"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imagination. But instead of bringing me release, it brought me heart-ache; instead of spelling victory, it came involved with the thin humiliations of compromise. For things could never be the same again. The blot was there on the scutcheon, and could never be argued away. The man I loved had let the grit get into the bearings of his soul, had let that grit grind away life's delicate surfaces without even knowing the wine ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... admitted more fully the alarming' symptoms she felt, were it not for the declining health of her daughter. If there be one misery in life more calculated than another to wither and consume the heart, to make society odious, man to look like a blot in the creation, and the very providence of God doubtful, it is to feel one's character publicly slandered and misrepresented by the cowardly and malignant, by the skulking scoundrel and the moral assassin—to feel yourself loaded with imputations that are false, calumnious, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... features in common; there was the same melancholy grandeur, the same character of romance, the same fantastical display. Nor were the secret passages, peculiar to the one, wanting to the history of the other. Both had their mysteries. One blot there was in the otherwise proud escutcheon of the Rookwoods, that dimmed its splendor, and made pale its pretensions: their sun was eclipsed in blood from its rising to its meridian; and so it seemed would be its setting. This foul ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes of 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 among the blessed ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... her," she said firmly, "and I am not going to present her to Merton with the slightest social blot upon her dazzling whiteness. Chaperoned she must and shall be, or ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me. Last night one of my post-dated letters went to post, the first of that fatal series which is to blot out the very traces of my ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... and seas forlorn, Until, when star-linkt domes are red, And Oceans' shells and sands grow white, Dusky isles and lights—Twins of the Gloom! Betray each soul cursed and forsworn; Or awed, at Twilights' scarlet bed, When nightshades blot the conjured light As javels vomit death and doom, Dank vapours veil the seaward flight Of Satellites gray 'gainst the night. Till, eyes in fear peer at profounds Unfathomed and, in vales unsunned, See Cyclops battling ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... Nature; the religion that exalts, that ennobles man. Were not you to send me your Zeluco in return for mine? Tell me how you like my marks and notes through the book. I would not give a farthing for a book, unless I were at liberty to blot it with ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... spark of life and gives you none in return; you exhaust yourself on fantoms; wherever falls a drop of our sweat, there springs up one of those sinister weeds that grow in graveyards. Die! You are the enemy of all, who love; blot yourself from the face of the earth, do not wait for old age; do not leave a child behind you, do not fecundate a drop of your corrupted blood; vanish as does the smoke, do not deprive a single blade of living grass of a ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... America." (Stefan heard himself.) "Look!" And rapidly he drew a bird flying high above the blot, with its head pointed to the right, away ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... say, before leaving Mr. Chamberlain, that I still consider that the worst blot upon his political career was the manner in which he treated Mr. Forster. No doubt his dislike of Mr. Forster was in the first instance inspired by his repugnance to the Education Act; but I cannot help saying that in later years it degenerated into ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... no reverence for the generation before them, then will they in turn have no reverence for their fathers. Let them be taught that the sins of their ancestors involve their own honour so little that they need not take any trouble to clear the blot off the scutcheon, but may safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, 'Very likely it is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what matter?'—Then those young people are being bred up in a habit of mind which contains ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... that together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may joyn the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favor; and their humble & earnest Supplication that it may please God through the Merits of Jesus Christ mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance. That it may please Him, graciously to afford His Blessing on the Governments of these States respectively, and prosper the publick Council of the whole. To inspire our Commanders both by Land and Sea, & all under them with that ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... and a roll of millinery below the waist, that looked like a military cloak rolled up on the crupper of a life-guardsman's saddle. Then poor Martha Brown was too young, and at that time too bashful, for a heroine; and besides, there was no getting over the blot on her birth. Theodore Fitzhedingham could never think of paying attention to the daughter of a Hindoo woman and old Sneezum, the bullock contractor of Bunderjumm. One day I had been at work in one of the plantations, and just as I was marking with my hand-axe a birch tree ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... never had secrets from each other until this affair of Simon Varr. I had discussed him with her and she understood just what a blot on society he was, but I had not confessed to playing Destiny! After the murder, however, she learned of the monk who had been threatening Simon. She knew I detested him, she knew all my points of view, and her old mind began to work. Janet's mind is like the mills of the gods; it grinds ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... reformers. And even so early as the beginning of this second period there was to be seen on the social horizon a small cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, which was to grow and grow till in a few years it was to blot out of sight all other matters of public concern. This was the movement for the abolition of slavery. Till that national anachronism was at least politically and legally cleared out of the way, there was no great amount of public ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... red who reads the Law Gave him three weeks of life, Three little weeks in which to heal His soul of his soul's strife, And cleanse from every blot of blood The hand that held ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... he said, "and, unworthy though I be, I have a great word for my fellow men this day—a word the unfallen angels could not speak. Oh, my brethren, believe me, I have not been leading a double life. I took the eldership at your hands, I know, saying nothing of the dark blot that soiled the past. My humble hope was that in service I might seek to redeem my life and I remembered One who said to a guilty soul like mine:—'Feed My sheep.' Penitence, and not remorse, I thought, was well pleasing ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... country. "The Marble Faun" appropriated the author's attention, after the sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just before the commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-note of the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, on beginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore," it was at last with the definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with the legend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could no longer write an English romance, but must give the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... and shuddering at himself. For this, then, he had plotted and intrigued and written an anonymous letter. The only woman he had ever loved at all went past him with a look of aversion, and was his enemy's wife, and would soon be the mother of that enemy's children, and blot him forever out of the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... The darkest blot upon the character of Yoritomo is his treatment of his youngest brother Yoshitsune. It was he who had by his generalship and gallantry brought these terrible wars to a triumphant conclusion. He had crushed in the decisive battle of Dan-no-ura ...
— Japan • David Murray
... dilution of good liquor; and yet to render up in fair array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not metaphysically draw upon internal resources, I can at least externally and physically resort to yonder—desk; (drawer would have savoured of the Punic, which Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie perdus divers poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at "poeticals," carp not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as carp—so called from ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... carbuncles and golden topazes, or over a gravel of which some of the stones arc rubies and emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires—who can tell?—and whoever can't tell is free to think—all waiting to flash, waiting for millions of ages—ever since the earth flew off from the sun, a great blot of ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... library is attracting large numbers. Here again a teacher, helped by a pupil, is changing or renewing books. With surprising skill any blot, stain, or torn page is discovered, and for years the books will pass from hand to hand ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... and saw, and my mind was intensely occupied with the rush of thought, the horror of all that was going on about me. How I wish I might blot it out,—forget forever the hellish deeds of those dancing devils who made mock of human agony and laughed at tears and prayers! It was plain, as the wild cries of rejoicing rose on every side, that the ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the place had its own dismal significance. The postmark ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, 10 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: May joy be theirs while life shall last! And Thou, if they should totter, teach them ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... that the light which has already gone forth will be extinguished. Tyrants might as well attempt to blot the sun from the firmament. They may attempt it; but "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh them to scorn." The creatures formed for his worship will be permitted to worship him with exalted faculties and full liberty ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... 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 ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... century, the main line had, so far as the union of its members was blessed by the Church, expired, and no legitimate offspring were left. Gilbert's spouse, accordingly, must, if a genuine Oliverres, have come into the world with a considerable blot on ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... furnishing information of the disposition and number of the Federal forces. "If we could get at the true story of his connection with that woman," said the colonel, "I am satisfied he has only been indiscreet, not treacherous. He is one of my best, most trusted officers, and his arrest is a blot on the regiment. If he will tell anybody, he will tell you. Can you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • 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 ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... brow so receding, could not have belonged to any man who has made himself conspicuous in the world's history. Again, descending to mere matter of costume, there cannot be a doubt that the purple mantle flung on the psalmist's shoulders is wholly wanting in study of detail, and constitutes a blot on the landscape. Barring these oversights, the picture ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... the condition upon the coast a disgrace to civilization. It was a notorious fact, moreover, that a large proportion of the vessels in the trade were of American build and sailed under the Stars and Stripes. The United States Government was anxious to wipe out this blot upon the nation's fair fame; and consequently, in 1849, sent Lieutenant Foote, in command of the brig "Perry," to African waters. The lieutenant, who, by the way, afterward became the distinguished Admiral Foote, at once began active ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... backwoods. It is hardly proper for me to give a recipe in this place, that belongs more properly to the "Household Departments" of the newspapers. But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell something about cooking, which Prof. Blot does not know, I may say that they were broken and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top of the old box-stove. By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was burned to ashes, but the egg came off clean and nice from the stove, and made as palatable and indigestible ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad and marching men. They seemed to hang above the good man and his house like a black ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... industrial but of social importance outweigh all others; and these two questions most emphatically come in the category of those which affect in the most far-reaching way the home life of the Nation. The horrors incident to the employment of young children in factories or at work anywhere are a blot on our civilization. It is true that each. State must ultimately settle the question in its own way; but a thorough official investigation of the matter, with the results published broadcast, would greatly help toward arousing the public conscience and securing unity of State ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... thou settest it a goal, thou art the hymn that lifts it into harmony; therefore turn back into thyself, lift high thy head and meet proudly the evil that comes to thee. Adversity can crush thee, death can blot thee out, yet art thou still ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Where indeed had I left it? It was a new book with scarcely a blot in it. Great heavens! I had forgotten it and left it out of doors at the far end of the garden in the most removed asparagus bed. For my historical studies I had selected the asparagus bed which was like a bit of copse, for the feathery green plants, past ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... of his father's arguments, Christopher could not entirely put the unlucky Stuart out of his mind. Nor did the fried scallops, grilled sweet potatoes, and salad which his father ordered for him wholly blot out a lurking depression or the haunting memory of the criminal's face. It took two chocolate ice creams and an ample square of fudge cake to dispel his gloom and bring his spirits back to their ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... each medallion that was filled gloriously with noble, and even with royal names, till at last she stopped short, and covering one medallion with her finger, she said, "Pass over that, dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great uncle John's: what could he expect by marrying into that family, where, you know, all the men were not sans peur, and none of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... does it speak always of restlessness and change. Some find a stimulus beside the sea, and say it brings forgetfulness. Rather let us call it exaltation. Much more than of a petty excitement, fit to blot a man's momentary woes, it speaks in a sterner and a stronger note. It throbs with the pulse of a further shore. It speaks of a quiet tide making out to the Fortunate Islands, and tells of a way of following ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a 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. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the blessings, Edward, with which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland; her own jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day or other—when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies—they will blot it from their records as levelling them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head—they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... livery my father's menials had worn. I had been begging my bread from Robert Beaufort's lackey! I said nothing; the man went on his business on tiptoe, that the mud might not splash above the soles of his shoes. Then, thoughts so black that they seemed to blot out every star from the sky—thoughts I had often wrestled against, but to which I now gave myself up with a sort of mad joy—seized me: and I remembered you. I had still preserved the address you gave me; I went straight to the house. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... a particular reason for remembering that, for I had sat down hurriedly after he had signed it, and dipping my pen too deeply in the ink, made a blot. It was no doubt a stupid thing to do, but Brander was so unreasonably angry about it, and blew me up so roughly that I made up my mind there and then to stand it no longer, and wrote that very evening to my friend in my present office the letter which led to my getting the situation ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... instance. One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... themselves are by their imprecations so afflicted with external and internal pains and diseases that the births of children are but few: Our pleasure therefore is, that all impediments that may hinder the inquisitors' office be utterly removed from among the people, lest this blot of heresy proceed to poison and defile them that may yet be innocent: And therefore we ordain, by virtue of the apostolical authority, that our inquisitors may execute the office of inquisition by all tortures and afflictions, in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 face of the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... "Dogtown is the only blot on the landscape," panted Amy, after a while. "It stands there right where the brook empties into the lake and—and it is ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... said Pertinax. "I, too, have done things that are best forgotten. We attain success by learning from defeat, and we forget defeat in triumph. I know of no triumph that did not blot out scores of worse things than defeat. When I was in Britain I subdued rebellion and restored the discipline of mutinying legions. How? I am not such a fool as to tell you all that happened! When I was in Africa men called me a great proconsul. So I was. They would welcome me back there, if all ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the upper fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small house. Upon this house descended—or rather ascended—Judge Menefee and his cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They called; they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence they waxed restive; they assaulted and forced the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Quickly did the darkness blot out all trace of land. Back some little distance, it was true, they could still glimpse feeble lights, marking the location of Dunkirk. The French no longer feared to illuminate to a limited extent since bombing planes ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... admire the glowing Ruby, or the sparkling Green of an Emerald, as the fainter and less permanent Beauties of a Rose or a Myrtle. If there are Men of extraordinary Capacities who lye concealed from the World, I should impute it to them as a Blot in their Character, did not I believe it owing to the Meanness of their Fortune rather than of their Spirit. Cowley, who tells the Story of Aglas with so much Pleasure, was no Stranger to Courts, nor insensible ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... now from court, I come now from court, I come not to flatter you: upon whom can I justly cast this blot, but upon your own forehead, that know not ink from milk? such is the blind besotting in the state of an unheaded woman that's a widdow. For it is the property of all you that are widdowes (a hand full excepted) to hate those that honestly and carefully love you, to the maintenance ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 'The (Inkblot), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdroeckh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... most fortunate lover may avenge you of the malice of Zobeide, by calling you back to him; and when you shall be restored to his wishes, that you may remember the unfortunate Ganem, who is no less your conquest than the caliph. Powerful as that prince is, I flatter myself he will not be able to blot me out of your remembrance. He cannot love you more passionately than I do; and I shall never cease to love you into whatever part of the world I may go to expire, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... and file, was proof positive of something radically wrong, either in his disposition or his record. It was entirely comprehensible and fully in accordance with human nature and the merits of the case that a man should quit drinking when he quit the army, but that a man with the blot of an occasional spree on his escutcheon should enlist for any other cause than sheer desperation, and should then become a teetotaler, was nothing short of prima facie evidence of ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... and as he paused, wondering which would be the wisest plan to pursue, there was a wave ready to rise up and completely blot out the faint daylight which streamed through ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Cary—you were part and parcel of the loved past—you had all the shibboleths—you could comfort, commiserate, and counsel! Ha! I wish I might have heard. 'Aurelius' dealing with the forsworn and the absent! 'Here the blot, and there the stain, and yon a rent that's hard to mend. If there's salvation, I see it not at present.' So you resolved all her doubts, and laid within her hand every link of a long chain. You have ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... shepherd's pipe or the song of the lark; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines, and make the notes run into each other; and when I try to blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which, turned into sound by good father Louis the Dominican, will tell you, if you can only hear it aright, what is not to be told in any human speech; not even that of Plato, or Marcus Aurelius, or Erasmus, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... flags the curling waters sweep, The Lusian mortars thunder o'er the deep; Again the fiery roar heaven's concave tears, The Moors astonished stop their wounded ears; Again loud thunders rattle o'er the bay, And clouds of smoke wide-rolling blot the day; The captain's barge the gen'rous king ascends, His arms the chief enfold, the captain bends (A rev'rence to the scepter'd grandeur due): In silent awe the monarch's wond'ring view Is fix'd on Vasco's noble ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... her teeth, but dares not bite, And south sea treasures are not brought to light; When churchmen scripture for the classics quit, Polite apostates from God's grace to wit; When men grow great from their revenue spent, And fly from bailiffs into parliament; When dying sinners, to blot out their score, Bequeath the church the leavings of a whore; To chafe our spleen, when themes like these increase, Shall panegyric reign, and censure cease? Shall poesy, like law, turn wrong to right, And dedications wash an AEthiop white, Set up each senseless wretch for nature's boast, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... boast of being very handsome, but who would one day astonish the world. Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan court which led to the only blot ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... until she disappeared in the shadow of an arc lamp, and after that he continued a long time staring into the blot of darkness where the office was. At last the window became faintly luminous, as some one lighted the wall lamp; then, as if it were a signal he had been waiting for, Bannon ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... after to-morrow, that Sunday, might never come!" he exclaimed suddenly, this time in utter despair. "Why could not this one week be without a Sunday—si le miracle exists? What would it be to Providence to blot out one Sunday from the calendar? If only to prove His power to the atheists et que tout soit dit! Oh, how I loved her! Twenty years, these twenty years, and she ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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
... sweet lips were upon his own, and she was in his arms. She lay there still, quite still, but even as she lay there rose, as it were, in the midst of the glamour and confusion of his mind, that made him see all things distraught, and seemed to blot out every principle of right and honour, another and far different scene. For, as in a vision, he saw a dim English landscape and a grey ruin, and himself within its shadows with a nobler woman in his arms, "Dethrone me," said a remembered voice, "desert me, and I will still ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... kitten, a tiny black blot on the pink and green, came daintily down the path to meet her, mindful of her two pails of warm milk. Sport, who had succeeded in putting the cows into their places, came bounding up in a fit of boisterous familiarity, and leaped at the little black ball ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... tear away the leaf Wherein it's writ; or, if fate won't allow So large a gap within its journal-book, I'll blot it out at least. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... had no better means of knowing than himself; when he compares the abrupt beginning of the first stanza of the bard, to the ballad of Johnny Armstrong, "Is there ever a man in all Scotland;" there are, perhaps, few friends of Johnson, who would not wish to blot out ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... on account of their ignorance of the communicability of disease combined with their poverty. I refer to the contagious maladies tuberculosis and the one called "specific" or syphilis, the moral as well as the physical blot on all civilized life. The former is well known nowadays to be one, if not the worst contagion to which the human family is subjected. In its various forms it is responsible, probably, for more deaths among the colored people than any one disease with a ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... lad he was terribly bad. He worried his parents a lot; He'd lie and he'd swear and pull little girls' hair; His boyhood was naught but a blot. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... 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 his papers.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... 1666.) Luther then continues to condemn the Diet in unqualified terms. "What a disgraceful Diet," says he, "the like of which was never held and never heard of, and nevermore shall be held or heard of, on account of his disgraceful action! It cannot but remain an eternal blot on all princes and the entire empire, and makes all Germans blush before God and all the world." But he continues exonerating and excusing the Emperor: "Let no one tremble on account of this edict which they so shamefully invent and publish ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... been very ridiculous. He was an unit of the British Empire—nothing could blot out that fact before heaven! Had anything been left undone that ought to have been done, or done that had well been left undone, or were better to be undone now? Of a truth ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... dawned upon us, hove-to under close-reefed canvas, with a strong gale blowing, and a high, steep, and dangerous sea running. And there was every prospect that there was worse to come, for the sun rose as a pale, wan, shapeless blot of sickly light, faintly showing through a veil of dim, grey, watery vapour, streaked with light-coloured patches of tattered scud, that swept athwart the louring sky at a furious rate, while the sea had that greenish, turbid appearance ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... that dark cloud is, it is difficult for us now to realize, so accustomed are we to the light God's word has given. But were it possible to blot out entirely from our minds all that Word has taught us, and place ourselves for a moment just by the side of our "Preacher," look alone through his eyes, recognize with him the existence of the Creator whose glorious Being is so fully shown in all ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... the dictates of humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy religion and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... in reality she was thinking of them inasmuch as they concerned her mother, who was below, and her father and brother who awaited them in Prussia, whither they had separately emigrated. The impatience in his tone stung her into a feeling of resentment, that for the moment seemed to blot out the much that she owed him. A reproachful word was trembling on her lips, when suddenly he ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... unmistakable puncture! the distinct, though slight, pang of a miniature wound. A crimson bead of blood rose on Otto's finger, swelled to its due proportion, and became a trickling blot. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... life, Nan; and, incidentally, he has muddied the spring for me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and yellow down and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... would indicate, say, a distant tree with a preliminary tint and a subsequent elaboration; he would do it all in one process, giving his blot an irregular edge and allowing the color to accumulate where the shadows required it. His elaborative touches elsewhere were of the same nature. They were brush blots as distinct from washes. To this, I think, we may attribute on analysis the ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... before; And though th'event oft answers not the same, Suffice that high attempts have never shame. The mean observer whom base safety keeps, Lives without honour, dies without a name, And in eternal darkness ever sleeps. And therefore, Delia, 'tis to me no blot To have attempted though ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... you could," she said, "if the child needed it. The world was cruel, cruel, Adam; I used to wonder sometimes why God did not blot it all out, as He has blotted it out now. Once in another club, a big, swell affair, there was a Humane Society programme. One woman, in a Persian lamb jacket, spoke on the evils of the overcheck; you know how they get that wool? And women nodded the aigrettes ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... Thou art he who grants the power of bearing or upholding all things.[164] Thou art thyself capable of bearing all things. Thou art fixed and steady (without being at all unstable). Thou art white or pure (being, as thou art, without any stain or blot). Thou bearest the trident that is competent to destroy (all things).[165] Thou art the grantor of bodies or physical forms unto those that constantly revolve in the universe of birth and death. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Marie is nothing but a genial and romantic young squire-of-dames. He is much more than that. He has very fine qualities. To be sure, he appears to possess no ambition in particular, but I should be glad if he were my son. He comes of a very old house, and there is no blot upon the history of that house—nothing but faithfulness and gallantry and honor. And there is, I think, no blot upon Ste. Marie himself. He is ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty six theaters in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge; the lover following his rival; the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour; or the wiping out by death of a blot on a hitherto unstained honor. It was estimated that one sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theaters on that day. At that same moment the churches throughout the city were preaching the gospel of good will. Is not this a striking commentary upon the contradictory ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... Doctor praised or tore, On paper wings flit dimly through the night, And, hovering low in air, beheld the fight. Each ill-starr'd verse its filthy den forsakes, Black from the spit, or reeking from the jakes; The blot-stain'd troop their shadowy pages spread, And call for vengeance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... incisive steel-clicking manners, at the head of the table, puts to a vote. Then these youths, whose souls are afire with the hope of a director's $5 gold fee, timidly sign the record, trembling the while lest a blot call down on them a scolding; a head clerk, whose fondest dream is a raise of salary as the result of coming under the Master's eye in a seventy-five-million-dollar deal, affixes a seal, and there is an exchanging of thin slips of paper—checks—dollars—magically ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... object but your good in making this disclosure; and should it meet the eye, as I have no doubt it will, of some one not a stranger to its crimes, I beseech him to consider his ways. Why should he live a curse to the earth—a destroyer of his kind—a blot upon creation—a dishonour to his Maker? Heaven and earth are equally ready to receive the returning prodigal. The only danger—the only disgrace is to continue where you are. In behalf of our Maker, in behalf of humanity, in behalf of all that is noble and ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... nerve-racking night, the mere proximity of the railroad with its accompanying associations served constantly to bring to mind all that I had fled to the mountains to escape. Yet I cannot bring myself to agree with those who profess to brand a railroad "a blot on the landscape." The enormous engines which pull the overland trains up the heavy grades of the Sierra Nevada impress one by their size, strength and suggestion of reserve power, as not being out of harmony with the forces of Nature ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... before luncheon to the river and sailed up and down in a small steam-launch named The Swan of Avon. Jean thought privately that the presence of such things as steam-launches were a blot on Shakespeare's river, but the boys were delighted with them, and at once began to plan how one might be got ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... days ago, in a trance, and announced that you had been bounced from the boarding-house, and that you needed paper to blot up the ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... the substance of this remarkable work. He hit, and hit very forcibly, a blot which belonged to almost all writers in common who took part in this controversy. The great deficiency of the age—a want of spiritual earnestness, an exclusive regard to the intellectual, to the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the horror of the long siege had followed the greater disorder of the Commune, when brave men were shot down by the insurgent National Guard, and all Paris was at the mercy of the rabble. Indeed, this Reign of Terror must ever remain a blot on the civilisation of the century and the history of the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... hoped to marry Miss Norbury. Now, if Robert really was a blot upon the family honour, Mark would want to do one of two things. Either keep it from the Norburys altogether, or else, if it had to come out, tell them himself before the news came to them indirectly. Well, he told them. But the ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... said this to frighten Jack the Dullard; and the clerks gave a great crow of delight, and each one spurted a blot out of his pen on ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... devil himself is painted black. Let them who are doing shameful acts to the innocent walk shamefacedly! For shame, sirs, to cloak malice and jealousy of M. Picot under religion! New England will remember this blot against you and curse you for it! An you listen to Deliverance Dobbins's lies, what hinders any lying wench sending good men to ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... since: but I might have been very different; I might have been as good as you—wiser—almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an inexhaustible source of pure ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... I did, what should I get in return for all he has stolen from me? Could he give me back your heart? Could he blot out the past with his blood? Should I regain the pure thing I lost, the wife I treasured, the woman I adored? Think how he shattered my life and wrecked my happiness, when he enticed you with the golden apple, that rots and decays, turning to wormwood between the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... unpleasant sight," one of the leadys said. "You've seen the photographs; you know what you'll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick
... there can be found in this country no sectarianism so narrow, so hide-bound, so dogma-clad, that it would like to blot out from the history of the country what the men of our faith have contributed to it. On the first roll of this Washington parish will be found close together the names of John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams had learned ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... a blot upon my life. At these words of mine the Master turned his blade against my bosom; I saw the light run along the steel; and I threw up my arms and fell to my knees before him on the floor. "No, no," I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson |
