"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... future years One wretch should turn and fly, Let weeping Fame Blot out his name From Freedom's hallowed sky; Or should our sons e'er prove A coward, traitor race,— Just heaven! frown In thunder down, T' ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... mostly with the spun-glass eraser. First she rubbed out the cents after the written figure "Twenty-five." Carefully with a blunt instrument she smoothed down the roughened surface of the paper so that the ink would not run in the fibers and blot. Over and over she practised writing the "Thousand" in a hand like that on the check. She already had the capital "T" in "Twenty" as a guide. During the night in practising she had found that in raising checks only ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... as the union of its members was blessed by the Church, expired, and no legitimate offspring were left. Gilbert's spouse, accordingly, must, if a genuine Oliverres, have come into the world with a considerable blot ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... fortunate. The country is, indeed, subject to much bad weather, and it has been ascertained that twice as much rain falls here as in many parts of the island; but the number of black drizzling days, that blot out the face of things, is by no means proportionally great. Nor is a continuance of thick, flagging, damp air, so common as in the West of England and Ireland. The rain here comes down heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear, bright weather, when every brook ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... slavery today for the people to solve. The question is: "How shall the warfare against White Slavery be waged to blot out this cloud upon civilization expeditiously?" Over two years ago I learned that there was a gigantic slave trade in women, and with a handful of people we began to fight the traders. That a system of slavery, debasing and vile, had grown to enormous ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... succeeded each other in his thoughts. He turned to the lands where life was freer, where perchance his happiness awaited him, had he but the courage to set forth. What brought him to London, this squalid blot on the map of the round world? Why did he consume the irrecoverable hours amid its hostile ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... violated the unities; his plays were neither right comedies nor right tragedies; he had small Latin and less Greek; he wanted art and sometimes sense, committing anachronisms and Bohemian shipwrecks; wrote hastily, did not blot enough, and failed of the grand style. He was "untaught, unpractised in a barbarous age"; a wild, irregular child of nature, ignorant of the rules, unacquainted with ancient models, succeeding—when he did succeed—by happy accident ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... paint too faithfully the features of the very aged, which are repellent in spite of themselves; I mean, they cannot help their faces, their sentiments and actions are another matter; therefore I will leave Father Iden's face as a dim blot on the mirror; you look in it and it reflects everywhere, except ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... other to unhorse, unseemly act! Since in that quarrel they are nought to blame. Those err, nor know the usage, why by pact Deem they were bound their horses not to maim: Without pact made, 'twas reckoned a misdeed, And an eternal blot ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... that good lady would not have pushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was to behold I knew of cases in which she had been obliged to administer that shove. I went to New York to paint a couple of portraits; but I found, once on the spot, that I had counted without Chicago, where I was invited to blot out this harsh discrimination by the production of no less than ten. I spent a year in America and should probably have spent a second had I not been summoned back to England by alarming news from my mother. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... lights up his eye, He struggles 'gainst his lot. Behold ambition on his brow, And on his nose, a blot. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... And no one foresaw as yet how long the struggle would last. So Harry Hatton's return to the home county and neighborhood was full of interest. He was their favorite and their friend, and he had been long enough away to blot out any memory of his faults; and indeed a fault connected with horses calls forth from Yorkshiremen ready excuse and forgiveness. As to the mill, few of its workers blamed him for hating it. They hated it also and would have ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... finding a singular apathy in ray own bosom on this important subject, I bought five hundred of each sex to stimulate my sympathies. This led me nearer to the United States of America, a country that I had endeavored to blot out of my recollection; for while thus encouraging a love for the species, I had scarcely thought it necessary to go so far from home. As no rule exists without an exception, I confess I was a good deal disposed ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... interested in its accomplishment. There are some good old-fashioned people who think we are going too fast and too far in our railroad enterprises. We have, they say, lived and got along well enough without railroads, and now you seem to think that your temporal salvation depends upon it! Blot out your telegraphs, lay up your steamboats,—what darkness would come upon the world! We must form ourselves into a council of war for the purpose of combating these old prejudices, and, instead of being turned away from our objects, we will ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... said fervently, "I beg you never to allow yourself to think of it. Blot the accursed thing out of the Universe while—you are here. For you there must ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... parts a man from God, and makes it impossible for a heart to expatiate in the thought of His presence, is the contrariety to His will in our conduct. The slightest invisible film of mist that comes across the blue abyss of the mighty sky will blot out the brightest of the stars, and we may sometimes not be able to see the mist, and only know that it is there because we do not see the planet. So unconscious sin may steal in between us and God, and we shall no longer be able to say, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... most shameful blot on the face of the earth, the grave the most repulsive of scandals, drawing the trench of its corruption and stain round the ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... simply inexcusable, and stands out a foul blot on the memory of every Rebel in high place in the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... and we are glad to be rid of it. One little blazing fragment lifts itself out of the flame, and we can trace on the smouldering relic the stamp of Austria. Go back again into the grate, and perish with the rest, dark blot! ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... could see over the bent form of the ape, but suddenly the form, with its back to him, seemed to straighten up and blot out the cupboard of drawers. The ape had changed to the form of a woman, dressed in the pretty Gillikin costume, and when she turned around he saw that it was a young woman, whose face was ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sons of latitude that court your grace, 160 Though most resembling you in form and face. Are far the worst of your pretended race. And, but I blush your honesty to blot, Pray God you prove them lawfully begot: For in some Popish libels I have read, The Wolf has been too busy in your bed; At least her hinder parts, the belly-piece, The paunch, and all that Scorpio claims, are his. Their malice too a sore ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... gates of thought, and conscience still was king. He would do all that lay in his human power, with every moment and every muscle that he had, to fulfil the stern command of duty, and then if he should fail, it would be with no shame in his heart, no blot upon ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... and evil, sweet and bitter, joy and sadness, and will give Thee thanks for all things which shall happen unto me. Keep me from all sin, and I will not fear death nor hell. Only cast me not away for ever, nor blot me out of the book of life. Then no tribulation which shall come upon me shall do ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland; her own jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day or other—when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies—they will blot it from their records as levelling them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head—they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. I hope they will set it on ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... affection je lgue chacun d'eux cent mille francs.'' The paper upon which the will was written was folded up before the ink was dry, and therefore many of the letters were blotted. The legatees asserted that the apostrophe was a blot, and therefore claimed two instead of one hundred ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... soul away, Nor wear, as erst, the smiling face That best beseems this hallow'd day Fain would my yearning heart be gay, Its wonted welcome breathe to thine; But sighs come blended with my lay, And tears of anguish blot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... the importation of Africans ought to be left to the States—and the President. He thinks that as Cuba is the only spot in the civilized world where the African slave-trade is permitted, its cession to us would put an end to that blot on civilization. An end to it, indeed! Think of it!" His voice rose as he spoke. "End slavery and you end that accursed trade. And to think that a woman like Ann Penhallow should think it right!" Neither John nor Leila were willing to discuss ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... yourself and the knights here spoken of as brave and gallant gentlemen, whose sole fault was that they chose to take part with a rebel prince, rather than with the King of England. I rejoice that you have cleared your name of so foul a blot as this would have placed upon it, and I acknowledge that your conduct now is knightly and courteous. But I can no more parley. The sun is within a few minutes of twelve, and I must surrender, to meet such fate as ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... off. She was unequal to the task of explaining, without hurting anyone's feelings, that she had always regarded Cuthbert as a piece of cheese and a blot on ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... divinity, is the religion of God and nature; the religion that exalts, that ennobles man. Were not you to send me your "Zeluco," in return for mine? Tell me how you like my marks and notes through the book. I would not give a farthing for a book, unless I were at liberty to blot it with my criticisms. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the love with which Jesus receives us when we seek His forgiveness. If I, His poor little creature, feel so tenderly towards you when you come back to me, what must pass through Our Lord's Divine Heart when we return to Him? Far more quickly than I have just done will He blot out our sins from His memory. . . . Nay, He will even love us more tenderly than ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... he saw wrath flash into the general's face as he recognized the enemy. "Shoot them—shoot them—" he shouted. But the gray line vomited its smoke first, and the boy felt his foot afire. The general dropped from his horse, and as the boy looked down, he saw a red blot coming out on his instep. In the same instant he saw Captain Ward rush to the falling general, and saw the bodyguard gather about him, and then the blackness came over the child and he fell. He did not see them bear General Lyon's body into the brush, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... frsoning, strlande Valhalla? 6 Blgde Balder, tar du ingen bot? Bot tager mannen, nr hans frnder falla, de hga gudar sonar man med blot. Det sgs, du r den mildaste av alla: bjud, och vart offer ger jag utan knot. Ditt tempels brand var icke Fritiofs tanka, tag flcken bort ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... passionless way that the judges became convinced that he was speaking the truth. As soon as the indictment had been read, the proceedings began. Robeckal whiningly declared that he bitterly regretted what he had done. He had been seduced by Fanfaro, and would give his right hand if he could blot out the recollection of the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... it?" I have not torn the good down. I have only endeavored to trample out the ignorant, cruel fires of hell. I do not tear away the passage, "God will be merciful to the merciful." I do not destroy the promise, "If you will forgive others, God will forgive you." I would not for anything blot out the faintest stars that shine in the horizon of human despair, nor in the horizon of human hope; but I will do what I can to get that infinite shadow out of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... demonstrations that had been made in all Espana in honor of this Lady, they began to place on all the corners and upon the doors of churches notices that read, "Praised be the most holy sacrament and the Immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin, conceived without blot of original sin." There was no lack of persons who tried to efface one of these notices that was on the door of the church of Santo Domingo, a fact which caused the people to burn with greater devotion to this Lady. It was arranged that for two ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... some invitation, apart from occasions of too great solemnity, when he was really constrained to dress himself in the complete livery of circumstance and ceremony, he remained faithful to his black felt hat, which made a blot among all the carefully polished "toppers" of his colleagues. He was called to order; he was reprimanded; he obeyed unwillingly, or worse, he resisted; he revolted, and threatened to send in his resignation. To pay ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... fellow-creatures, should have deprived them of freedom altogether. I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon. I am not ignorant—nobody can be ignorant—of the great difficulties which encompass the solution of this question in America. It is vain for us to shut our eyes to it. ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... their rites are the Virgins fair, For none but a virgin may enter there. 'Tis a custom of old and a sacred thing; Nor rank nor beauty the warriors spare, If a tarnished maiden should enter there. And her that enters the Sacred Ring With a blot that is known or a secret stain The warrior who knows is bound to expose, And lead her forth from the ring again. And the word of a brave is the fiat of law; For the Virgins' Feast is a sacred thing. Aside with the mothers sat Harpstina; She durst ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... demeanour, disregard of authority, falsehood, oppression, and ungentlemanly conduct; and there can be little doubt but, in a semi-barbarous age, when prowess in the field of battle was considered the highest acomplishment, that the dread of a blot on the escutcheon, or a reversal of the shield of arms, restrained many a proud baron in his tyrannical proceedings to those beneath him, and tended to keep down the insolence of the upstart favourites of ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... it was belted with turrets: and its habitable character was chiefly proclaimed by the immense number of its windows, and by a roof of deep red tiles; which last, though generally felt as a harsh blot in the picturesque honours of the castle, were however at this particular time lowered into something like keeping by the warm ruddy light of the morning sun which was now glancing upon every window in the sea-front, and also by the dusky scarlet of decaying ferns which climbed all the neighbouring ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... intimate picture of the battle of our bodies against the hosts of disease. If we could see with the eye of the microscope and feel and hear with the delicacy of chemical and physical interactions between atoms, the heat and intensity and the savage relentlessness of that battle would blot out all perception of anything but itself. Just as there are sounds we cannot hear, and light we cannot see, so there is a world of small things, living in us and around us, which sways our destiny and carries astray the best laid schemes of our wills and personalities. The gradual development of ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... volumes—Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), Men and Women (1853), Dramatis Persona (1864)—will suggest how strong the dramatic element is in all his work. Indeed, all his poems may be divided into three classes,—pure dramas, like Strafford and A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; dramatic narratives, like Pippa Passes, which are dramatic in form, but were not meant to be acted; and dramatic lyrics, like The Last Ride Together, which are short poems expressing some strong ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... that was filled gloriously with noble, and even with royal names, till at last she stopped short, and covering one medallion with her finger, she said, "Pass over that, dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great uncle John's: what could he expect by marrying into that family, where, you know, all the men were not sans peur, and none of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... feet ashamed I lie, Upward I dare not look— Pardon my sins before I die, And blot ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Humphrey's grave, and enter the Chapel of the Martyr by the door which opens into it from the aisle. The centre of the chapel is occupied by the reconstructed pedestal of the martyr's shrine. The ugly wooden railing that surrounds it is a great blot on the appearance of the chapel; no doubt it is necessary that the pedestal should be protected by some kind of barrier, but a light and elegant railing of brass would answer every purpose without marring the general effect, as the present ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... comrades scornfully, and tells her how of course the home-folk have been careful to blot out all memories of one who has come to the town to lead the life she leads. She may be sure the old people have rubbed out the mark showing how tall she was on the door, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... ill-temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This compatibility of ill-temper with high moral character ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... consents that others may so regard him, does that make him a chattel, or make those guiltless who hold him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer because I consent to be made a corpse? Does my partnership in his guilt blot out his part of it? If the slave were willing to be a slave, his voluntariness, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind and he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... service, turned their attention to the epic. These were Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton. The latter is our subject, but something should also be said of the former. Drayton not unfairly hit the blot in his successful rival ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... ancient Greece and Rome were nothing to them. Horses, cattle, and sheep were driven in among them and made to prance wildly, not in the hope of destroying the foe—as well might you have attempted to blot out the milky way,—but for the purpose of stemming the torrent and turning, if possible, the leading battalions aside from the garden. They would not turn aside. "On, hoppers, on—straight on!" was their watchword. "Death or victory" must ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... But now, the blood of twenty thousand men Did triumph in my face, and they are fled; And till so much blood thither come again Have I not reason to look pale and dead? All souls that will be safe, fly from my side; For time hath set a blot upon my pride. ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... pronounce as ill, I find so much of goodness still; In men whom men pronounce divine, I find so much of sin and blot; I hesitate to draw the line Between the ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... rarely justifies the means, and there are means so foul that they would blot any result into their own filthiness. All that the world can write; or think, or say, will never make it honorable or noble to bribe and tell lies. Men who lie are not brave because they are willing to be shot at, in some instances, by the men their falsehoods have injured. Men who ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... lowered him gently to the snow. Lurching to his feet, he stood swaying above the scientist's body, ready to defend the helpless man against any who came to take him. Defiant curses died in his paralyzed throat as darkness swooped down to blot out all consciousness. His steel-sinewed body, beaten at last, slumped protectingly over the lanky form ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... with pain and exquisite grief stirs within us at the sight and we can endure naught else but to suffer with them, when youth is blurred with sin, and gray heads are sick with shame and we, then, want to die and cry, O God! forgive and save them or else blot me out of Thy book of life—for who could bear to live in a world where such things are the end!—then, through the society of sorrow, and the holy comradeship in shame, we begin to find the Lord and to understand both the kindness and the justice of His world. In the moment ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... which were first knit by corresponding fitness, and which affection promised to perpetuate?" So far, indeed, from feeling elated by her own elevation to a throne, she regretted it with deep melancholy. "The assumption of the throne," she looked on as "an act that must ever be an ineffaceable blot upon Napoleon's name." It has been asserted by her friends that she never recovered her spirits after. The pomps and ceremonies, too, attendant on the imperial state, must have been distasteful to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Allies. In alliance with the city rabble, the Giovani Fiumani, Italian soldiers attacked the French: "I can state emphatically," says Mr. Ryan, "that the French guards did nothing whatever to provoke the assault, some details of which would blot the escutcheon of most savage tribes. I saw soldiers of France killed, after surrender, by their supposed Allies.... I could scarcely believe my ears when Italian officers rapped out the order to load. But they seemed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... pleasure in it. Being, when she chose, a clear- sighted young woman, she realized this, but she also knew that Francis Sales would find the obvious meaning in the blow. For herself, she sanely determined to blot that episode from her mind: it was maddening to think of it as an insult and dangerous to remember its delight, and she was able calmly to tell her aunts that Mr. Sales had seen ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... living at Neuilly, the terrors of the French Revolution growing daily greater, she took a step to which she was prompted by pure motives, but which has left a blot upon her fair fame. The outcry raised by her "Vindication of the Rights of Women" has ceased, since its theories have found so many champions. But that which followed her assertion of her individual rights has never yet ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... be met from our Permanent Property Account, but fully $500.00 needs yet to be secured if we are to provide things honest in the sight of all men. Thus far in the history of our mission, the account of no year has closed with the blot of a deficit upon it. The account of the year just ended is held open for awhile in the hope that the good precedent of the past may be still maintained. And, oh, if we might be a little less hampered by poverty;—if we might be set free to enter opened doors, and to make the most possible ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... country and nothing but my country." I accept the great trust confided in me by a free and intelligent people, and with a firm reliance on the principles of constitutional liberty, and invoking the guidance of an all-wise Providence, Ruler of Nations, shall labor so to discharge it as to leave no blot upon my political escutcheon. Say to his Excellency, the successor of the immortal Washington in the Seat of Power, that the patronage of my office will be bestowed with an eye single to securing the greatest good to the greatest number, the stability of republican institutions ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... because low ideas of womanhood have been implanted, and which give a taste for mucky authors that reek with suggestiveness; and to avoid the waste of nerve substance and nerve weakness in ways which Ibsen and Tolstoi have described. These things are the darkest blot on the honor ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... board the raft, he had no binnacle, and no lamps by which to illuminate the compass card. It is true the island was still in sight, some four miles astern, but the night had grown so dark and the atmosphere so thick that the land merely loomed like a vast undefined blot of darkness against the black horizon, being so indistinct indeed that only the practised eye of a seamen could have detected its presence at all; it was therefore useless as an object to steer by, even to so keen-eyed an ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... shipmates. On swept the wave, the water gathering up round the quarters of the devoted schooner until it began to pour in over the taffrail. Nothing now could save the Dolphin—her hour had come. I glanced wildly round the deck and saw, indistinctly through the gloom, the dark blot-like crowd of men all clustered together in the gangway, waiting to spring for the wreck of the foremast; and as the body of the wave came roaring and foaming in over the stern, and I felt the deck canting upward under its weight, I too staggered up the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... followed her quivering finger, discerning what appeared to be a blot of shadow close to the bush above ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... another inflamed exhibition, not unlike that with which the honorable member has edified us. For myself, Sir, I shall not rake among the rubbish of bygone times, to see what I can find, or whether I cannot find something by which I can fix a blot on the escutcheon of any State, any party, or any part of the country. General Washington's administration was steadily and zealously maintained, as we all know, by New England. It was violently opposed elsewhere. We know in what quarter he had the most earnest, constant, and persevering support, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... thou that standard from the dust Of lower ends or doubtful gain; On thy good sword no taint of rust; On stars and stripes no blot or stain. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... all the pain you have given me; to blot out the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake of the nights that I spent ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty six theaters in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge; the lover following his rival; the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour; or the wiping out by death of a blot on a hitherto unstained honor. It was estimated that one sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theaters on that day. At that same moment the churches throughout the city were preaching the gospel of good ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... a distance to that little red blot on the map," mused Lorry, pulling his nose reflectively. "What an outlandish place for a girl like her to live in," he continued. "And that sweet-faced old lady and noble Uncle Caspar! Ye gods! one would think barbarians existed there and not such people as the Guggenslockers, refined, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... over him. And he fell to despising himself for the kind of exultation that filled him, its selfishness, its sordidness, the absence of all high enthusiasm. Why was he denied the happiness of self-deception? Why could he not forget the means, blot it out, now that the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... when they were recognised by one of the Frangipani, who were the lords of the territory. Arrested by him and handed over to Charles, they were subjected to a form of trial, and beheaded in the market-place of Naples. This act has always been regarded as an indelible blot on Charles's record. Dante couples it with the alleged murder, by his order, of St. Thomas Aquinas; and it seems to have been felt even by members of the Guelf party as something, if one may so say, beyond the rules of the game. Pope Clement, according to Villani, blamed Charles ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... over which Prince Mastowix held sway, he had charge of this fearful secret record; but the better to blot his existence out, should inquiries ever be made, he applied a false name to the "No. 20"; described him as a Russian, a Nihilist, who had been caught in holding correspondence with Paul Zobriskie, and who had also assaulted ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... he murmured. 'Did Dorothy do it?—How foolish I am! It is but a blot the sun has left behind him!—Ah! I see! I am dead and lying on the top of my tomb. I am only marble. This is Redware church. Oh, mother Rees, is it you! I am very glad! Cover me over a ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... returns to a stricken house: What shape is that he rears on high? A withe of the Willow, set round with Heads: They blot ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she was the same good comrade, cool and quick. But as before a change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so Shelton was affected by the inner change in her. He had made a blot upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was left a mark, and it was ineffaceable. Antonia belonged to the most civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is written of Samuel (Ecclus. 46:23): "He lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy to blot out the wickedness of the nation." Therefore other saints can likewise be called ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... her seat so quickly that she did not think of her book, pen, or ink. Her arm had given the book a careless push, sending it against and overturning the ink-bottle, and she had dropped the pen on the white paper, where it made a long ugly blot. ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... with this sentence: "such is the effect of the ejectment of tenantry in Ireland." He next dwelt on the physical wretchedness of the people in general, relying chiefly for his facts on the Devon Commission. He reminded Sir James Graham of a statement of his, that the murders in Ireland were a blot upon Christianity. "Is not," said O'Connell, "the state of things I have described a blot upon Christianity? (hear, hear). This, be it recollected," he continued, "is forty-five years after the Union, during which time Ireland ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... said, "my pensive neophyte? Sage son of the Alma Mater of Low-Dutch learning, what aileth thee? Is the leaf of the living world which we have turned over in company, less fairly written than thou hadst been taught to expect? Be comforted, and pass over one little blot or two; thou wilt be doomed to read through many a page, as black as Infamy, with her sooty pinion, can make them. Remember, most immaculate Nigel, that we are in London, not Leyden— that we are studying life, not lore. Stand ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... be necessary for the work thou art about; but having killed a pair of doves in order to enable thee to give mankind a true and proper description of them, thou must not destroy a third through wantonness or to show what a good marksman thou art: that would only blot the picture thou ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the cloven foot of vulgarity. Discharge a servant at once when he is disrespectful or when he is careless in his duties or in his conduct. When asking for anything there is no necessity of forgetting the elements of true politeness, nor is it a blot on your deportment to utter a civil "thank you" for a service performed. All servants should address you as "Sir," and when called should reply "Yes, sir," and certainly not "All right." Your menservants touch their hats to you on receiving orders in the open, on ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... the hereditary tendency, and the other is the tendency to variation. One, if it were in full force, would merely, forever and forever, repeat the past: the other, if it were in full force, would blot out all the past, and forever be creating something new. It is in the balance of these two tendencies that we discover the orderly growth of the world; and this orderly growth it is which constitutes evolution. Let me illustrate: ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... died, and also you had helped care for him previously. Mr. Kipping has written a statement of the circumstances in the log and you are to sign it, Here's the place for your name. Here's a pen and ink. Be careful not to blot or smudge it." ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... respect him more than he respected White or Bateman. And so of a Unitarian; if he believed the power of unaided human nature to be what it was not; if by birth man is fallen, and he thought him upright, he was holding an absurdity. He might redeem and cover this blot by a thousand excellences, but a blot it would remain; just as we should feel a handsome man disfigured by the loss of an eye or a hand. And so, again, if a professing Christian made the Almighty a being of simple benevolence, and He was, on the contrary, what the Church of England ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... verse, of many meanest, Hope to escape his venemous despite, More then my former writs, all were they clearest From blamefull blot, and from all that wite, With which some wicked tongues did it backebite, And bring into a mighty Peres displeasure, That never so deserved to endite. Therfore do you my rimes keep better measure, And seek to please, that now is ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... remains a mystery yet to be unveiled. I blot Monday night from my mind. I have no alternative, being on the jury which has to arrive at a just verdict. Now, if Fred Elkin were here, he would foam at ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... to read, and, moreover, recalling his calligraphy as a sergeant-major, he has set her copies in writing. It is his greatest joy when the child, bending attentively over her paper, and sometimes making a blot which she quickly licks up with her tongue, has succeeded in copying all the letters of an interminable adverb in ment. His uneasiness is in thinking that he is growing old and has nothing to ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... only blot on the landscape," panted Amy, after a while. "It stands there right where the brook empties into the lake ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... great glory to you to have overcome Manfred, but a far greater one it is to overcome one's self; wherefore do you, who have to correct others, conquer yourself and curb this appetite, nor offer with such a blot to mar that which you ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... good mother sleeps at the bottom of the ocean, which serves as her monument and her grave." Mary, this is the most trying passage that I have to write in this sketch of my life; and you must not think me weak that tears blot the words as I write. My mother fell a victim to sea-sickness which brought on a violent hemorrhage, that exhausted the sources of life. She died three weeks before the vessel reached the port; and my two sisters (the one seventeen and the other nine years of age) ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... was sincerely concerned and grieved by the occurrence. It is always a blot on a school to be obliged to expel a pupil. She talked the matter over carefully with some of the teachers. Marjorie's record at Brackenfield had unfortunately been already marred by several incidents which prejudiced her in the eyes of the mistresses. They had been ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll, And dawning grace is opening on my soul: 280 Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art! Oppose thyself to heaven; dispute my heart; Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes Blot out each bright idea of the skies; Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears; Take back my fruitless penitence and prayers; Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode; Assist the fiends, and tear me ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... they were well beyond the farthest point toward the mountains which any one else believed the child could have reached, and there were no footprints of previous searchers to perplex their eyes or blot out such traces as they might find. From the top of the hill they saw the great body of men again scattering out over the mesa, and knew ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... his devilish designs, her ruin, was easy. She fell a victim to his lustful desire, and in a short time discovered that she would soon become a mother. Almost crazed at this discovery she knew not what to do or which way to turn. It was the first blot that had ever come on the name of a member of the proud Bryan family. In her desperation she confided her condition to her cousin, Will Wood. As Wood claimed, no one else in Greencastle knew or even suspected anything of the true condition of affairs between ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... said Merton to himself, 'when I was only dreaming about the crimson blot on the ceiling. Was I asleep when I saw the tartans go down the stairs? I used to walk in my sleep as a ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang |
