"Blight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon him, grasped him by the throat, and thrusting him fiercely down on the steps of the dais, placed one foot on his prostrate body. Then drawing his gigantic sword he lifted it on high, . . the blight blade glittered in air...an audible gasp of terror broke from the throng of spectators, . . another second and Khosrul's life would have paid the forfeit for his temerity...when crash! ... a sudden and tremendous clap of thunder shook the hall, and every lamp was extinguished! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ages had whipped the sand down into the valleys. Little clusters of green poplars, like vast goatees, nestled on the northern chin of the hills across the valley, where the Chinook had failed to spread its balmy winter-blight among them; here and there were glimpses of thousands of cattle feeding on the brown ranges. The sun, like a bubble of molten gold blown from the bowl of heaven, hung very close in a steel-bright, cloudless sky. Lower it fell, and lower, until a fang of rock ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... way of balls and sleigh-rides. Content that her face showed health and enjoyment, he never thought or cared what passed in her mind. If only the hay-crop proved abundant, and the Davis lot yielded well,—if neither wheat got the blight, nor sheep the rot,—if it were better to buy Buckhorn for milk, or sell the Calico-Trotter,—these thoughts so filled his soul that there was very little room to let in any nonsense about Dorcas, only "to have Swan Day shet up before he begins," for, as he often ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... du Brocard We have pledged our word to the Count and Countess of Verby! Mlle. Pamela, whose friend I shall be all my life, did not effect the deliverance of my nephew on the understanding that she should blight his prospects. ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... Cape Cod cottage with no unnecessary additions. Here were eight cane-seated chairs of the late Empire years. Four had been painted a dirty brown to simulate black walnut; four represented the white enamel blight which, in turn, had chipped enough to display the "grained" painting of the golden oak years beneath. A scraper applied to a leg revealed the mellow tone of honey-colored maple. Patience and paint remover did the rest. Brought up in the natural finish, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... voice as 'twere calling at your door, And I don't mind my bare feet clammy on the stones, And the blight to my bones, For he only knows of THIS house I lived ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... behind settling with the boatman. They were now, he knew, between the two Niles, which joined their waters at Khartoum. The country here had evidently been rich and prosperous before the host of the Mahdi passed like a blight over it. They halted a few miles from the river, near a ruined and deserted village. Edgar was told to watch the camels while they plucked heads of corn from the deserted fields, while the Arabs lit a fire and baked some cakes. None of these were offered to Edgar, who had to content himself with ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... touched something red hot Marcia dropped it, and pushed it with her foot far back under the bed. Then shutting the door quickly she went downstairs. Was it always to be thus? Would Kate ever blight all her joy from this ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Clannahan, whose house stands over against the main gate of the grave-yard, and who may, therefore, be considered as moving in the best Dublin society, hints, that though good Catholics, the French are not thought perfectly honest,— "things have been missed" since they came to blight with their crimes and vices the once happy seat of integrity. It is amusing to find Dublin fearful of the encroachment of the French, as we, in our turn, dread the advance of the Irish. We must make a jest of our own alarms, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... was puzzled and distressed. Perhaps her ears had played her false. Perhaps what he had really said was, "Squire, Binyon, and Shanks," or "Childe, Blunden, and Earp," or even "Abercrombie, Drinkwater, and Rabindranath Tagore." Perhaps. But then her ears never did play her false. "Blight, Mildew, and Smut." The impression was distinct and ineffaceable. "Blight, Mildew..." she was forced to the conclusion, reluctantly, that Denis had indeed pronounced those improbable words. He had deliberately repelled her ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... landmarks like milestones made their appearance, and these, we were told, were new claims pegged out. The thought suggested itself that this part of South Africa is in some respects a wicked country, with, it would almost seem, a blight resting on it: sickness, to both man and beast, is always stalking round; drought is a constant scourge to agriculture; the locust plagues ruin those crops and fruit that hailstones and scarcity of water have spared; and ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... spirit of my dream. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him; he was a mark For blight and desolation, compassed round With hatred and contention; pain was mixed In all which was served up to him, until, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment; he lived Through that which had been ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... a soothfast word, Not the true parent is the woman's womb That bears the child; she doth but nurse the seed New-sown: the male is parent; she for him, As stranger for a stranger, hoards the germ Of life; unless the god its promise blight. And proof hereof before you will I set. Birth may from fathers, without mothers, be: See at your side a witness of the same, Athena, daughter of Olympian Zeus, Never within the darkness of the womb Fostered nor fashioned, but a bud more bright Than any goddess in her breast ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... happiness between Ethel and myself—have you no heart that you can refuse to repair a little of the harm that you have done? You are a cruel woman—I could almost say a wicked woman: hard, false, and cowardly; and I wish my words could blight your life as ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... LEAF BLIGHT (Cercospora Halstedii): This disease of pecan leaves causes them to turn brown, wither up and drop prematurely. At first, small brown spots are noted. These become larger, and at length the whole leaf is destroyed. When attacked by this disease the tree makes no progress. ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... from home on branch in morning light, * But shakes my very frame with sorrow's killing might: No lover sigheth for his love or gladdeth heart * To meet his mate, but breeds in me redoubled blight I bear my plaint to one who has no ruth for me, * Ah me, how Love can part man's mortal ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Portuguese adopted like habits themselves. In one thing indeed they were far superior to the Boers—in their treatment of the children born to them by native mothers. But the whole system of slavery gendered a blight which nothing could counteract; to make Africa a prosperous land, liberty must be proclaimed to the captive, and the slave system, with all its accursed surroundings, brought conclusively to an end. Writing to Mrs. Livingstone from Bashinge, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... occasional treat, the smallest glimpse of anything resembling a Front. And all this is in a country so desolated by centuries of war that in spite of obvious natural fertility it is a sullen treeless desert—a desert of blight and thistles, as profitless to our men as their periodically deferred anticipations of a grand advance. A book that sets out to record vacuity can hardly be crammed with thrilling literature, and I am not going to pretend that Mr. LAKE has achieved the impossible. All the same one found points—for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... woods, though he scarcely ever saw them. Then, past the pines, were roses just breaking into June bloom—roses in such profusion as Jims hadn't known existed, with dear little paths twisting about among the bushes. It seemed to be a garden where no frost could blight or rough wind blow. When rain fell it must fall very gently. Past the roses one saw a green lawn, sprinkled over now with the white ghosts of dandelions, and dotted with ornamental trees. The trees grew so thickly that they almost hid the house to which the garden pertained. It was a large ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... earth withhold her goodly root, Let mildew blight the rye, Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... sight of their sin brought sorest pain to his spirit. Paul tells us there was a continual cutting of a knife at his heart because of his racial kinsfolk, their sin, their stubbornness in sin, the awful blight upon their lives.[74] There was sore, lone, unspeakable pain of spirit because he felt so keenly the sin of others. This is the Gethsemane experience. Have you felt something like this as you have come in touch with the sin, the blighted lives, the wreckage of lives among both ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... battle, a surge High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears That shake on us their shadow, till men's heads 490 Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now The winter of this wind out of the deeps Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here, Here never shall the Thracian plant on high For ours his father's symbol, nor with wreaths A strange folk wreathe it upright set and crowned ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... two following seasons, New South Wales suffered a serious drought, which increased in severity. Rivers were exhausted, and their beds left dry. Not only the want of rain was felt, but a withering blight, travelling in a defined current over the cultivated districts, cut off their harvests. In two years the cultivation of wheat in Van Diemen's Land increased from twenty to thirty thousand acres, and the average price of wheat ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... while the red cup foams along, Mingle in soul as well as song. Then, while I sit, with flowerets crowned, To regulate the goblets round. Let but the nymph, our banquet's pride, Be seated smiling by my side, And earth has not a gift or power That I would envy, in that hour. Envy!—oh never let its blight Touch the gay hearts met here tonight. Far hence be slander's sidelong wounds, Nor harsh dispute, nor discord's sounds Disturb a scene, where all should be Attuned to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Randolph. Recrimination and abuse were common. Northern speakers drew insulting comparisons between the population, wealth, and prosperity of the free and slave States. They attributed the difference to the blight of slavery. Southern speakers explained that slavery was a thing of which a non-resident could not judge properly; that what appeared to an outsider as a lack of prosperity was the enjoyment of life by a people not devoted to the sordid aspects of existence; that slavery ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... sake, don't be too hasty! Give me opportunity for explanation. I admit that I did wrong, but there are extenuating circumstances. Let me explain, I entreat you, before you thus blight my life, and ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... distinct species of the fruit flourished within a radius of a dozen miles of the town, all wholesome and palatable. The attention of planters is being diverted from spice culture to that of fruit raising, the latter requiring so much less attention, and not being liable to blight ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... is obtained. Chestnut trees are upstanding, straight trees that tower 80 to 100 feet above the ground. The extinction of our chestnut forests threatens as no effectual control measures for checking the chestnut blight disease over large ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... another kind of 'Johnny Appleseed,' for he doted on apples and used to beg slips and seeds of any new variety until he had one hundred and eighty-two trees in his big orchard. I have counted them and longed for them, early, mid, and late harvest—he fit off the bug and the blight and the worm like a wizard. If there was any one thing save his orchard he doted upon it was a daughter o' his'n, her name being Rose, and all that you can cram of lush and bright-red and rosy-posy nicety into that name. An' yet he hankered much on the latest ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... who has cursed my life, blasted my prospects, and ruined my youth; a woman who gained my early affection only to blight and wither it; a woman who should be nearer to me and dearer than all else, and yet who is further than the uttermost depths of hell from me in sympathy or feeling; a woman that I should cleave to, but from whom I have been flying, ready to face shame, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... gardener, and thence to dress for a dinner that he looked forward to with dread, and Philip to make his way home. As he passed up through the little flower-garden at the Abbey House, he came across his daughter, picking the blight from her shooting rose-trees. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... few years until they yearned for the fertility they had extravagantly wasted. Buildings inevitably decay and they may be destroyed by fire or storm. Orchards may be overturned by a cyclone or be destroyed by blight or by the thousand enemies of the various varieties of fruit trees. The land may be injured by washing that may require years to repair. A single storm has destroyed fields in this way that never ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... friend. Your kindred had hearts in their breasts. Would they doom you to the life upon which you are entering? Can you not see that you are passing deeper and deeper into the shadow of the past? What good can it do them? Could they speak would they say, 'We wish our sorrows to blight your life'? You are not happy, you cannot be happy. It is contrary to the law of God, it is impossible to human nature, that happiness and bitter, unrelenting enmity should exist in the same heart. You are not only unhappy, but you are in deep trouble of some kind. I saw that from your ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... wasted energies and flagging purpose, rises up before me, darkly and reproachfully reminding me of what I might have done, have been! O Heaven! what bitter years of suffering and crushing disappointment, years on which the tracks of time have left their blight and mildew, have passed since first I listened to the bird-like warbling of its simple strains. Then was the blissful May-time of my existence, when I was governed by youth's generous impulses, led captive by its sweet delusions, when I fondly dreamed that my life was destined to become ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other considerations whatever. This is an instinct for which there is, I think, little original sympathy in the practical English nature, and what there was of it has undergone a long benumbing period of blight and suppression in the epoch of concentration ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... trail as hounds, but this atmosphere of Ascalon and its bad influence on the country wouldn't be good for their young folks, they said. So they backed off. And that's the way it's gone, that's the way it will go. The blight of Ascalon falls over this country for fifty miles around, the finest country the Almighty ever ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... wholly discredited underlay the fundamental views and principles of Puritanism. The early records of our General Court are thickly strown with appointments of Fast-Days that the people might discover the especial occasion of God's anger toward them, manifested in the blight of some expected harvest, or in a scourge upon the cattle in the field. Some among us who claim to hold unreduced or softened the old ancestral faith have been twice in late years convened in our State-House, by especial call, to legislate upon the potato-disease and the pleuro-pneumonia ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and of feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... his eye Grew kindled with a fierce and flaming blight, Red-lowering like the sky, When, heralding the tempest in his might, The muttering clouds march forth and form on high. With sable banners and grim majesty. Beneath his frowning brow a shaft of fire, That told the lurking ire, Shot ever forth, outflashing through the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... blight of the gravest character upon the local industry of the inhabitants, and it is a suicidal and unstatesmanlike policy that crushes and extinguishes all enterprise. What Englishman would submit to such a prying and humiliating position? And still it is expected that the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... reading, of jaunting about in his little cart, and frequenting both church and meeting, our worthy neighbour begins to feel the weariness of idleness. He hangs over his gate, and tries to entice passengers to stop and chat; he volunteers little jobs all round, smokes cherry trees to cure the blight, and traces and blows up all the wasps'-nests in the parish. I have seen a great many wasps in our garden to-day, and shall enchant him with the intelligence. He even assists his wife in her sweepings and dustings. Poor man! ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the world, and you learn that the triumphs of evil, though sudden, are temporary, and those of truth slow but eternal. A true word spoken by a single man has in it more power than armies, and will, in the long run, do more to bless than all that tyrannies can do to blight mankind. Savonarola, feeble as he seemed, and unprotected as he was, wielded a power greater than that of Rome. The truths sown by the preacher on the banks of the Arno so many centuries ago are not yet dead. They are springing up; and, long after Rome shall have ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem—find out for certain—she had come to feel that if he died, she would never see him after. It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her belief at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... never strip the bowers, Or icy Winter cast A blight upon the flowers; But Spring, in all her bloom, For ever flourish there, And the children of the tomb Forget ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... with hot milk. The Germans never would have complained about their war-time coffee, made from chicory and acorns, had they once tasted the Java product. Yet I was assured that this was the choicest coffee grown in Java. I might add that, as a result of a blight which all but ruined the industry in the '70s, fifty-two per cent of the total acreage of coffee plantations in the island is now planted with the African species, called Coffea robusta, and thirteen per cent with another African species, Coffea ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... The 'apple-blight' of the Calvados must obviously have extended into the neighbouring department of the Eure, or at least into the great and busy arrondissement of Bernay, which gave the Monarchist candidate in September 1889 the tremendous majority of 5,550 votes ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... which were mixed with tubs of water; the suction-pipe of the engine was inserted in these, the hose and branch attached, and the slaughter of the insects began down between the rows of hop-poles, where the blackened, blight-covered ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... days more—appallingly few to the hearts which had set themselves bravely to hope against hope—three weeks, a month later, perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the "Overdue" heading shall appear again in the column of "Shipping Intelligence," but under the final declaration ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... six," answered Edward; "nor dare I reckon on the life of the frail babe that England hailed yesterday as my heir. I sometimes deem that the blight of broken covenants has ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, but you nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... allus a turr'ble far-seeing sort of chap, 'e says, "Reckon the trolley 'ull be along fust thing i' the marnin' from the brewery, Missus?" An' when Mrs. Izod 'er says as 'er didn't know, but 'twas to be 'oped as 'twud, a sort of a blight settled down on the lot on us, which I reckon is a pretty fair way o' puttin' it, for a blight allus goes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... the wild cat in the hush. I call Tikoloshe (a water spirit) out of the river in the night-time and ask him questions. I make sickness do my bidding on men and cattle. I drive it away when I like. I can bring blight to the crops, and stop the milk of cows. I can, by my magic medicines, find out the wicked ones who do these things. I alone can look upon Icanti (a fabulous serpent) and not die. I know the mountain where Impandulu ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... else suffice? No less invaluable prize be found? But must he fall a noble sacrifice And early victim to thy fatal wound! Thou stern and merciless destroyer, say, Why didst thou blight his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... popular in his own state. He seemed to have before him a brilliant career. He had won a lovely bride to make a home for him; so that no man seemed to have more attractive prospects. What was there which at this time interposed in some malignant way to blight his future? ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... boat's sail, his people said that they had no Bazimo, or none worth having, seeing they had never invented the like for them. The chief, Mankambira, likewise treated us with kindness; but wherever the slave-trade is carried on, the people are dishonest and uncivil; that invariably leaves a blight and a curse in its path. The first question put to us at the lake crossing- places, was, "Have you come to buy slaves?" On hearing that we were English, and never purchased slaves, the questioners put on a supercilious ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... grows, lest there should be no Unseen Power, as his fathers believed, and his mother taught him, filling all things and meaning all things,—no Power with whom, in his last extremity, awaits him a final refuge. With the quickening doubt falls a tenfold blight on the world of poetry, both that in Nature and that in books. Far worse than that early chill which the assertions of science concerning what it knows, cast upon his inexperienced soul, is now the shivering death which its pretended denials ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... love, and to ensure her happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal blight that ruined everything ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... flames, as though the last day had come and the whole universe were burning; the dust, and smoke, and drift of fiery particles, scorching and kindling all it fell upon; the hot unwholesome vapour, the blight on everything; the stars, and moon, and very sky, obliterated;—made up such a sum of dreariness and ruin, that it seemed as if the face of Heaven were blotted out, and night, in its rest and quiet, and softened light, never could look upon ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... ran down his back, and he could not leave his house for days. Doubtless this indignity surpassed all other outrages in the proud old chief's estimation, and we can imagine him sitting in his cabin on the highest ground in the village, looking over the magnificent landscape, brooding upon the blight which had fallen upon the beautiful home of his tribe, and harboring thoughts of revenge. Still he refrained from open resistance ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... animation swept through the waiting room and the casting office. "Swell cabaret stuff" was the phrase that brought the applicants to a lively swarm about the little window. Evening clothes, glad wraps, cigarette cases, vanity-boxes—the Victor people doing The Blight of Broadway with Muriel Mercer—Stage Number Four at 8:30 to-morrow morning. There seemed no limit to the people desired. Merton Gill joined the throng about the window. Engagements were rapidly made, both through the window and over the telephone that was now ringing those people ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... gettin' pretty tight on farms now. It means about sixteen hours hard graft a-day to make not half what a railwayman makes in eight hours. If you happen to have grapes or oranges, if they manage to escape the frost, an' hail, an' caterpillar, then the blight ketches 'em, or there's a drewth, and there ain't none; an' if there's any, there's so much that there ain't no sale for 'em; and the farmer's life I reckon ought to be stopped as gamblin', for a gambler's life ain't one bit ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was to sacrifice four thousand millions of property specially protected by law. It was for the existing generation of the governing class in the South to vote themselves into bankruptcy and penury. Far beyond this, it was in their judgment to blight their land with ignorance and indolence, to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so radically different from that held by a large number of Northern people that it left no common ground for action,—scarcely, indeed, an opportunity for reasoning together. In the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... their daily wants, each suffering keenly; she, desperate at the thought of the tortures that awaited him; he unable to accustom himself to the idea of seeing her wanting bread. Was their happiness forever ended, then? Was poverty going to blight their spring with ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... Mendelssohn, because of the latitudinarian habits of the Maskilim, who "despise the counsel of their betters, and go after the dictates of their hearts."[35] Both saw in Haskalah a deadly foe to their dearest ideals, a blight upon their most cherished hopes, and, like Elizabeta Petrovna, they would not derive even a benefit from the enemies ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Can "long" give any comfort in Love's need? It is her death-doom, blight upon her seed. "My faith is, Love will never pass away"— That song must cease, and in its stead be heard: "My faith is, that I loved you yesterday!" [As uplifted by inspiration. No, no, not thus ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... port of Manilla. Indigo, coffee, sugar, cotton, and tobacco, are grown in abundance; indeed, were the resources of the islands fully developed, they would prove some of the richest in the world. But it may truly be said, that where Spaniards rule there a blight is ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... tribe. The previous winter had been one of unprecedented severity and had wiped out bears, and herds of caribou and musk oxen. The summer season, which was now drawing to a close, had been destitute of every kind of game. Musk oxen had been seldom found and then only in the far inland valleys. Some blight of nature seemed to have exterminated even the animals of the sea. The natives had lived mainly on the teeming bird life. From the scrawny bodies of the arctic birds, however, neither food that could be preserved nor fuel to be burned in the lamps could be secured. ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... roof I've been On eves of wintry blight, And heard his magic violin Make musical ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... young hearts, as those who have cradled and loved us grow proud in our successes? For myself, a life that has failed in every prestige of those that prophesied favourably—years that have followed on each other only to blight the promise that kind and well-wishing friends foretold—leave but little to dwell upon, that can be reckoned as success. And yet, some moments I have had, which half seemed to realize my early dream of ambition, and rouse my spirit within me; ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... often has raved with delight, The true, good, and beautiful seeking; Hiddigeigei often felt grief's deadly blight, And with ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... sure. There is still mademoiselle, with her new-formed friends in Paris—may a pestilence blight them all! There are still the lands of La Vauvraye to lose. The only true end to our troubles as they stand at present lies in your marrying this ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... heathen superstitions, which they would have cast away if their faith had been full, and if they had held with their whole hearts and souls and minds, that there was one God, of whom are all things. They believed that the Devil and evil spirits had power to raise thunderstorms, and blight crops, and change that course of nature of which the Psalmist had said, that all things served God, and continued this day as at the beginning, for God had given them a law which could not be broken. They believed in magic, and astrology, and a hundred other ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... among ourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; and in spite of the emphatic censure of Him after whose name we call ourselves, is still the instant interpreter for us of any unusual calamity, a potato blight, a famine, or an epidemic: such vitality is there in a moral faith, though now, at any rate, contradicted by the experience of all mankind, and at issue even ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive eloquence and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal venom, under whose blight its flowers faded, its music was hushed, its sunshine was darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only the new made graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless, erratic meteor without an orbit, sweep across ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... again!—that I must perforce study the writings of impious men? Yet I submitted myself as a candidate for the task, to save my brethren in Christ from soiling their hearts. Heaven preserve me from the blight of spiritual pride, but I believe that I am now a scapegoat for the offences of my fellow-monks, and, thus, may redeem my own wretched ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... he laid his head upon a tomb, Not knowing it was Arthur's, at which sight One of her maidens told her, 'He is come,' And she went forth to meet him; yet a blight ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... prejudices, there can be but one answer to that question. Oriental superstition cast its blight upon the fair field of science, whatever compensation it may or may not have brought in other fields. But we must be on our guard lest we overestimate or incorrectly estimate this influence. Posterity, in glancing backward, is always prone ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... entered with her weary smile, Just as of old; She looked around a little while, And shivered at the cold. Her passing touch was death to all, Her passing look a blight; She made the white rose-petals fall, And turned ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... himself can flee?[100] To zones though more and more remote,[di] Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of Life—the Demon Thought.[101] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... should Hymen ever blight The roses Cupid wore? Or why should it be ever night Where it was day before? Or why should women have a tongue, Or why should it be cursed, In being, like my Second, long, And louder ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... slave laws. Since reaching her majority, in looking back, the following sentences from her own pen express the loneliness of her childhood days. "Have I yearned for a mother's love? The grave was my robber. Before three years had scattered their blight around my path, death had won my mother from me. Would the strong arm of a brother have been welcome? I was my mother's only child." Thus she fell into the hands of an aunt, who watched over her during these early helpless years. Rev. William Watkins, an uncle, taught a school ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... faces, clustering around him like flowers; he witnessed the renewed contentment and affection of their parents; he breathed the simple air of their poor home, restored to its tranquillity; he thought of the unwholesome blight he had shed upon it, and might, but for her, have been diffusing then; and perhaps it is no wonder that he walked submissively beside her, and drew her gentle bosom nearer to ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... "Parsifal" and "Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11, 1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... parties who were citizens of the Republic (for no foreigner was permitted by law to own land directly or indirectly, so that the curse of Absentee Landlordism which was the ruin of Ireland, should never blight the happiness of the people of Eurasia), they added up the assessments for the previous five years and divided them by five and added twenty per cent. to it in payment for the land, together with fair compensation for any buildings there ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... With regal step, Martial yet measured, to the King he strode, And laid a strong hand on him, speaking thus: 'Rejoice, my son, for God hath sent thy land This day Good Tidings of exceeding joy, And planted in her breast a Tree divine Whose leaves shall heal far nations. Know besides, Should sickness blight that Tree, or tempest mar, The strong root shall survive: the winter past, Heavenward once more shall rush both branch and bough, And over-vault the stars.' He spake, and took The sacred Standard from that monarch's hand, And held it in his own, and fixed its ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... everything went wrong in the country around. The hay had hardly been got in when the haystacks were floated bodily down to the sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail; the corn was all killed by a black blight; only in the Treasure Valley, as usual, all was safe. As it had rain when there was rain nowhere else, so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else. Everybody came to buy corn at the farm, and went away pouring maledictions on the Black Brothers. They asked ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my son's career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than that it never can take place, and never will. If there is ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Witham stream There fell no chilling shade To blight the drifting naiad's dream Or make ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... another tunnel! "Don't miss that jagged line of snows just beyond the back of poppa's head, dear one. Quick! they are melting away!"—but the next tunnel was quicker. "Put down that the dazzling purity of these lovely peaks must be realised, for it cannot be"—darkness, and the blight of another tunnel. It was very hard on momma's imagination, and she finally accepted the Senator's warning that it would be thrown completely out of gear if she went on, and abandoned the attempt to form ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... diverge, and listless stray Into some thought, feeling, or dream unright, O Watcher, my backsliding soul affray; Let me not perish of the ghastly blight. Be thou, O Life eternal, in me light; Then merest approach of selfish or impure Shall start me up ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the circumference. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? How much tranquillity has been reflected ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... sometimes ludicrous inaptness shown on the decks of her ships of war. Doubtless such a result is not to be attributed to one cause only. Doubtless the government of Spain was in many ways such as to cramp and blight a free and healthy development of private enterprise; but the character of a great people breaks through or shapes the character of its government, and it can hardly be doubted that had the bent of the people been toward trade, the action of government would have been drawn into the same current. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... embrace her, and taking the withered tokens, hastened to hide her emotion in the furthest recess of the carriage that bore her away from the home of her kindred. It seemed to those who watched the receding travelers, as if a blight had fallen upon their pleasant things; as if the winter had suddenly come and frozen up all the springs of pleasure and delight, for that young girl's presence, though unobtrusive in its influence, had diffused warmth and gladness all about ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes iodoform in the cups and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... in view of Laura's romantic nature—that only a career of gloomy grandeur and high renown would impress the maiden whom yesterday he proposed to make happy forever, but to-day to blight with regret like a "worm i' the bud." He already had a vague presentiment that such a role would often mortify his tastes and inclinations most dismally; and yet, what had he henceforth to do with pleasure? ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. So—with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained—he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most perfectly beautiful territories the tourist can find, and still fertile,—though the hills have forgotten their fruit and the plain its river,—and capable of sustaining a much larger population than it now supports, if the Mohammedan blight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... voice behind him, which I recognised as his wife's, "because you're bringing a blight on us, and our houses—because we want our children's faces left as God ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the necessity for long hours of toil beyond their own doors, may preside as befits the hearthstone of American citizenship. We want the cradle of American childhood rocked under conditions so wholesome and so hopeful that no blight may touch it in its development, and we want to provide that no selfish interest, no material necessity, no lack of opportunity shall prevent the gaining of that education so essential ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... stands in the porch of the world— (Why should the door be shut?) The grey wolf waits at his heel, (Why is the window barred?) Wild is the trail from the Kimash Hills, The blight has fallen on bush and tree, The choking earth has swallowed the streams, Hungry and cold is the Red Patrol: (Why should the door be shut?) The Scarlet Hunter has come to bide— (Why ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were amazing; countless as the tears shed for perfidious lovers. Far abroad on both flanks, they swam in long lines, tier above tier; the water alive with their hosts. Locusts of the sea, peradventure, going to fall with a blight upon some green, mossy province of Neptune. And tame and fearless they were, as the first fish that swam in Euphrates; hardly evading the hand; insomuch that Samoa caught many without ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... still delight in making other people happy. I breathe through his lips, I live in his life, his passions are my own; and it is impossible for me to know noble and pure emotions excepting in the heart of this being unsoiled by crime. You have your fancies, here I show you mine. In exchange for the blight which society has brought upon me, I give it a man of honor, and enter upon a struggle with destiny; do you wish to be of my party? ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... times in my wandering about the country. They lived on that road, drifting along its length here and there, according to the inexplicable impulses of their monstrous darkness. They were an offence to the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven, a blight on the concentrated and purposeful vigour of the wild landscape. In time the story of their parents shaped itself before me out of the listless answers to my questions, out of the indifferent words heard in wayside inns or on the very road those ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... the exorbitant growth of London that many an ill has spread over the land? London is the antithesis of the domestic ideal; a social reformer would not even glance in that direction, but would turn all his zeal upon small towns and country districts, where blight may perhaps be arrested, and whence, some day, a reconstituted national life may act upon the great centre of corruption. I had far rather see England covered with schools of cookery than with schools of the ordinary kind; the issue would be ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... in the soil; he had felt its stirrings before he had believed in its existence, and then one day the earth had broke and he had seen its life and known what its strength might be. 'Twould be of wondrous strength, he knew, and of wondrous beauty if no frost should blight nor storm ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with tears and his weakening voice was choked,—"your friendship moves me deeply—to the soul. But science can do nothing for me: science has not yet sufficient knowledge of the principle on which I lived. Would you have me, then, live on,—passing to and fro among mankind merely as a blight, taking the energy of life, even from whomsoever I would not? No, I must die! Death ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... be moments that prolong, but there are others in which time no longer is; and as Mary shrank in the blight of Judas' stare, both felt that the culmination of ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... adopted a wishy-washy platform much like Burbank's—if anything, weaker. I saw Goodrich's blight upon it. But the victory cost him dear. That night the delegates realized what a blunder they had made—or thought they realized it after Merriweather and his staff had circulated among them. Few of them had been trusted by Beckett with the secret that, with that platform and with Simpson ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... he knows no guest— No hand will touch him, none! Nor woman mild nor happy child Greets him when day is done; And he walks the night, a poison blight, An outcast of ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... of the elms! Back to the simple and patriarchal state of feeling which old documents disclose. Back to a time before these little squashed heads and bodies and features jutted every which way; before there were long squashed streets of gray houses; long squashed chimneys emitting smoke-blight; long squashed rows of graves; and long squashed columns of the daily papers. Back to well-fed countrymen who could not read, with Common rights, and a kindly feeling for old 'Moretons,' who had a kindly feeling for them!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Make yourself some clothes. You can shake Dandy Dale's outfit, except when we're on the trail.... And, say, if you knew what I had to pay for this stuff you'd think there was a bigger robber in Alder Creek than Jack Kells.... And, come to think of it, my name's now Blight. You're my daughter, if any one asks." Joan was so grateful to him for the goods and the permission to get out of Dandy Dale's suit as soon as possible, that she could only smile her thanks. Kells stared at her, then turned abruptly ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... villainy of a woman and the bloody strength of a man. Oh, God, pity a poor, blind fellow, the way I am this day with no strength in me to do hurt to them at all. (He begins groping about for a moment, then stops.) Yet if I've no strength in me I've a voice left for my prayers, and may God blight them this day, and my own soul the same hour with them, the way I'll see them after, Molly Byrne and Timmy the smith, the two of them on a high bed, and they screeching in hell.... It'll be a grand thing that time to look on the two of them; and they twisting and roaring out, and twisting and ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... suffering another kind of impoverishment which is somewhat mysterious in its causes and perhaps impossible to prevent. This is the kind of blight which attacks many of our most ancient, beautiful, and expressive words, rendering them first of all unsuitable for colloquial use, though they may be still used in prose. Next they are driven out of the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... strikes across the land. May Heaven arrest its course, avert its terror, And keep the Statesman who this foe must fight From careless blindness and from blundering error, Such as of old lent aid to the Black Blight. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... breakfast. Every one of his hunting trails in the neighbourhood of the encampment he ranged with growing thoroughness and care, without finding so much as a mouse with which to satisfy his appetite. Even Koala and Echidna were nowhere to be found. It was as though a blight had descended upon the countryside, and the only living thing Finn saw that morning, besides the crows, was a laughing jackass on the stump of a blasted stringy-bark tree, who jeered at him hoarsely as he passed. Disconsolate and rather sore, as the result of his frenzied ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... entertainment. At the supper given by David Helmsley for Lucy Sorrel's twenty-first birthday, there was, however, no note of dissatisfaction—the blase breath of the callow critic emitted no withering blight, and even latter-day satirists in their teens, frosted like tender pease-blossom before their prime, condescended to approve the lavish generosity, combined with the perfect taste, which made the festive scene a glowing picture of luxury ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Preston's recollections cast a suggestive light upon the causes which rendered unhappy the lad's early life and tended to blight his prospective hopes. Although mixing with members of the best families of the province, and naturally endowed with hereditary and native pride,—fostered by the indulgence of wealth and the consciousness ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... his day. A fruitless search for the one man whom he now believed to be the only person who could lift the blight of suspicion from his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... heard it sigh, Hollow and sad, as night crawled sluggishly: Hollow and sadly sighed the corn while I Moved darkly in the midst, a blight ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... still relate How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops, And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops. A blight played havoc with Beverly beans,— It was all the work of those hateful queans! A dreadful panic began at "Pride's," Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides, And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms 'Mid the peaceful ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... unhallowed souls," answered the dark man impressively, "who return to blight the living with the spectacle of ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be who still delight, O Mrs. R., in Punch's page, Who like a joke to wear the blight ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... forgery can always be settled out of court in France if the missing amount is returned. The losers by the crime are usually well-to-do, and have no wish to blight an imprudent man's character. But du Croisier had no mind to slacken his hold until he knew what he was about. He meditated until he fell asleep on the magnificent manner in which his hopes would be fulfilled by the way of the Assize Court or by marriage. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... in the broad Libyan plains, tending his flocks, and bringing forth rich harvests from the earth. For him the bees wrought their sweetest honey; for him the sheep gave their softest wool; for him the cornfields waved with their fullest grain. No blight touched the grapes which his hand had tended; no sickness vexed the herds which fed in his pastures. And they who dwelt in the land said, "Strife and war bring no such gifts as these to the sons of men; therefore let us ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... leafless, or if covered at all, covered only with their Christmas dress of snow and icicles—these trees were clothed with the loveliest foliage, fresh and green and feathery, which no winter's storms or nipping frosts had ever come near to blight. And in the little space between the door where Hugh stood and these wonderful trees was drawn up, as if awaiting him, the prettiest, queerest, most delicious little carriage that ever was seen. It was open; ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... did. I saw myself in the glass, in my mourning-dress, a faded, hollow-eyed vision. Yet I thought little of the wan spectacle. The blight, I believed, was chiefly external: I still felt life at ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and also a number of sacks stuffed to their utmost capacity with what appeared to be black walnuts, shell-bark hickories, butternuts, and even splendid large chestnuts. Apparently, the strange and deadly blight that was attacking the chestnut groves all through the East had not yet appeared in the highly favored region around the town of Scranton, in which place the boys in question lived, and attended the famous high school where ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... though a blight had settled upon my house party," Dominey remarked with bland irrelevancy. "First Eddy, then Mr. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... results, and is seldom curbed by the reflection of possible evil. Ronald would have served Maurice at all hazards, and by all means in his power, or out of his power. He was expressing to his mother the chagrin he felt at the sad position of his friend, and his fear that it would throw a blight over his ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... he naturally became comparatively more friendly with her than with his other cousins; and this friendliness led to greater intimacy and this intimacy once established, rendered unavoidable the occurrence of the blight of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of the sad blight which had come over his future young kinsman's life, Railsford was sitting in his room that Sunday evening, feeling rather more than usually comfortable. He had some cause to be pleased. His house had done better than anyone expected. They had beaten all the records but three, and, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... "are you disappointed?—is the blight come over you? has the black fog shut out all the bright visions which the foolish Laird created in your fancy? Go, child!" she said, "go and tell him what I have told you, and see whether he will continue to cherish and flatter the ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... Madame Steynlin captured him and began to talk music. He repeated that remark, too good to be lost, about the spinet; it led to Scarlatti, Mozart, Handel. He said Handel was the saviour of English music. She said Handel was its blight and damnation. Each being furnished with copious arguments, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... as do wine and brandy. The difference lies there, and all men see and feel it, make what excuses they will for self-indulgence and deference to custom. The curse of drink is too widely felt. There is scarcely a family in the land on which its blight does not lie. The best, the noblest, the purest, the bravest, have fallen. It is breaking hopes and hearts and fortunes every day. The warning cross that marks the grave of some poor victim hurts your eyes at every turn of life. We are ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... man will sicken In that pure and holy light, When he feels the hopes I've stricken With an everlasting blight! For, so wildly in my madness Have I poured abroad my wrath, I've been changing joy to sadness; And with ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... ornamental flower garden; "out of Weathersfield" Wethersfield (the modern spelling), Connecticut, was famous for its onions (there is still a red onion called "Red Weathersfield"), until struck by a blight about 1840; "old Egyptians" ancient Egypt was proverbial ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... loyalty. He felt that herein lay his own real danger. Yes, to bolt again, as he had done that time before, would be an easy way out. But its selfishness was too obvious. He could not do it. To do so would be to drag them in his train of disaster, to blight their lives and leave them under the grinding shadow of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... no spiritual frosts to blight? They are impossible, if the {134} spiritual atmosphere be kept clear, and the Holy Ghost be a daily and hourly ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... a fragrant bow'r, With nicest art compos'd. All nature strove, With all her powers, this favour'd spot to prove A dwelling fit for innocence and joy, Or temple worthy of the god of love. All objects round to mirth and joy invite, Nor aught appears among that could the pleasure blight. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... Benjamin, would be decked with the flower of her fancy. Of the original bearer of the name she knew nothing. Waiting on table at the Golden Nugget and later bearing children and helping on the ranch had not left her time for historical study. When her son, waking to the blight she had so innocently put upon him, asked her where she had found the name, she had answered, "In a book," but beyond that could give no data. When, unable to bear his shame, he had abbreviated it to "Mark D.L." she had ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... will return, but cold and altered, Like all whose hopes too soon depart; Like all on whom have beat, unsheltered, The bitter blasts that blight the heart. ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... passional value of a peacetime year, was here at hand, an ever-ministering angel to them and to their hero; yet they never included him and Flora in one thought together but to banish it, though with tender reverence. Behind a labored disguise of inattention they jealously watched lest the faintest blight or languor should mar, in him, the perfect bloom of that invincible faith to, and faith in, the faithless Anna, which alone could satisfy their worship of him. Care for these watchers brought the two much together, and in every private moment they talked of the third one; ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... gentleman and the laborer. In many parts of the world it is not so. In Blantyre, for example, according to MacDonald, "to be called a liar is rather a compliment." Once more: English sentiment is such that the mere suspicion of incontinence on the part of a woman is enough to blight her life; but there are peoples whose sentiments entail no such effect, and, in some cases, a reverse effect is produced: "Unchastity is, with the Wetyaks, a virtue." It seems, then, that in respect of all the leading ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul—whose life and happiness is unceasing progress—what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors. The dawning of this, another year, awakened me from my temporary slumber, and roused into life my latent, but long cherished aspirations for freedom. I was now not only ashamed to be contented in slavery, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... and Trouble, turn about, Through hopeless desolation, Through flood and fever, fire and drought, And slavery and starvation; Through childbirth, sickness, hurt, and blight, And nervousness an' scarin', Through bein' left alone at night, I've got to be past carin'. Past botherin' or carin', Past feelin' and past carin'; Through city cheats and neighbours' spite, I've come to ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... promise well for Master Peter's comfort. Even when the ill-matched couple were presently blessed with children, his happiness was but short lived, the savage temper of his quarrelsome wife seemed to blight them from the first, and they died like little kids ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... surly sister, Blight her brow with blotch and blister, Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver, In her guts a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... in silence, the corners of her mouth wilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flower in the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenly and so whitely that almost a second could blight her. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... dear! Of course, people have different ways of showing blight. Mr. Redgrave, it is rumoured, hides his head in a hermitage, somewhere in the north of Italy, by one of the lakes. No doubt he lives on olives and macaroni, and broods over what might have been. Did you ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... founded in 1826, fared no better, although controlled during its last year by the gifted and unfortunate Captain Barker. A blight of stagnation seemed in those days to hang over all attempts at settlement in the tropical regions, and in three years' time Fort Wellington was abandoned, and ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... The game's up: we must save the swag. (TO DUMONT.) Sir, since your key, on which I invoke the blight of Egypt, has once more defaulted, my feelings are unequal to a repetition of yesterday's distress, and I shall simply pad the hoof. From Turin you shall receive the address of my banker, and may prosperity attend your ventures. (TO BERTRAND.) ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... flowers in the windows; gaudy scarlet geraniums, which seemed to enjoy an immunity from all the ills to which geraniums are subject, so impossible was it to discover a faded leaf amongst their greenness, or the presence of blight amidst their wealth of blossom. There were birdcages within the shadow of the muslin curtains, and the colouring of the newly-pointed brickwork was agreeably relieved by the vivid green of Venetian blinds. The freshly-varnished street-door bore a brass-plate, on which to look was to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the Plague swept over Kennons. That mysterious blight, rising in the orient, traveling darkly and surely unto the remotest West, laid its blackened hand upon the fair House ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee |
