"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore, say, that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, Sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the Third be a blot on the page of history. You are surrounded by British counsellors, but remember that they are parties. You have no ministers for American affairs, because you have none taken from among us, nor amenable to the laws on which they are to give you advice. It behoves you, therefore, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... citizens, including twenty priests who had fled to the cathedral for refuge, affords no excuse whatever for the perpetration of equal atrocities by Cromwell, and no impartial historian can deny that these massacres are a foul and hideous blot in the history of a great and, for the most part, ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... fellows at Westminster were told I was guilty. I shall be constantly meeting them in the world, and all my life this blot will hang to me if it is not set straight. When we get home I shall go back to the School and see if I cannot hit on some clue or other. Of course if Fred would confess it would be all right, but, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... the expenses of their conquest in the prisoners taken in battle, who were sold to the slave merchants; and this is the real blot on Caesar's career. But the blot was not personally upon Caesar, but upon the age in which he lived. The great Pomponius Atticus himself was a dealer in human chattels. That prisoners of war should be sold as slaves was the law of the time, accepted alike by victors and vanquished; and ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... been terrible, much more so were those that now followed. Sulla was made dictator, an officer that had been unknown for a century and a quarter, and proceeded to show his adhesion to the optimates by attempting to blot out the popular party. He announced that he would give a better government to Rome, but he found it necessary to kill all whom he pretended to think her enemies. It was Marius who had brought on the era of carnage by attempting to deprive Sulla ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... "... Absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them.... His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers" (Heminge and Condell's Address "To the great Variety of Readers," ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... wood and dark green as to ironwork the simple-minded distribution of these colours evoked the images of simple-minded peace, of arcadian felicity; and the childish comedy of disease and sorrow struck me sometimes as an abominably real blot ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... to find the name of Emma Weston in the corner, and to perceive how great and irreparable the loss of the paper was to her friend. The thought of all her wrongs towards Alethea, caused more than one large tear to fall, to blot the heads of her crotchets and quavers, and thus give her all her work ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... returned unto the Lord and said, 'Oh! this people have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt, forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... captions in a running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm, in spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the lad of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it his glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a noble undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great imprudence of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... was that when Venables returned and found an absolute stranger placidly engaged in wrecking his carefully-tidied study, he would at once, and without making inquiries, fall upon that absolute stranger and blot him off the face of the earth. Afterwards it might possibly come out that he, Harrison, had been not altogether unconnected with the business, and then, he was fain to admit, there might be trouble. But he was ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Barend, talking afterwards, with a pucker of wonder between his brows, said he was smooth. He had a face that was keen and alert without being hard; eyes that were quiet and yet judged; lips upon which there dwelt an armed peace and also a humorous curve. He seemed to have his own world, to blot from his consciousness that which displeased him; yet he himself was for those who looked upon him a man blocking the horizon of life. A great man, I judge—that is, a man great in the qualities which need but an aim to move mountains. God gives few such men an aim, or there would ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... disconcerting. "I forgot our friend Echo," he said apologetically. With some idea of restoring her composure by his own unconcern, he began to move in the direction from which the sound had come; but he had taken only a few steps when a blot of darkness which had crouched before him like a huge stone or the stump of a tree suddenly detached itself and rose into the form of a man. Leigh had an indistinct vision of a face, of arms that seemed to ward him off, and then the intruder fled without a word, breaking through the woods like ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... me suddenly out of temper, and caused me much pain of mind, besides displeasing others together with my dear partner. O my God, but for Thy blood, I should lose all hope of eternal happiness; yet blot not, I beseech Thee, my name out of the book of life; but if ever my heart went with my ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... judgment? She gave herself no fuller reason than a painful sense of unfitness—in what? Airy possibilities to which she could give no outline, but to which one name and one figure gave the wandering persistency of a blot in her vision. Here lay the vaguer source of the hidden sadness rendered noticeable to Hans by some diminution of that sweet ease, that ready joyousness of response in her speech and smile, which had come with the new sense of freedom and safety, and had made her presence like the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... when her dark side is toward us, and she happens to get exactly between us and the sun—she shuts out the face of the sun from us; for though she is tiny compared with him, she is so much nearer to us that she appears almost the same size, and can blot him right out. Thus the eclipses of both sun and moon are not difficult to understand: that of the moon can only happen at full moon, when she is furthest from the sun, and it is caused by the earth's shadow falling upon ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... manifestation of curiosity is a blot on the scutcheon of true politeness! The rest of the account of this, her longest visit to London, shall be told in her ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... jeers had the effect of a bucket of ice-water, for he had not been aware that this blot upon his escutcheon—the disgraceful epoch in his life when he had earned ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... nevertheless, few value it for what it is worth. Few see a brother-mind in others, through the rags with which poverty has clothed it, beneath the crushing burdens of life, amidst the close pressure of worldly troubles, wants and sorrows. Few acknowledge and cheer it in that humble blot, and feel that the nobility of earth, and the commencing glory of Heaven ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was it the eighth? Upon my life, I'm not quite clear as to that; blot the word a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... soldiers in order to prevent the recurrence of thefts and assaults, but he has never been able to suppress them completely, because the soldiers are abandoned by their officers, and because of lack of example on the part of the latter; they do not understand that it is a great blot when they commit these abuses, since when they discover the goods or house of a Spaniard they believe they have a right to appropriate ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... roomful of rivermen. Nothing stirred save the clouds of filmy blue smoke floating against the rafters—that and a bulky blot of shadow outside which shifted a little, noiselessly, just beyond the patch of light that streamed through the door. They waited, heavy-breathed, while Harrigan began to recover from the disconcertment into ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... out. The check was made out to bearer and signed Estrella Johnson. It called for fifteen thousand dollars. Across the middle was a great ink blot, reason for its rejection. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... of like standing and State influence shall so pronounce, this hideous blot upon the national escutcheon will disappear. It is manly and necessary to protest when wronged. But a subject class or race does but little for their amelioration when content with its denouncement. Injustice can be more ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the ship began to creep. Behind her, houses, multi-colored funnels, scrubby trees, slowly swung to blot out the glowing Mediterranean and the western hemisphere. Gray desert banks closed in upon her strictly, slid gently astern, drawing with them to the vanishing-point the bright lane of traversed water. She ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the locusts, a human blot on the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Burney that he never wrote any of his works that were printed, twice over. Dr. Burney's wonder at seeing several pages of his Lives of the Poets, in Manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew this observation from him. MALONE. 'He wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting' (post, Feb. 1744), and a hundred lines of the Vanity of Human Wishes in a day (post, under Feb. 15, 1766). The ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... word of this to any alive.—Your Chancellor?(9) Why, madam, I can tell you he has been dead this fortnight. Faith, I could hardly forbear our little language about a nasty dead Chancellor, as you may see by the blot.(10) Ploughing? A pox plough them; they'll plough me to nothing. But have you got your money, both the ten pounds? How durst he pay you the second so soon? Pray be good huswifes. Ay, well, and Joe, why, I had a letter lately from Joe, desiring I would take ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... all the pain you have given me; to blot out the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake of the nights that I ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which heats upon a throne, And blackens every blot. ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... the furloughed artillerists and home guards; and though Dahlgren's picked cavalry were whipped in the open field by one-fourth their number of Richmond clerks and artisans!—boys and old men who had never before been under fire—still the object of that raid remains a blot even upon the page of this uncivilized warfare. It were useless to enter into details of facts so well and clearly proved. That the orders of Dahlgren's men were to release the prisoners, burn, destroy ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... agitated the benevolent for some years, and finding a singular apathy in ray own bosom on this important subject, I bought five hundred of each sex to stimulate my sympathies. This led me nearer to the United States of America, a country that I had endeavored to blot out of my recollection; for while thus encouraging a love for the species, I had scarcely thought it necessary to go so far from home. As no rule exists without an exception, I confess I was a good deal disposed to believe that a Yankee ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... will be for them to decide. Kenneth had already established himself as a lawyer back in the old home town. I shall urge him to return to that place with Viola as soon as they are married. His mother was a Blythe. There is no blot upon the name of Blythe. My daughter was born there. Her father was an honest, God-fearing, highly respected man. His name and his memory are untarnished. No man can say aught against the half of Kenneth that is Blythe, nor the half of Viola ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... set about revenge; she cursed the moon; the agony of her limbs; the stretch which lay between one shadow and another; but she laughed, though no sound issued from the gaping mouth, as she stood in the last patch of shadow which was separated by some few yards of silvery path from the black blot upon the wall which covered ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... of God's sweet air Free denizens; no ugly earthly spot Their boundless happiness doth seem to blot. The swallow, swiftly flying here and there, Can it be true that dreary household care Doth goad her to incessant flight? If not How can it be that she doth cast her lot Now there, now here, pursuing summer everywhere? ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... all that,' he remarked, as he plunged his pen rather savagely into the inkstand; and then a tap at the door made him start, and a huge blot was the result. Of course it was Cyril, who was standing at ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... been had it passed in ordinary course through the post-office. Letters in the post-office are hurried quickly through the operation of stamping, so that one passing over the other while the stamping ink is still moist, will to some extent blot and blur that with which it has come in contact. He will produce some dozens taken at random, and will show that with them all such has been the case. This blotting, this smudging, is very slight, but it ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... taking on so for? Where did such a caprice come from? Am I finding fault with your dress? Why, isn't it a dress?—and anybody will say it's a dress. But it isn't becoming to you; it's absolutely not the right thing for your style of beauty—blot out my soul if I lie. For you a gold one would be little enough; let's have one embroidered with seed-pearls. Ah! there you smile, my jewel! You see, I know ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... the glorious uncertainty that attends the finding of the average American jury. If such verdicts are to be rendered, we may as well blot out from the statute-book all punishment for all crimes in which the evidence is largely circumstantial. If ever a strong case was made out against a human being it was the case of the prosecution in the recent trial. If ever ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... laborers into slaves. Drunkenness, dissipation, poverty, disaffection, and misery—that is what you will find in the open villages. Now, in Islip you have an omnipotent squire, and that is an abomination in theory, a mediaeval monster, a blot on modern civilization; but practically the poor monster is a softener of poverty, an incarnate buffer between the poor and tyranny, the poor ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of the father is, at the outset, as great as that of the mother. The unhappy or immoral thoughts of one alone at the critical moment when life is imparted, may fix for eternity a foul blot upon a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... believing that they will find the TRUTH even "stranger than fiction." And, as an incentive to the noble exertions of those, either North or South, who would rid our country of its "darkest, foulest blot," we would say, that our attempt has been to give a true picture of Southern society in its various aspects, and that, in our judgment, the institution of Slavery is directly chargeable with the various moral, social and political evils detailed in ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... that's worth seeing, men, and it's visible," the major called down. "A great blot of oil on the water, and it's spreading. That shows that a submarine was knocked to flinders by ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... any moment to make common cause with Dissent against 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, and, no doubt, did more to maintain the mental equilibrium ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gathered impetus, momentarily diminishing in the night's illusory perspective; presently it was little more than a fugitive blot, gliding swiftly in midstream. And then, it was gone entirely, engulfed ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... fibers of the growing tree of civilization from the far-off centuries that are gone, without injuring the whole organism. "If we were to wipe out all the records of the past, what a series of inexplicable riddles would our own history present, and if we were to blot out entirely every reference to ancient writers, or were to blow away all the perfume that has been shaken down from the vestments of those writers, how blurred and how scentless would the fairest and most fragrant pages of our own great ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... their sins. Again, Matt. xi. 28, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will ease you." Ezek. xviii. 27, "At what time soever a sinner shall repent him of his sins from the bottom of his heart, I will blot out all his wickedness out of my remembrance saith the Lord." Isaiah xliii. 25, "I, even I, am He that put away thine iniquity for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." "As a father" (saith David Psal. ciii. 13) "hath compassion on his children, so hath ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... shall have said, whatever counsel he shall have given."[41] Again does Origen write: "For if we have done this, and revealed our sins not only to God, but also to those who are able to heal our wounds and sins, our sins will be blotted out by Him who saith: 'Behold, I will blot out thy iniquities as a cloud, and thy sins ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... loudest in its praise are now loudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite! What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this Expunging resolution? Can ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... inveterate garlic eater, to give it a fair trial when it appears in a recipe. It is just one of those things that require the most delicate handling, for which the French term a "suspicion" is most appreciated; it should only be a suspicion, its presence should never be pronounced. As Blot once begged his readers, "Give garlic a fair trial in a remolade sauce." (Montpellier butter beaten into mayonnaise is a good remolade ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the evils of slavery for a time. While it continues it is a blot on our national character; and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away, and earnestly looks for the means by which the necessary object may ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... be any Age, or dayes, or time, Or tongues of men, guilty so great a crime As wronging simple Maid? O Perigot, Thou that wast yesterday without a blot, Thou that wast every good, and every thing That men call blessed; thou that wast the spring From whence our looser grooms drew all their best; Thou that wast alwayes just, and alwayes blest In faith ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that Syren, that incarnate fiend, Monster of Nature, spectacle of shame, Blot and confusion of his familie, False-seeming semblance of true-dealing trust, I meane Fallerio, bloody murtherer: Hath he confest his cursed treacherie, Or will he stand to ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Monday, because the employes blot out some of the sunshine on Sunday by thinking of the hard week's work ahead of them. Much of the blueness is driven away, however, if in looking forward they know that Monday or Tuesday they ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... for mercy; or that Jesus Christ would have mercy offered, in the first place, to the biggest sinners, to stir up others to come to him for life? This is not the manner of men, O God! But David saw this betimes; therefore he makes this one argument with God, that he would blot out his transgressions, that he would forgive his adultery, his murders, and horrible hypocrisy. Do it, O Lord, saith he, do it, and 'then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bowels of compassion, O Lord, be open to thy faithful servants, who have this day perished by the hand of the barbarians. Hither did they come to vindicate thy faith; for thy sake are they fallen. Do thou, O Lord, mercifully blot out their offences, accounting them worthy to be delivered from the pains of hell. Send thy archangels to rescue their souls from darkness, and bear them to the regions of light, where thy blessed martyrs eternally ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the index of the mind, if so, how necessary it is that there should be no improper word or idea expressed, no blot or tarnish should be upon the fair page; how chaste and elegant should be the diction, how pure and refined the idea, how simple and concise the expression. It should be like the glassy lake that reflects an unclouded sky—the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... speed her rapid course The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, Well pleas'd to leave so cruel sea behind; And of that second region will I sing, In which the human spirit from sinful blot Is purg'd, and for ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his health. That is what I am doing, though," he admitted, with a bitter smile and a sad shake of his head. "But I cannot stop it now. I have gone too far, and I cannot help myself. I am a wreck, a blot on the face of ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... both of love and of himself, with a dozen women at a time, and, if you would believe his words, raving after every one of them; but ere a week passes over his head they are all sponged out of it together, and not even a blot of them remains.' ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the King at Rheims. For reward he allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to her memory; indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had done in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to the fact that France was ashamed, and longed to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored. Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... letter terminated abruptly. There was a blot and a smudge. The pen lay where it seemed to have rolled—on the floor. The ink was not yet dry. Francis called to ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... joy of the Solid South! At last, its numberless crimes against personal Freedom, and political Liberty, would reap a generous harvest. At last, participation in Rebellion would no more be regarded as a blot upon the political escutcheon. At last, commensurate rewards for all the long years of disconsolate waiting, and of hard work in night ridings, and house-burnings, and "nigger"-whippings, and "nigger"-shootings, and "nigger"-hangings, and ballot-box ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... day they had all to bid him the long farewell. Mrs. Caldwell stood looking down upon him, not wiping the great tears that welled up painfully into her eyes, lest in the act she should blot out the dear image and so lose sight of it for one last precious moment. She was an undemonstrative woman, but the lingering way in which she touched him, his hair, his face, his waxen hands, was all the more impressive for ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of women, bewildered and intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul had proved ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to punish it? or doth the priest take any care to correct it? on the contrary, is the most notorious practice of it any detriment to a man's fortune or to his reputation in the world? doth it exclude him from any preferment in the state, I had almost said in the church? is it any blot in his escutcheon? any bar to his honour? is he not to be found every day in the assemblies of women of the highest quality? in the closets of the greatest men, and even at the tables of bishops? What wonder then if the community in general treat this monstrous crime as a matter of jest, and that ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... rising]. Ah! Well, Martha!—No, no, no, if you please! [He restrains her approach.] Observe the retribution of an unchastened will. You have never seen my face for sixteen years! However, like a cloud, I blot out your transgressions from ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... with my husband—fiendish thought. I did not desire to prove him other than the pure and noble man I had loved; but I was not myself—I would do it just to still my excited suspicions. Putting the lamp down over the name, as if that could blot it out, I went up the creaking steps, and hastened back with the axe firmly clenched in both hands, as if I feared a rescue. Placing the light on the earth floor, I hesitated whether to strike or not—the blow was to reveal joy or eternal misery to me. ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... lie. Carpeted rooms, with pictures on the walls, and shiny chairs and tables; smart clothes and clean hands; evenings of mental peace in a home of his own. And a woman to manage it and him. That was the bewildering part of it—he wanted a woman to order him about, some one gentle and sweet, to blot from his warped mind the hideous nightmare of strife and scheming amidst which he seemed always to have moved. He longed to have to change his clothes after the day's work, to wash and brush himself, to smile and converse in his best of English. He owed ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... 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, of so much misery inflicted on innocent persons—and on persons who even when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... th' rest iv th' fam'ly met an' decided that unless prompt action was took, our cousins an' invistmints acrost th' sea wud be damaged beyond repair, so we cabled our ambassadure to go at wanst to th' White House an' inform th' prisidint that we wud regard th' war as a crool blot on civilization an' an offinse to th' intillygince iv mankind. I am glad to say our inthervintion was iffycacious. War was immeedjately declared. I will not tell ye how high our hearts beat as we r-read th' news fr'm day to day. Ye know. I ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... the civilized world Blot her escutcheon, brand her with shame; But though the German flag there be unfurled, Do Germans know what is done in their name? If not, the final accounting ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... reverse was a small blot that had condemned it in Mabel's sight, as unfit to be sent to her most valued correspondent, and which she had not observed before writing the direction. Selecting another, she had thrown this back carelessly into the desk, meaning to burn it when ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... blood Thy little soul a11 lonely? Or the god That rules thee, is he other than our gods? Nay, yield thee to men's ways, and kiss their rods! How many, deem'st thou, of men good and wise Know their own home's blot, and avert their eyes? How many fathers, when a son has strayed And toiled beneath the Cyprian, bring him aid, Not chiding? And man's wisdom e'er hath been To keep what is not good to see, unseen! A straight and perfect life is ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven May scatter thy delusions, and the blot Upon my fame vanish in idle thought, Even as flame dies in the envious air, And as the flow'ret wanes at morning frost, And thou shouldst never—But alas! to whom Do I still speak?—Did not a man but now Stand here before me?—No, I am alone, And yet I saw him. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... youngest child perched on his back kicking him in the ribs and urging him to canter. So if he intended by the strength of his will and of his riches to compel little Miss Blythe to marry (and to be happy with him; he thought he could manage that, too), it is only one blot on a decent and upright character. And it is unjust to ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... they do not follow the good example thus set, and show the tramp as little mercy as possible. Leniency, indeed, of any kind he simply regards as weakness. He would be a highwayman if the existing conditions of society allowed it, and if he had the necessary personal courage. As it is, he is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our roads. Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is with the genuine Gipsies. He has taken to it from choice, and the true-bred Romany will always regard him with contempt, as a mere migratory gaol ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... suggested by one of the anonymous writers that Trent's continued presence in the district was felt to be a blot on the fair fame of Monkshaven; and, by another, that should the rumours now flying hither and thither concerning the imminence of a European war materialize into fact, the French Foreign Legion offered opportunities for ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... new superstition and a new persecution. As we have seen, this is entirely erroneous. The fact that the Puritans copied a bad example, instead of setting a new one, should, at least, be remembered in palliation of the unfortunate blot upon their otherwise ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... died, I began to have hope. The only blot on her funeral was the fact that you were there—and you told me you intended to stay. Her sister—the same story. I soon shook that off, however—for I saw the way he turned to his work as a refuge from his grief for her. I had my chance and I ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... charging and directing him to thrust me forth both from my home and my country, to stray an outcast to earth's remotest limits; and that, if he would not, a fiery-visaged thunder-bolt would come from Jupiter, and utterly blot out his whole race. Overcome by oracles of Loxias such as these, unwilling did me expel and exclude me unwilling from his dwelling: but the bit of Jupiter[53] perforce constrained him to do this. And straightway my person and my mind were distorted, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... was a long empty room of ice, with the ceiling so low that they had to stoop—and their hands were parted. Before she realized what he intended Harry Harry had darted down one of the half-dozen glittering passages that opened into the room and was only a vague receding blot against ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... thine, instead of my and thy, are used in solemn style, before a word beginning with a vowel or silent h; as, "Blot out all mine iniquities;" and when thus used, they are not compound. His always has the same form, whether simple or compound; as, "Give John his book; That desk is his." Her, when placed before a noun, is in the possessive case; as, Take her hat: when standing ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... afternoon and only the thin white line of tiny curling waves crept out of the haze on to the gleaming yellow sand. Behind them, on every side was common and the only habitation, a small cottage nearly hidden by a black belt of trees, on their right. These black, painted trees lay like a blot of ink against the ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... marvelous 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 of ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... fail to observe the care which Bonaparte took to cast the reproach of shedding the first blood on the men he calls rebels. He made a great point of representing his adversaries as the aggressors. It is certain he long regretted that day. He often told me that he would give years of his life to blot it out from the page of his history. He was convinced that the people of Paris were dreadfully irritated against him, and he would have been glad if Barras had never made that Speech in the Convention, with the part of which, complimentary to himself, he was at the time ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the archdiocese of New York. In a "Christmas Pastoral" this dignitary even went to the extent of declaring that "even though some little angels in the flesh, through the physical or mental deformities of their parents, may appear to human eyes hideous, misshapen, a blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of this Christian thought that under and within such visible malformation, lives an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for all eternity ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... soliciter? No marvel though the branches be infected, When poison hath encompassed the roots; No marvel though the leprous infant die, When the stern dam envenometh the dug. Why then, give sin a passport to offend, And youth the dangerous rein of liberty; Blot out the strict forbidding of the law; And cancel every canon that prescribes A shame for shame or penance for offence. No, let me die, if his too boisterous will Will have it so, before I will consent To be an actor in his ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is o'er—my pleasant task is done:— My long-sustaining friend of many years: If I do blot thy final page with tears, Know that my sorrows have wrung from me none. But thou, my young creation! my soul's child! Which ever playing round me came and smiled, And woo'd me from myself with thy sweet sight, Thou too art gone—and so is ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... with a jointure. The young Marquis was all the more straitened for money because he held a post at Court. Being in great favor with Louis XIV., the King's goodwill brought him a fortune. But here, monsieur, a blot stained our escutcheon, an unconfessed and horrible stain of blood and disgrace which I am making it my business to wipe out. I discovered the secret among the deeds relating to the estate of Negrepelisse ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... me on that subject,' said the nun, 'it is to me a terrible one! Would that I could blot it from my memory!' She sighed deeply, and, after the pause of a moment, asked Emily, by what means ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... generals taken prisoner, the Duke d'Enghien mortally wounded, the flower of the nobility cut down like grass,—such were the terrible results of a battle which plunged France into mourning, and which would have been a blot on the reign of Henry II, had not the Duke of Guise obtained a brilliant ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger
... 25, 1872, is a day in my memory which time cannot blot out. I and a number of friends were in a place called Holbrook, Ariz. A dispute started over a saddle horse with the following result. Arizona Bob drew his forty-five Colt revolver, but before he had time to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... bad feelings—the same willful and perverse nature that dwelt there, when I left him, ten years ago, forsaking home and happiness; time had only served to deepen the impressions, and crime almost entirely to blot out the few remaining influences of a religious education, while the vicious impulses strengthened. But, in person, he was greatly changed. From the stripling he had become the man. A half sneer was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... however, occupied this position before him, and it was not until 656, after the murder of Othman, that he assumed the title of caliph. The fact that he took no steps to prevent this murder is, perhaps, the only real blot upon his character. Almost the first act of his reign was the suppression of a rebellion under Talha and Zobair, who were instigated by Ayesha, Mahomet's widow, a bitter enemy of Ali, and one of the chief hindrances to his advancement ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the past; if he could only be as he was a short time ago, clear of this guilt, how thankful he would be! But there it was, staring him in the face, and he could not blot out the memory of it. He fancied himself again getting a kid from amongst his flock; giving it to his mother to dress, so that his father would not know it from venison; stooping down, while she put on the back of his neck small pieces of the kid's skin, that it might feel, to the blind Isaac, like ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... each other steadily. John read a furious challenge in Scaife's bold eyes—more, a menace, the threatening frown of power thwarted. Scaife seemed to expand, to fill the horizon, to blot out the glad sunshine. Once again the curious certainty gripped the younger that Scaife was indeed the personification of evil, the more malefic because it stalked abroad masked. For Scaife had outlived his reputation as a breaker of the law. Since that terrible ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... helpless while the hammer head catapulted at the sickened face of its victim. The Major's free left arm, raised instinctively to blot out the sight of the living horror, took the terrific impact, then dropped to his side, paralyzed. Still bearing that hideous grin the flat head drew back for another blow at the exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... their rifles at me. I assured him that the sensation was by no means terrible; but he would not be comforted. Death itself he wouldn't mind so much, if he could have found it in the open fighting gladly for his country; but it seemed a blot on his good name to be shot for just snooping around the ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... future but misery and despair. To few men is it given to love as he loved the girl before him, and in that moment he suffered an agony of suspense which might well have caused the recording angel to blot out the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the day is the wine thereof," said Conrad Kurzbold, rising to his feet. "Wine, blessed liquor as it is, possesses nevertheless one defect, which blot on its escutcheon is that it cannot carry over till next day, except in so far as a headache is concerned, and a certain dryness of the mouth. It is futile to bid us lay in a supply to-night that will ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... Imperious honour;—surely I may pity him. Yet, wherefore pity? no, I envy thee: For thou hast still the liberty to weep, In thee 'twill be no crime: thy tears are guiltless, For they infringe no duty, stain no honour, And blot no vow; but mine are criminal, Are drops of shame which wash the cheek of guilt, And every tear I ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... worked but mildly. Shakspere violated the unities; his plays were neither right comedies nor right tragedies; he had small Latin and less Greek; he wanted art and sometimes sense, committing anachronisms and Bohemian shipwrecks; wrote hastily, did not blot enough, and failed of the grand style. He was "untaught, unpractised in a barbarous age"; a wild, irregular child of nature, ignorant of the rules, unacquainted with ancient models, succeeding—when ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... from my easy chair, of the dirty brick-burners' hut, with the poisonous film of blue smoke playing over the kiln, and the family of pariah puppies below, sporting with the sun-dried remains of a fowl, which deceased in my yard and was purloined by their gaunt mother. Now let imagination blot out the Dirzee. Remove him from the verandah. Take up his carpet and sweep away the litter. What a strange void there is in the place! Eliminate him from a lady's day. Let nine o'clock strike, but bring no stealthy ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... afternoon. Rising one behind the other were long slopes and fields of trampled brown where the mooncalves had pastured, and far away in the full blaze of the sun a drove of them basked slumberously, scattered shapes, each with a blot of shadow against it like sheep on the side of a down. But never a sign of a Selenite was to be seen. Whether they had fled on our emergence from the interior passages, or whether they were accustomed to retire after driving out the mooncalves, I cannot guess. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... he browsed, and even through him where he lay and rested, as one walks through the dun mist in a little hollow on a still, damp morning; and turning round to look (at the proper distance) there was the unmistakable shape again, just thick enough to blot out the lines of the dim primeval landscape beyond, and make a hole in the blank sky. A dread silhouette, thrilling our hearts with awe—blurred and indistinct like a composite photograph—merely the type, as it had been seen generally by all who ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... could not be called a very well written one; there were several mistakes in the spelling, and here and there, a great blot could tell that a good deal of his heart had gone into it; but whatever it was, it was a ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... Legislative Council on June 22, 1829, had granted the free population of color the same civil rights and privileges as other Mauritians possessed, but the local government had failed to carry out the enactment. Remy Ollier felt that this was a blot on the fair name of his country, as well as an affront to his people and longed to do his part in bringing about a change, which he believed could be effected ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... them; and from the high bridge over the cut close by, I could see, even in the twilight, how beautiful the little village with its grey stone houses had become; for we had now come into the stone-country, in which every house must be either built, walls and roof, of grey stone or be a blot on the landscape. ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... 2. Blot off the superfluous water with the filter paper, or dry more completely between two folds ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... other leaders in the Lutheran Church. And, therefore, by all the laws of honour, he was bound to lead the Brethren upward and keep their record clean. But his conduct now was unworthy of a trusted leader. It is the darkest blot on his saintly character, and the chief reason why his brilliant schemes met with so little favour. At the very time when he placed before the Brethren the noblest and loftiest ideals, he himself had done the most to cause the enemy to blaspheme. No wonder his Tropus ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... more going out of fashion with philologians; and partly also because the traces of onomatopea in separate words become almost obliterated in the course of ages. The poet of language cannot put in and pull out letters, as a painter might insert or blot out a shade of colour to give effect to his picture. It would be ridiculous for him to alter any received form of a word in order to render it more expressive of the sense. He can only select, perhaps out of some ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... his old home, his days there are not so sad as some of his reminiscent talk would seem to indicate. In truth, he is serenely content, so much so that he sometimes almost chides himself for living so much in the present. "Oh, the power of a living reality to veil or blot out the Past!" he sighed. "And yet, is it not best so? Does not the grass grow above graves? Why should these lovely scenes always be a cemetery to me? There seems to have been a spell put upon them that has laid the ghosts, and I am glad." And to see ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the Turks have a very convenient recording angel, who, without dropping a tear to blot out that which might be wished unsaid or undone, fairly shuts his eyes, and forbears to record whatever is said or done by man in three circumstances: when he is drunk, when he is in a passion, and while he is under ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... though it has been, I have seen much of these poor old women, and many others, whom the world never sees on the streets at all, experiencing a slow, lingering death by starvation, and fatigue, and cold. It is the foulest blot on our country, that there is no sufficient provision ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... strange and new in her light, with an old, withered, yet unfading newness. When the moon was nearly full, one of their great delights was, to dive deep in the water, and then, turning round, look up through it at the great blot of light close above them, shimmering and trembling and wavering, spreading and contracting, seeming to melt away, and again grow solid. Then they would shoot up through it; and lo! there was the moon, far off, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... hotel proprietor, was perhaps the solitary person who did not understand her. In vain he waited patiently, as the seasons opened and closed, for her to accede to his importunities to sell her property. There the old inn stood, a blot within the terraced grounds and clean-cut park, unsightly to his eyes, and the humorous butt of his patrons. But Nancy had made her plans when the new order of things was first suggested, and she turned her rugged face to the sandy Monk ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... it!—Why this involuntary tear? You would see it by the large blot it has made, if ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson |
