"Smirch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to get the window open, and put out the lamp. Then mamma looked at the eggs. Alas, again! There they lay covered with fine black soot. She took up one and tried to wipe it, but succeeded only in making a smirch which she could not wipe off. She knew then that the ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Valencia with the Cid the Campeador they stand. On Carrion's Heirs of knavery the three have put the brand, And paid the debt the lord Cid set upon them furthermore. On that account right merry was the Cid Campeador. Upon the heirs of Carrion is come a mighty smirch. Who flouts a noble lady and leaves her in the lurch, May such a thing befall him, or worse fortune let him find. Of Carrion's Heirs the dealings let us leave them now behind. For what has been vouchsafed them now ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... the rule. The little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's lap. And as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. The street-car conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, and their manners were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the mysterious power which makes body and soul—master and man—thrill as one string. The musician played several bars, beautiful in themselves, but unconnected; and ever and anon there sounded a discordant note, like a smirch upon a fair picture. The execution, however, showed a master hand, and the themes betrayed the soul of a true musician, albeit tainted with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... reading Ruskin. You are never again quite the same man after doing a poor job, after botching your work. You cannot be just to yourself and unjust to the man you are working for in the quality of your work, for, if you slight your work, you not only strike a fatal blow at your efficiency, but also smirch your character. If you would be a full man, a complete man, a just man, you must be honest to the core in the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... country. We must contrive some machinery of the law which shall command respect. We must not continually drag the name of the South—the name of America— in the mire of lawlessness. To do that is to smirch the flag—the one flag of America. But we denounce and will always denounce that false decree which says that black is white; that inequality is equality; that lack of manhood is manhood itself; that the absence of a hearthstone can mean a home; ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... was the fly in the ointment, the abiding smirch on the otherwise radiant surface—as she now hailed it—of this strangely moving fraternal relation. The fact of it did come, and, as she feared, would inevitably continue to come between her and her father, marring ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Mr. Johnson's lasting credit, he proved that he possessed the honesty and courage to dare his enemies to do their worst—he would not smirch his own name and disgrace his country and his great office, by using its power for the-promotion of an enterprise not far removed from a scheme of personal plunder, let it cost him what it might. It was a heroic act, and bravely, unselfishly, ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! —And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... grace, If it rings on the plate of the church: And money can neatly erase Each sign of a sinful smirch.' For I saw men everywhere, Hotfooting the road of vice; And women and preachers smiled on them As long as they paid ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... evil: a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian. The worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is mistaken if he thinks I can do nothing. I may as well go up to London and see for myself whether he is still on his feet to-morrow night. It is a mere formality, but I will do it. I might have guessed that she would try to smirch her own name, and the boys through her, if she had the chance. She will defeat me yet, unless I am careful. Oh, ye gods! why did I marry a fool who does not even know her own interests? If I had life over again ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life; and life Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes, And they stood wide with horror; and he seized In both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his head, and smirch'd his hair,— His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms; And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him; and he clutch'd his sword, To draw it, and forever let life out. But Sohrab saw his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law. And in one as in the other the finer ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the hollow tree; the idyllic devotion of Little Emily, dating from the morning when you saw her dress fluttering on the beam as she ran along it, lightly, above the flowing tide—(devotion that is yet tender, for, God forgive you Steerforth as I do, you could not smirch that pure heart;) the melancholy, yet sweet sorrow, with which you saw the loved and lost Little Eva borne to her grave over which the mocking-bird now sings his liquid requiem. Has it not been sweet good fortune to love Maggie Tulliver, Margot ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... on silken wings, With bridal lights of diamond rings,— Not foul with kitchen smirch, With ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... again the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyes which held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years in those silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow to smirch ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... go," said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. "I will cut off my hair, and put on boy's clothes, and smirch myself brown with walnut leaves; and I will go. I can talk their French tongue. I know their French ways; and as for a story to cover my journey and my doings, trust a woman's wit to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... do not concern me," said the priest at last, lowering the large lids over his eagle eyes to veil his emotions. ("Ho! ho!" thought he, "you can't compromise me. Thank God, those damned lawyers won't dare to plead any cause that could smirch me. What do these Listomeres expect to get ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac |
