"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so close aboard of us that I involuntarily braced myself against the expected impact of the two vessels; but the next moment, through the dense fog, I saw the faint glimmer of a light opening out clear of our foremast, saw a huge, dark, shapeless blot go drifting away on to our port bow, and heard a sharp hail ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Hugh, and wishing he might be happier than ever he could have been with her, for he deserved the love of a better and a purer heart than she had to bestow. The old man's forgiveness (she said) she had no power to ask, but she prayed God to bless him, - and so ended with a blot upon the paper where her tears ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Ritualism, if such a calamity should ever threaten the little community, and very ready to join, more or less furtively, in the excitements of Dissenting revivals. Jerry Timmins and his set represented the only serious blot on what the pious Clough Endian might reasonably regard as a fair picture. But this set contained some sharp fellows—provided outlet for a considerable amount of energy of a raw and roving sort, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ground, seemed to see there, in fiery type, the words of the paper in her grasp. Those scrawling lines, roaming from blot to blot across the soiled sheet, had communicated to Jane no pain of a personal sort. So far, indeed, as their trend took her on the score of feeling, she might even have found something satisfying in Mr. Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financial disability. ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... others, and all are again much nearer than any of the stars, it must often happen that one celestial body will pass between us and another, and thus intercept its light for a while. The moon, being the nearest object in the universe, will, of course, during its motion across the sky, temporarily blot out every one of the others which happen to lie in its path. When it passes in this manner across the face of the sun, it is said to eclipse it. When it thus hides a planet or star, it is said to occult it. The reason why ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... the foot-ropes; the squall itself, the catch at the heart, the opened sluices of the sky; and the relief, the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again, and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. I love to recall, and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable, the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... kitchen to the inexorable tasks that death has no power, even for a day, to blot from existence. He can stalk through dwelling after dwelling, leaving despair and desolation behind him, but the table must be laid, the dishes washed, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... function; a third presented the favored napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... bade me tell her —his own precious pearl, as he used to call her—that he was quite content, and believed it was best for her and him both, that all should be thus settled, for they did not part for ever, and he trusted—But I can't write all that." (There was a great tear-blot just here). "It is too good to recollect anywhere but at church. I have been there to-day, with my uncle and aunt, and I thought I could have told it when I came home, but I was too tired to write then, and now I don't seem as if it could be written anyhow. When I come home, I will try to tell ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... had no share in the immediate cause of the war; we know what nation has that blot to wipe out; but for fifty years or so we heeded not the rumblings of the distant drum, I do not mean by lack of military preparations; and when war did come we told youth, who had to get us out of it, tall tales of what it ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... it was now past midnight; but the king slept not, for he was careful and troubled about many things. And he had a lamp before him and in his hand a tablet of pine wood, whereon he wrote. But he seemed not to remain in the same mind about that which he wrote; for now he would blot out the letters, and then would write them again; and now he fastened the seal upon the tablet and then brake it. And as he did this he wept and was like to a man distracted. But after a while he called to an old man, his attendant (the man had been given in time past by ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... morning of April 4, 1853, a "Persian prince" embarked at Southampton for Alexandria. The "prince" was myself, about to undertake a journey for the purpose of removing that opprobrium to modern adventure, the huge white blot which on our maps still notes the eastern regions of Arabia. I had hoped to make a more extended tour, but the East India Company had only granted me a year's furlough, refusing the three years that I had asked on the ground that my project was too dangerous. The ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... 'The one blot upon his noble nature,' uttered Basil, with a sigh. 'His one weakness. How,' he cried scornfully, 'can the conqueror of half the world bend before ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... 