, with a body, only one of a higher capacity and better ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... a star of the first magnitude. Alas! how soon that star has been obscured and by what ignoble means! But, against great odds, its brief existence was characterized by a brilliancy that no prejudice or hatred can ever obliterate. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope... Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... returned to Olifant's River and at the cobalt mine near there joined those who had remained behind under General Muller. The enemy, however, who seemed determined, if possible, to obliterate us from the earth's surface, discovered our whereabouts about the middle of July, and attacked us in overwhelming numbers. We had taken up a position on the "Randts," and offered as much resistance as we could. The enemy poured into us a heavy shell fire from their howitzers and 15-pounders, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... the happy mood I could have wished, for that fatal misunderstanding still hovered before me, and my conduct at that time is now hateful in my sight. But so it was, and how much would I give to have the power wholly to obliterate from my life a mode of acting so degrading to myself, and so contrary to the usual tenor ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... and wanted it. He stooped under the wires and entered the swamp. With a little searching, he found a big piece of thick bark loose on a log and carefully peeling it, carried it out and covered the print so that the first rain would not obliterate it. ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... a date fixed by Dupuis, with a great degree of probability, at about seventeen thousand years from our time. This epoch would doubtless carry us back many thousand years beyond that of the alphabet; the invention of which was sufficient of itself to obliterate the details of previous history, as the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... the world, save possibly one, would her infidel propagandism and preachings in regard to the social relations of life be tolerated. She would be prohibited by the powers of government from her efforts to obliterate from the world the religion of the Cross—to banish the Bible as a text-book of faith, and to overturn social institutions that have existed through all political and governmental revolutions from the remotest time. The strong hand of the law would be laid upon ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Roman craft had planned, which Roman hands had fashioned, lived almost in its integrity in the days of King Robert the Good. He had girdled it with gardens; he had sought to obliterate the memories of its old-time brutalities, its old-time bloodshed, by the institution of kindly sports and gentle pastimes. A populace had laughed innocently, had contested healthily in the place where man had fought with man, where man had fought with beast, where the soil had sucked ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... let the past dominate the rest of your life," she asked slowly, "is the future to count for nothing? There are, in all probability, many years ahead of you—cannot you, in them, obliterate what has ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... Men must learn to be conscious of the common interests of mankind in which all are at one, rather than of those supposed interests in which the nations are divided. It is not necessary, or even desirable, to obliterate the differences of manners and custom and tradition between different nations. These differences enable each nation to make its own distinctive contribution to the sum ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... determination: to obliterate Robert before going to Bendigo, the inevitable means appeared. A week before Robert Redmayne died, every stage of the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... liquidity at a low temperature, but does not seem to influence the crystallization to any appreciable extent. The two elements to be avoided by the founder are silicium and sulphur. These give to iron a peculiar crystalline appearance easily recognized by an experienced person. Silicium seems to obliterate the sparkling brilliancy of the crystalline faces of good iron, and replace them with very fine dull ones only discernible with a lens, and the iron breaks more like stoneware than metal, while sulphur in appreciable quantities gives a striated crystalline ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... confronted, it is necessary to divest oneself of all prejudices and to enquire in a spirit of scientific detachment whether any definite proof exists that a concerted attempt is being made by Jewry to achieve world-domination and to obliterate ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... had with Justin. For it became necessary for me to see Justin in order that we should stamp out the whispers against her that followed her death. He had made it seem an accidental death due to an overdose of the narcotic she employed, but he had not been able to obliterate altogether the beginnings of his divorce proceedings. There had been talk on the part of clerks and possible witnesses. But of all that I need not tell you here; what matters is that Justin and I could meet without hatred or violence. I met ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... flash the tidings from mountain to mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to steeple, from city to hamlet, from valley to hill-side, till the whole Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of Protestantism from ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... possibility of such a treasure having been hidden by the King when he, Akhnaton, knew that he was dying and when he realized that his new capital of Tel-el-Amarna would not long survive his decease, that the priests of the old religion would do all in their power to obliterate his memory and teachings. She knew that Michael was not the only person who held this view. He was not the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... just as God has set definite bounds in nature between day and night, between light and darkness, so also has He separated Israel from the other nations, and so also has he separated Aaron from the rest of Israel. If you can obliterate the boundary between light and darkness, then only you remove the boundary of separation between Israel and the rest, but not otherwise. Other nations have many religions, many priests, and worship in many temples, but we have one God, one Torah, one ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... a castle of considerable strength once lent it protection. Its old castle, its towers, and the walls by which it was surrounded, have all been swept away by the busy crowds that now throng its thoroughfares. Even the former names of places have in most instances been altered, as if to obliterate all recollections and associations connected with its early history. Thus a row of houses, which a few years ago bore the not very euphonious name of Castle Ditch, from its having followed a portion of the line of the moat by which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... support in the corner of the coach. The neighbours came out with many blunt speeches, and more kindly wishes, and one or two of them would have relieved Margaret of her burden, if she would have allowed it. The presence of that little crippled fellow seemed to obliterate all the angry feelings which had existed between his mother and her neighbours, and which had formed the politics of that little ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... defeat. At York, at Chippewa, at Fort Erie, at Lundy's Lane, at New Orleans, on Lake Champlain, on Lake Erie, on the broad ocean, Great Britain and the world were taught lessons of American valor, skill, and energy, which ages will not obliterate. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... deposit at the top of the former; and so on till every pit is full. They are so careful in covering up the eggs, that, when they quit the spot, the only marks distinguishable are those which they make when returning to the water—as they go round and round the nest several times in succession to obliterate all traces. The sand, however, remains so loose, that it gives way under foot, and thus the Indian easily discovers ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... a divorce under the terrible circumstances, and she was far too proud and spirited to touch a farthing of her husband's money. It was like a dreadful chapter in her life, of which she could only turn down the page; never, never, obliterate nor escape from. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... we have not seen with the microscope the microbe which produces it. But we know with certainty that the gnat, Stegomya fasciata, and no other, is the carrier of the unseen germ, and that we can obliterate that fever by obliterating the gnat. So, too, although we know how the infection of rabies acts, and how it is carried, yet no one has yet isolated and recognised the terrible infective particle itself. There is ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... the fur of the mink; wearing a jaunty Spanish sombrero; boots on the dainty feet of patent leather, with tops reaching to the knees; a face slightly sun-burned, yet showing the traces of beauty that even excessive dissipation could not obliterate; eyes black and piercing; mouth firm, resolute, and devoid of sensual expression: hair of raven color and of remarkable length;—such was the picture of the youth as ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... landsmen, who considered a ship at all times, a kind of dungeon. The transporting our soldiers to England, and their sufferings during their passage, and while confined in that country, has engendered a hatred against the British nation, that ages will not obliterate, and time scarcely diminish. We, Americans, can never be justly accused of want of humanity to the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... particularly fine. The ruined church possesses the grace and lightness of architecture peculiar to the twelfth century, and is, even in its decay, of truly sublime and grand proportions. Time has been unable to obliterate the skilful work of our forefathers, for the Early English transition arches, the delicate molding, and the exquisite stone tracery in the windows still delight the eye. The history of Tintern is almost a hidden ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... by addressing him as though he were grown up, and listening courteously to everything that he had to say. Peter decided that he did not like him—but "a gentleman from London" was always an exciting introduction. The boy was able very quickly to obliterate himself by sitting down somewhere in a corner and remaining absolutely silent and perhaps that was the reason that he was admitted to so many elderly gatherings—he was never in the way. He slipped quickly into a chair, hidden in the shadow of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... his view, only needed enforcement, to give "Peace and Order, Freedom and Unity, to a now distracted Country;" but the "crowning act" of incorporating this Amendment into the Constitution would do even more than all this, in that it would "obliterate the last lingering vestiges of the Slave System; its chattelizing, degrading, and bloody codes; its malignant, barbarizing spirit; all it was, and is; everything connected with it or pertaining to it, from the face of the Nation it has scarred with ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... been drilled to write by certain fixed and unchangeable rules of rhetoric and grammar will produce similar compositions. They have no literary style, for style is individuality and character—the style is the man, and grammar tends to obliterate individuality. No study is so irksome to everybody, except the sciolists who teach it, as grammar. It remains forever a bad taste in the mouth of the man of ideas, and has weaned bright minds innumerable from a desire to express themselves through ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... scientific geologist, Mr. John Milne, F.G.S.,[EN127] proposing to cut through the two to five hundred feet of elevation which separate the Gulf from the Dead Sea, some thirteen hundred feet below water level. Does he reflect that he simply proposes to obliterate the whole lower Jordan? to bury Tiberias and its lake about eight hundred feet under the waves? in fact, to overwhelm half the Holy Land in a brand-new nineteenth-century deluge, the Deluge ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... 'Commentaries.' Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain. It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or whether they had become weak and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... labor, but cannot obliterate it. Rather must its true work be the more wide separation of the sphere of each sex from that of the other. Christianity elevates the rank of woman, and through civilization, gives her a new moral and intellectual importance in society. Mental culture, again, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... weeks—possibly I have; but you are the man who has been carrying out the plans, and you are the man the courts will recognize. But we're wasting time sitting here jawing at each other like a pair of old women. It's up to us to obliterate Lidgerwood; after which it will be up to you to get his job and cover up your tracks as you can. If he lives, he'll dig; and if he digs, he'll turn up things that neither of us can stand for. See how he hangs onto that ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... Germany, most prominent among whom was Hans von Buelow, who had been in Weimar with Liszt, and had become enthusiastic over "Lohengrin." Wagner overcame his own repugnance to the operas of Meyerbeer and his associates, which he hoped his "Lohengrin" was destined to obliterate, and directed their performance. To do the same for his own works, the requisite strength was lacking. "Some of us are old, others are young. Let the older one think not of himself, but let him love the younger for the sake of the inheritance which he places ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea, turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands, whose skin, faintly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... undergraduate, was down from Oxford one Easter, when she again opened the subject. As soon as he was ordained, she argued, he would have a home of his own, wherein she, with her bad grammar and her ignorance, would be an encumbrance to him. Better obliterate her ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... full of dignity, and has a soothing influence which the words of his speech do but confirm[525]. It is unfortunate for an orator to have eloquence for his only gift, and to have to obliterate by his oration the unfavourable effect produced on ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... the realities of God and the soul. Gott und die Seele, die Seele und ihr Gott—these two, eternally akin, yet in their kinship unconfounded, make up the theme and the content of religion; and any attempt to obliterate the distinction between them in some monistic formula, any tendency to surrender either the Divine or the human personality, any philosophy which seeks to merge man in God and God in the {242} universe, is fatal to religion itself. We have been told of late ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... for everybody to read. Poor Susannah Maude was the daughter of very disreputable parents; she had been rescued from a travelling caravan at the age of ten, and the authorities at the Alexandra Home had done their best to obliterate her past life from her memory. When she reached school-leaving age the question of her future career loomed on the horizon. After considerable correspondence with the matron, Miss Bowes had at length decided to have the girl at The Woodlands, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... had been the matter that he should keep seeing Steve—that his vision should so obliterate from him what I still shivered at, and so shake him now? For he seemed to be growing more stirred as I grew less. I asked him no further questions, however, and we went on for several minutes, he brooding always in the same fashion, until he resumed with the hard indifference that had before ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... that means is one of the most disputed questions of public policy; in our time it has been answered on the Place Louis XV., where they have now set up an Egyptian stone, as if to obliterate regicide and offer a symbol of the system of materialistic policy which governs us; it was answered at the Carmes and at the Abbaye; answered on the steps of Saint-Roch; answered once more by the people against the king before the Louvre in 1830, as it has ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... hereditary qualities which it has received in reproduction from parents and ancestors. All that man acquires afterwards in life by the exercise of his organs, the influence of his environment, and education—in a word, by adaptation—cannot obliterate that general outline of his being which he inherited from his parents. But this hereditary disposition, the essence of every human soul, is not "eternal," but "temporal"; it comes into being only at the moment when the sperm-nucleus of the father and the nucleus of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... "Exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere, 1495." Judith was the type of nationalism, the heroine of a war of independence: and this mark of the Florentine love of liberty has lasted to our own day. No Medici dared to obliterate the ominous words. Donatello was not much in politics: his father had taken too violent a share in the feuds of his day, and narrowly escaped execution. Nor was Donatello's art coloured by politics: the Florentines ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... peach is lovelier than the poor little pale blossom that preceded it—however attractive a middle-aged woman may be there must be some traces to show that she has lived half her life; and to suppose that pain brule brocade, and hand-worked embroidery, can obliterate those, is extreme folly. Dress in rich and dark velvets, and old point-lace that has been twenty years in your possession, and you will be as beautiful and as interesting as a portrait by one of the old Venetian masters. Can Theodore's ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... was not without bitterness. "No doubt the variety and excitement of a Continental tour did much towards blotting out all memory of her dead husband. But I do not wish to forget. I am in no hurry to obliterate the image of one who was most ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... operations for hernia is to produce a strong, firm tissue support over the ring through which the cord passes, so that the intestines cannot descend through it. It is rather interesting to find that the surgeons of this time tried to obliterate the canal by means of the cautery, or inflammation producing agents, arsenic and the like, a practice that recalls some methods still used more or less irregularly. They also used gold wire, which was to be left in the tissues and is supposed to protect ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... Edward Neville, the forsaken husband of Violet Vere, when he heard that that popular actress had died suddenly in America from a fit of delirium tremens brought on by excessive drinking, was able, by some gentle method known only to Love and himself, to forget all her frailties—to obliterate from his memory the fact that he ever saw her on the boards of the Brilliant Theatre,—and to think of her henceforth only as the wife he had once adored, and who, he decided in vague, dreamy fashion, must have died young. Love also laid a firm hand on the vivacious Pierre ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... paint. It was his dream, sir, to paint the house from floor to ceiling; his last words bade me pinch and save until I could paint. Well, here is the house painted, and I am anxious for a new device and name which shall obliterate the memory of the other. 'The Black Eagle' is its old name. Ask any traveller familiar with the road between Augsburg and Schlestadt, and he will counsel you to avoid 'The Black Eagle.' You are travelling to ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... shortly as he reached the Geyling. 'Let us endeavour to obliterate it by your grace!' And he commanded the musicians to play the new dance, but he danced unevenly, constantly glancing in the direction of the door where Wilhelmine had disappeared. Madame de Ruth watched for a moment, and then, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... love, all security, to leave the train and take another train because it is the only one that goes to where invisible machines belch red-hot pieces, of iron and Death casts out a finely meshed net of steel and lead to capture men? Who will obliterate from my soul the picture of that small dirty junction, the shivering, sleepy soldiers without any intoxication or music in their blood, looking wistfully after the civilian's train and its brightly lighted windows as it ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... cause, Against his Sovereign, or against his Laws, He on the Rack his Limbs in pieces rent, Thus was he tortur'd till his life was spent Of this unkingly act doth Seneca This censure pass, and not unwisely say, Of Alexander this the eternal crime, Which shall not be obliterate by time. Which virtue's fame can ne're redeem by far, Nor all felicity ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... upon this windy November morning, nobody thought of Clarendon. The business of the day was interesting enough to obliterate all considerations of yesterday. The young barristers, who were learning their trade by listening to their betters, had been shivering on their benches in the Common Pleas since nine o'clock, in that chilly ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... festival dramas in verse, and also for composing love-songs and heroic poems. Few of these heroic poems have been preserved, a circumstance the more to be regretted, as many of them would doubtless have been important historical documents; but for that very reason, the Spaniards spared no pains to obliterate every trace of them. Some of the love-songs have, however, been preserved. In Quichua poetry, the lines are short, and seldom thoroughly rhythmical. Rhymes were only exceptional, and were never sought for. The poetry was, therefore, merely ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... beautiful fabric, I can scarcely venture to call it an unrivalled one: it shall, if the fine statues at the corners can assist its power over the fancy, and if cleanliness can compensate for stately magnificence, or for the fire of original and unassisted genius, it shall obliterate from my mind the Rialto at Venice, and the fine arch thrown over the Conway at Llanwrst in ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... of oakum. He worked coolly, without haste, as agile as a monkey when the ship careened and the sea spurted through the cracks of the gun-ports. Well pleased with his task, he said to himself, with that grin which no peril could obliterate: ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... its back. There is no one in sight, however, save the vaqueano and his own followers; the latter behind, halted by command, some of them still in the water, so that they may not ride over the shod-tracks, and obliterate them. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... hours advance; storm supervenes In heaviness unparalleled, that screens With water-woven gauzes, vapour-bred, The creeping clumps of half-obliterate red— Severely harassed past each round and ridge By the inimical lance. They gain the bridge And village of Genappe, in equal fence With weather and the enemy's violence. —Cannon upon the foul and flooded road, Cavalry in the cornfields mire-bestrowed, With frothy horses floundering ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... the crew a full fortnight to transfer to the shore, bury, and cover up the treasure in such a manner as effectually to obliterate all traces of their operations; and on the morning of the fifteenth day after their arrival they hove up the anchor and made sail southward for Nombre de Dios, where George hoped to obtain some clue to the whereabouts of his ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... but whether biological differences having their roots in the remotest antiquity can be obliterated, is a question the answer of which lies in the distant future. As Geddes and Thomson so well said: The differences [between the sexes] may be exaggerated or lessened, but to obliterate them it would be necessary to have all the evolution over again on a new basis. What was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet neither time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble. Hard by the bridge there are two rival inns. At one of these we ordered a seadinner—crabs, cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots—which we ate at a table in the open air. Nothing divided us from ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... life in the open, roaming the prairie alone with the wolf hounds, or with French after the cattle, did much to obliterate the mark which those five days left upon Kalman's body and soul. From the very first the boy had no difficulty in mastering the art of sticking on a broncho's back, partly because he was entirely without fear, but largely because he had an ear and an eye ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... more desirous to show you your own ignorance than his own learning. Such manners as these, not only in the particular instances which I have mentioned, but likewise in all others, shock and revolt that little pride and vanity which every man has in his heart; and obliterate in us the obligation for the favor conferred, by reminding us of the motive which produced, and the manner which ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... the disadvantages of emigration is the separation of friends for ever. Time and distance no doubt gradually obliterate from our mind the most endearing recollections; but, under untoward circumstances, which will at times cross the path of every mortal in the most favourable situations, the emigrant's, and particularly the female emigrant's, breast must be "stung with the thoughts of home," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... Capital! But I will again propose to you another clever question. If a suit of five talents should be entered against you, tell me how you would obliterate it. ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... throne the conceited and luxurious Caesar, and reign in his stead, a second Marcus Antoninus, when the wisdom of thy rule, long unfelt in a world which has been guided by tyrants and voluptuaries, shall soon obliterate recollection of the manner in which thy power was acquired. To work then—be active, and be cautious. The time requires it, and the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... already wore the laurel wreath, and that was enough, surely, to obliterate the past. It should and must be enough; and it was this thought which blazed from Hartmut's eyes as he looked toward the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... of darkness that followed upon Rome's supremacy, is written in heaven, but they have little place in human records. Few traces of their existence can be found, except in the accusations of their persecutors. It was the policy of Rome to obliterate every trace of dissent from her doctrines or decrees. Everything heretical, whether persons or writings, she sought to destroy. Expressions of doubt, or questions as to the authority of papal dogmas, were enough to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... building as the cathedral at Rouen, it is impossible to forget the people who once trod its pavement; memories that not all the modern paraphernalia and glitter can obliterate. If we visit the cathedral after vespers, when the candles in the Lady-chapel look like glowworm-lights through the dark aisles, we are soon carried back in imagination to mediaeval days. The floor of the nave is covered with kneeling figures ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... interpretation, though declared to be 'most certain' and 'quite certain' in two consecutive sentences, silently vanishes to make room for the new. But why does the author allow himself to spend nine octavo pages over the discussion of this one passage, freely altering sentence after sentence to obliterate all traces of his error, without any intimation to the reader? Had not the public a right to expect more distinctness of statement, considering that the author had been led by this error to libel the character of more than one writer? Must not anyone reading the apology to Dr Westcott, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... an actual revival must always be impossible. Such vain antiquarianism in a waste of the poet's power. The composite experience of all the ages is part of each one of us: to deduct from that experience, to obliterate any part of it, to come face to face with the people of a past age, as if the Middle Age, the Renaissance, the eighteenth century had not been, is as impossible as to become a little [224] child, or enter ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... mass of pulverized rock and earth were restored to the localities from which it was derived, it certainly would not obliterate valleys and gorges hollowed out by great geological causes, but it would reduce the length and diminish the depth of ravines of later formation, modify the inclination of their walls, reclothe with earth many bare mountain ridges, essentially change the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh



Words linked to "Obliterate" :   obliterable, slur, obliterated, blot out, extinguish, blur, efface, mystify, modify, hide, kill, take out, obliterator, wipe out, veil, obscure, destroyed, alter, blotted out, do away with, eliminate, take away, change



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