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 will. Is not this a striking ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... of Nocturnal sport Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame 130 That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr, Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair, Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend Us thy vow'd Priests, til utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out, Ere the blabbing Eastern scout, The nice Morn on th' Indian steep From her cabin'd loop hole peep, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... both could not but think of another accident and another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... written down, and the direction concerning him. He met us by the way, and smote the hindmost of us, even all that were feeble, when we were faint and weary; and it had been said to our fathers that when we had rest from our enemies round about us, we were to blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven—"Thou shalt not forget it" was the word delivered to us. I had the record of the battle in Rephidim when Joshua discomfited Amalek, not in his own strength, but in the strength of the uplifted ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... proceedings during the great famine are to be regarded as trustworthy, we must admit that his wisdom and benevolence were such as are not commonly found in those who bear rule in the East. His conduct towards Khush-newaz has generally been regarded as the great blot upon his good fame; and it is certainly impossible to justify the paltry casuistry by which he endeavored to reconcile his actions with his words at the time of his second invasion. But his persistent hostility towards the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... a record So white and free from stain That, held to the light, it shows no blot, Though tested and tried amain; That age to age forever Repeats its story of love, And your birthday lives in a nation's heart, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... with eyes turned ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from his galley's stern, that melancholy psalm, 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain,' and seeing Naples dwindle to a white blot on the purple shore?" ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... working classes, consequent on unregulated infant labour, would alone be sufficient to account for the prevalence of the idle custom of losing at least one day every week in busy times, and the drinking habits, which are a blot upon a population of superior intelligence. But a still more demoralizing influence exists in the state of the dwellings of the working classes in Birmingham, which, although at first sight very attractive in appearance, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... equally be dishonoured before the world. He knew that world well, knew its tyrannical code, its puzzling verdicts, its unaccountable clemency to the wolf, its inflexible severity for the lamb, above all, its holy horror of a blot that has been scored, of a sin, then only unpardonable, that has ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Reuben," replied the young woman, "ye ken it is a blot that spreads to kith and kin.—Ichabod—as my poor father says—the glory is departed from our house; for the poorest man's house has a glory, where there are true hands, a divine heart, and an honest fame—And the last ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... desert or desire. If then you found me worthy of such honor, good your grace let not any light fancy, or bad counsel of mine enemies withdraw your princely favor from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart towards your good grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the infant princess your daughter. Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame; then shall you see ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... his absence, he expected to return before morning, and that, as he never did return, he has met with foul play. Of course, it is no use looking for footprints in the garden in support of this hypothesis, for the storm that night was a very severe one and quite sufficient to blot out all trace of them; but—— Look here, Mr. Narkom, put two and two together. If a message was sent him by a carrier pigeon, where must that pigeon have come from, since it was one ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... richness in finish, is dedicated to the awful goddess Kali, and each morning a goat is sacrificed to this deity, ever craving blood, by Hindu priests attached to the Maharajah's court. This is a revolting blot on a series of majestic buildings that unite to make one ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... 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, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is not by any means the chief blot on Mr. Noel's book. The fault of his book is that it tells us far more about his own personal feelings than it does about the qualities of the various works of art that are criticised. It is in fact a diary of the emotions suggested by literature, rather than any real addition ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would but spread their wings and fly away from it, houp! it would no longer exist. ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... made the charm of the narrow prospect was, first, the sense it produced in the spectator of hanging dizzily above the lake, with infinite air below him, and, then, the magical effects of dawn and evening, when wreaths of mist would blot out the valley and the lake, and leave the eye of the watcher face to face across the fathomless abyss with the majestic mountain mass, and its attendant retinue of clouds, as though they and he were alone ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... THEN I KNEW IT HAD FRIGHTENED YOU!" He stopped instantly as she momentarily recoiled from him, but the very brusqueness of his action had dislodged a tear from his dark eyes that fell warm on the back of her hand, and seemed to blot out the indignity. "Listen, Miss," he went on hurriedly, as if to cover up his momentary unmanliness. "I knew the bear was missing to-night, and when I heard the horses scurrying about I reckoned what ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... at Portsmouth, smiled and signed the instrument, which had been prepared, as he thought, in accordance with his wishes and directions. He then carelessly tossed the sand over the signature to blot it. ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... coolly sent about their business. Rather than bear the responsibility of such an act of black ingratitude, I would go and bury myself at Leri. I despise the ungrateful to the point of not feeling angered by them, and I forgive their abuse. But, by Heaven, I could not bear the merited blot of having failed to recognise services such as the conquest of a kingdom of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... be any opposition on her part; for we were carrying out her own wishes to the very last. So far I was at ease—far more at ease than earlier in the day I should have thought possible; but there were other sources of trouble which I could not blot out from my mind. Chief amongst them was Margaret's strange condition. If it was indeed that she had in her own person a dual existence, what might happen when the two existences became one? Again, and again, and again I turned this matter over in my mind, till I could have shrieked out in ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... participated in the errors or crimes of the revolution, I began and ended my political career without blot, and without reproach. The places, titles, and decorations, which the Emperor deigned to bestow on me, were the reward of several acts of great devotion to his service, and of twelve years of trials and sacrifices. Never did I receive from him any favours or gifts: ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... be remembered is, spell correctly, though it is one of much importance. A mis-spelled word is a grievous error in a letter—worse than a blot. Keep a dictionary on the desk; when in doubt look up the word, and then take pains to fix it in mind so as to have no further ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... 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 ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... if they were His own sins, and has been punished for them, as if He had really done them. The great God who loved us so planned all this. And now He can forgive us our sins, for the punishment is over. He can not only forgive, but He can forget. He can blot them out. He can make us clean and white, as white ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... years of maturity did I perceive that these conflicts, which, long after, I heard execrated in certain quarters as a blot upon Prussian history, rather deserved the warmest gratitude of the nation. During those beautiful spring days, no matter by what hands—among them were the noblest and purest—were sown the seeds of the dignity and freedom of public life which we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... besought the Signory of Venice on his bended knees, as a return for services rendered by him to the State, that no public punishment should be inflicted on the culprits. He could not bear, he said, to be the cause of bringing a blot of infamy upon his religion, or of ruining the career of any man. Fra Giovanni Francesco afterwards redeemed his life by offering weighty evidence against his powerful accomplices. But what he revealed is buried in the oblivion with which the Council of Ten ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... may find it advantageous to make preliminary outlines of what you wish to say. But above all, you must be willing to blot, to revise, to take infinite pains. You should remember the old admonition that easy ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... had gone down on one knee, cursing, and there was a fresh blot of crimson on a dark-stained shirt. We four had the advantage now, for we had come to no harm but a few bruises and an aching head or two, when suddenly there was a howl from the fellow last down, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... varied curvature to the arch itself; and it is just as much considered as the finest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which the slightest sign of cement would spoil like a blot. And so proud is the builder of his fine jointing, and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of pre-eminence by the minute inlaying of the head ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... yet he himself saith unto God, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... remorse, officiate as the spectator, or even as the author and director, of a scene of vulgar distress. But even he was somewhat startled upon the present occasion. The character and conduct of Emily in Mr. Tyrrel's family had been without a blot. She had not a single enemy; and it was impossible to contemplate her youth, her vivacity, and her guileless innocence, without ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... here [profound silence and] no mention of Christ nor faith; but men hoped by their own works to overcome and blot out sins before God. And with this intention we became priests and monks, that we ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... gently whether she would think it right to turn the fertilizing Nile from its bed and leave its shores dry, because, from time to time, it destroyed fields and villages in the excess of its overflow? "This day and its deeds of shame," he went on sadly, "are a blot on the pure and sublime book of the History of our Faith, and every true Christian must bitterly bewail the excesses of a frenzied mob. The Church must no less condemn Caesar's sanguinary vengeance; it casts a shade on his honor and his fair name, and his conscience no doubt will punish him for such ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... selfishness!—in the daily interchange of business, one seeking to over-reach the other by wily arts; sacrificing principle for temporal advantage. There is nothing so derogatory to religion as aught allied to such a spirit among Christ's people—any such blot on the "living epistles." "Ye are the light of the world." That world is a quick observer. It is sharp to detect inconsistencies—slow to forget them. The true Christian has been likened to an anagram—you ought to be able to read him up ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... these long blocks of brick and stone, These huge mill-monsters overgrown; Blot out the humbler piles as well, Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell The weaving genii of the bell; Tear from the wild Cocheco's track The dams that hold its torrents back; And let the loud-rejoicing fall Plunge, roaring, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... of that voyage I would blot entirely from memory if possible. I cannot hope to describe it in any detail—-the foul smells, the discomfort, the ceaseless horror of food, the close companionship of men turned into mere animals by suffering and distress, the wearisome days, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... associated, had made me a polished man of the world. On the other hand, I was his chief means of disposing of the thing which seemed to sum up all in life that he dreaded—time. As I remember him now, I can see that time was what he was always endeavoring to escape, to bridge over, to blot out; and it is not strange that some years later he did escape it ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... perfect of their limbs and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them, who as he was a happie imitator of Nature was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Lord; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. 31. And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh! this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. 32. Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written. 33. And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book. 34. Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee. Behold, Mine Angel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the Algerine pirates were made as far north as England, Ireland, and Iceland, and through them an iniquitous slave trade was developed. The law of nations did not place its ban upon this slave traffic until by statute England and the United States attempted to obliterate this ineradicable blot upon our civilization, and only a half century ago Austria, Prussia, and Russia declared it to ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... got somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of honest work—and above all things we must forget that there has ever ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... attempted against any government. This plot did not involve any contest for political power in the administration of public affairs. That, the Southern leaders already possessed, but with that they were not content. They were determined to destroy the Republic itself,—to literally blot it out of existence. And why? What could betray intelligent and educated men, persons esteemed wise in their generation, into an attempt which amazes the civilized world, and at which posterity will be appalled? We answer, it was the old leaven which has worked ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stone church of Grimm Manor was packed to the doors on the day that six big awkward men with tear blotched faces bore a silent burden up its aisle. A burden so covered with masses of fragrant blossoms as to blot out its gruesome oblong shape. The flowers were from Peter Grimm's own gardens, then in the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... cursed him,—it must have been dramatically done to have left so vivid a mark in men's minds,—him and his children's children. This was the curse that lingered in the family memory like a black blot in the blood, and was ever after used to explain any ill luck that befell the house. The third heir of the name, Joseph, was a plain farmer, in whose person the family probably ceased from the ranks of the gentry, as the word was then used. The fourth, Daniel, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... weariness of spirit, I stood within the lobby looking out upon the grayness of London in November. A slight mental effort was sufficient to blot out that drab prospect and to conjure up before my mind's eye a balcony overlooking the Nile—a glimpse of dusty palms, a white wall overgrown with purple blossoms, and above all the dazzling vault of Egypt. Upon the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... governed myself so badly, that it ill becomes me to dictate to you how they should be trained. God knows, I am heartily glad they were mercifully thrown into your hands; and if you can only make Stanley Owen such a man as you are, the old blot on the name may be effaced. From Mark and Joel I have not heard for several months, and presume they will be sturdy but unlettered mechanics. If I succeed, I shall interfere and send them to school; otherwise, they must take the chances for ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... that time, he did not yield to his commands, he would cause him to be strangled. Henry yielded. He not only went to mass himself, but submitted to the degradation of sending an edict to his own dominions, prohibiting the exercise of any religion except that of Rome. This indecision was a serious blot upon his character. Energetic and decisive as he was in all his measures of government, his religious convictions were ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... lad had we, chirruping in the chimney-tops, Twirling out a sooty broom, a blot against the blue. Ah, but when we called to him, and when he saw and ran to her, All our winter ended, and our world was ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... A darker blot appeared on the darkness and two warriors, bearing a third, came through the bushes. The man whom they bore was a dark-browed, cruel savage who had carried the scalp of a white woman at his belt. But he would hunt or scalp no more. He had been cloven from brow to chin with the blow of a ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... beyond this uncertainty his testimony is as explicit as could well be desired. All experience, if I mistake not, bears out his statement respecting the vividness of the memory during this period of life. In a recent trial, the most fatal blot in the evidence was the inability of a pretender to give any information respecting the games and studies, the companions, the familiar haunts, of the school and college days of the person with whom he identified himself. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... forgotten the history of his country. Preach insurrection to the Northern laborers! Who are the Northern laborers? The history of your country is their history. The renown of your country is their renown. The brightness of their doings is emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the words and the doings of Northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the recognised studies, however, was not the only blot upon Lyly's Oxford life. From the hints thrown out by his contemporaries, and from some allusions, doubtless personal, in the Euphues, we learn that, as an undergraduate, he was an irresponsible madcap. "Esteemed in the University a noted wit," he would very ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... the individual fame of scholars and literary men. I fear, that it is far greater than the world is willing to acknowledge; or, perhaps I should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out from England's history the names of Chaucer, Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton only, and how much of her glory would you blot out with them! Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and how much ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... censorious. There is no doubt of that, or that with every new day the tendency toward pessimism increases. But even taking these facts into consideration, there is no denying that the young man about town of the nineteenth century is a blot upon our boasted modern civilization. His is not a pleasant figure to contemplate, though it is one that we all see very often and know very well—clothed irreproachably in the most expensive raiment that London tailors and unlimited credit can supply. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... said earnestly, not at all displeased, I could see that something had come up that might blot out the past unfortunate misunderstanding, "there simply must be something wrong here. Leave this handkerchief with me. I'll ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... one fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective, is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot believe that Raphael added it of his own motion; rather it must have been placed there at the dictation of some meddling cardinal or learned humanist who, knowing nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space should not be filled with any figure ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... petty gust of rage, like a jet of steam escaping from a defective boiler, he swept the bottle to the floor, where he ground the splintering fragments of glass, the torn and stained paper, into an untidy blot. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that should cause the Ethiopians great blacknesse. And the most probable cause to my judgement is, that this blackenesse proceedeth of some naturall infection of the first inhabitants of that Countrey, and so all the whole progenie of them descended, are still polluted with the same blot of infection. Therefore it shall not bee farre from our purpose, to examine the first originall of these blacke men, and howe by a lineall discent they haue hitherto ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... I have denied myself even the consolation of your visits. I have told you fairly and simply that your presence would unsettle all my enforced and infirm philosophy, and remind me only of the past, which I seek to blot from remembrance. You have complied on the one condition, that whenever I really want your aid I will ask it; and, meanwhile, you have generously sought to obtain me justice from the cabinets of ministers and in the courts of kings. I did not refuse your heart this ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sister's grandson, and make him his heir and successor. By this time, Dion and his wife and sister began to suspect what was doing, and from all hands information came to them of the plot. Dion, being troubled, it is probable, for Heraclides's murder, which was like to be a blot and stain upon his life and actions, in continual weariness and vexation, declared he had rather die a thousand times, and open his breast himself to the assassin, than live not only in fear of his enemies but suspicion ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Edina, social, kind, With open arms the stranger hail; Their views enlarg'd, their liberal mind, Above the narrow, rural vale: Attentive still to Sorrow's wail, Or modest Merit's silent claim; And never may their sources fail! And never Envy blot their name! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... record every little accident that happened to his monastery. But, alas, all the protection that O'Donnell's clan might afford, all the fear that Columba's "Woe" might inspire, could not save his grove. Like many a similar one in Ireland, storms, and the destructive hand of man, have combined to blot it off the face of the landscape, and nothing now remains but ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... distress, to deny with every nerve he had her power to outstrip him or to widen the space between them, till the stars crept up to midnight. Then out again would come that crowd invisible, humming and hustling behind, dense and dark enough, he knew, to blot out the stars at his back, yet ever skipping and jerking ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... counsel: 'Gods of our fathers, under whose deity Troy ever stands, not wholly yet do you purpose to blot out the Trojan race, when you have brought us young honour and hearts so sure as this.' So speaking, he caught both by shoulder and hand, with tears showering down over face and feature. 'What guerdon shall I deem may be given you, O men, what recompense for these noble ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... completely all great men give the best part of themselves to the public, while the valet-de-chambre picks up little else than food for contempt. Nevertheless, we are as inquisitive about everything that concerns eminent people as anybody can be. We would not blot a single line from Boswell. We protest against a word being effaced from the garrulous pages of Lady Blessington and Leigh Hunt. We "hang" the stars with which Earl Russell has milky-wayed Moore's Diary. But we are no "lion-hunters," ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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
... natural that an Englishman should feel acutely sensitive to this blot in the law of England and desire the speedy disappearance of a system so open to scathing sarcasm. It is natural that every humane person should grow impatient of the spectacle of so many blighted lives, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... avenged. Carlos Montfort lives; and you, too, I know it, I feel it, would spring, would leap across the sea to avenge your Rita, who fondly loves you. Hear me swear, my uncle, on my knees; never, never will I go alive to that place of death, the convent. (I pray you to pardon this blot; I spilt the ink, kneeling in passion; what ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... the Viscount's attention quickened into eagerness, an eagerness deepened by the tender interest that always hangs round the names of those whom we have known in happier and younger days. The happy memories recalled by hearing of his old tutor seemed to blot out his present misfortunes. With French excitability, he laughed and ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been upon the other side of it had melted into the darkness beyond the moon. I bent over the bed. Sami was there—Sami, rolled shapelessly in the concealing bedclothes, his round face hidden in the pillow, his black hair just a blot of darkness on the white.... It might have been ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, an unwelcome remembrancer, a perpetually recurring mortification, a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, a drawback upon success, a rebuke to your rising, a stain in your blood, a blot on your scutcheon, a rent in your garment, a death's-head at your banquet, Agathocles' pot, a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in your chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, the one ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... this," she said. "' William Pleydell died unmarried and intestate in 1667, and was succeeded by his cousin Anthony. Except that during the former's tenure a good deal of timber was cut, White Ladies had been well cared for. The one blot upon his stewardship was the disappearance of the greater part of the family plate, which Nicholas Pleydell's will proves to have been unusually rare and valuable. There used to exist a legend, for which the author can trace no foundation, that William ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... smoke was rising from Mount Gut. Over its sides gentle cloud-currents were creeping, and on the summit rested one cloud of such dense blackness that it appeared like a blot upon the ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... was a great blot against the stars when, shortly after eight o'clock that evening, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... One of them was shod. One of the front shoes, badly worn, was broken and part of it gone on the left side. The riders were taking no pains apparently to hide their course. No doubt they relied on the full ditch to blot out pursuit. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... needlework of some sort; for she is extremely expert at it." "There is no occasion to have recourse to that remedy, senora," said Altisidora; "for the mere thought of the cruelty with which this vagabond villain has treated me will suffice to blot him out of my memory without any other device; with your highness's leave I will retire, not to have before my eyes, I won't say his rueful countenance, but his abominable, ugly looks." "That reminds me of the common saying, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... life: it may not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... damsels. It is, indeed, unnecessary to convert them,—a process to which their miscreant sisters usually submit with great goodwill,—and they are also relieved from the necessity of showing the extreme undutifulness to their more religiously constant sires, which is something of a blot on Paynim princesses like Floripas in Fierabras. This heroine exclaims in reference to her father, "He is an old devil, why do you not kill him? little I care for him provided you give me Guy," though it is fair to say that Fierabras himself rebukes her with a "Moult ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Genius that Lived under the Great Ovens said, and still maintains, though cats have probably forgotten the facts, and so, when stroked, hump up their backs and purr as if these actions were a matter of pride instead of being a blot upon ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot, Who do thy work, and know it not: Oh! if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street: always by night, when lights were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown upon ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... shame," said the Kent man; "that selling of English youth to foreign masters, whether male or female, is a blot on the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pertinaciously to what is tangible, as if that were of more importance than the spirit accidentally involved in it. And, in truth, the original manuscript has always something which print itself must inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of hand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical execution, bring us close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtle intimations for which language ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... taken at her word and ordered by the emperor for execution. It was the darkest deed of Vespasian's life, a blot upon his character which all his record for clemency cannot remove, and which has ever since lain as a dark stain upon ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was raining heavily; but soon after sunrise the rain slackened, the fog grew thinner, and the air warmer. Slowly the sun appeared, at first only a dazzling blot through the smother, then brassy, glittering, flooding the chilled earth ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... courant with the times, even when those times are chronicled by the rapid career of the British baby—anxious also to blot out the idea of the poor emaciated infants of Brixton, Camberwell, and Greenwich, by bringing home to my experience the opposite pole of infantile development—I paid a visit, and sixpence, at Highbury Barn when the Baby Show opened. On entering Mr. Giovannelli's ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to camp—Heaven knows how!—and they made me a lance-corporal, and the beggar says I saved his life; but it was really through carrying a fat letter from his sister—not even his sweetheart. We chaff him at missing such a romantic chance. He got off with a flesh wound, but there is a great blot of red ink on the letter. You may imagine we were not anxious to let our comrades go unavenged. My superiors being sick or otherwise occupied, I was allowed to make a night-march with thirty-five men on a farm nine miles away—just to get square. It was a nasty piece ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... fine play and several fine dramatic compositions; but throughout Shelley's poetry the dramatic spirit is deficient, while in Browning's it reveals itself so powerfully that one wonders how he has escaped writing many good plays besides the "Blot on the Scutcheon" and that fine fragmentary ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... great I am," declared the inventor, instantly off, on the hint supplied by his visitor. "But just the minute that insurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle the skies! I'll blot out the stars for 'em! I'll show New York! I know what I'm doing! And nothing on earth is going to stop me! All these fool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars! Deadly cigars is what ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... you, have loved you all the time, without fully realizing exactly what it meant. There have been times when I have doubted you, when I could not wholly escape the evidence that you were also concerned personally in this fraud. I have endeavoured to withdraw from the case, to forget, and blot everything from memory. But something stronger than will prevented; I could not desert you; could not believe you were wilfully wrong. You understand ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... "all will not be well; nothing will ever be well with me again," and she returns to the room which she has left a few hours before as a bright and happy girl, now broken hearted and on the verge of despair, with a blot upon her young life which nothing on earth can efface. To be sure, he who has brought all this upon her has promised to right the wrong by marriage, but poor consolation it seems to her to have to marry a man whom she feels to be worse than a murderer; even this poor consolation ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... and insects. Consequently, at the age of eighty I shall have advanced still further; at ninety, I shall grasp the mystery of things; at a hundred, I shall be a marvel, and at a hundred and ten every blot, every line from my brush shall ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... religion as a profession a degree of superhuman perfection. Their failings are insisted upon. Every eye is upon them to mark whatsoever may be amiss in their conduct. Their virtues, their learning, their holy lives—nothing will avail them, if one blot can be discovered in their character. There must be no moral blemish in the priesthood. In the Catholic religion, where more is professed, still more is demanded, and the errors of one padre or one ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... I repent. O Lord, let the Blood which flowed on that very day down the Holy Rood blot out my sins, atone for ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... favoured the views of opposition, but while a few politicians declaimed on the necessity of ending a ruinous war by recognising the independence of the United States, and others advised a cessation of arms and conciliation, the vast majority of the nation soon burned with ardour to blot out the recollection of Burgoyne's disgrace, by deeds of arms, and by reducing the colonies to their original subjection to the mother country. Not only did public meetings of corporate bodies, towns, and counties, display their attachment to the cause of the crown by addresses, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spent its brief moment on earth: "Crucify Him! Release unto us Barabbas, the Thief." It was this savage force, serving all masters with equal ferocious zeal, that Theodosius turned against the Serapion at Alexandria, in the name of Christianity, to blot out of existence the inestimable treasures of knowledge and literature that had been accumulated by ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... She pressed a hand to her eyes, as if to blot out the image of Stephen. A vivid scarlet spot now shone with preternatural brightness in the centre of each cheek, leaving the remainder of her ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... flesh 'neath his armour 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 60 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,— So he tossed him a piece ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Having sponged every Blot from the Escutcheon and laid out the Labels for all Generations yet unborn, the incipient Benedick thought there would be nothing more to it except Holding Hands ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade |
