"Blot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... market for the stock and produce of the settlers, while the maintenance of the convicts necessitated the expenditure of L80,000 to L90,000 a year of Imperial money in the colony. With these aids, the settlers kept their heads above water, till, owing to the Victorian outcry against what was termed 'a blot' on the already rather shady 'escutcheon 'of Australia, the immigration was stopped in 1868. Since then the convicts have dwindled down from 5,000 to 500. Happily the discovery of new pastoral lands occurred almost simultaneously with ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... kodaked it again. Then a small boy, standing by the juggler, commenced climbing up this rope, suspended to nothing, supported by nothing. He was kodaked. The boy went up and up, till he disappeared from view. The smoke from the herbs smouldering in the braziers seemed almost to blot out the courtyard from view. The juggler, professing himself angry with the boy for his dilatoriness, started in pursuit of him up this rope, hanging on nothing. He was kodaked, too. Finally the man descended the rope, and wiped a blood-stained knife, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... thy mortal frame, Oblivion's pen shall blot thy worthless name; For thy rude hand ne'er plucked the beauteous rose That on Pie'ria's sky-clad summit blows: [Symond's "Greek Poets," First Series, p. 139.] Thy paltry soul with vilest souls shall ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of jealousy, for the new colonel of the 23d; and the sudden sympathy which he evinced for M. du Marnet as soon as he saw the blood running from his wound. Quarrels between soldiers are family quarrels, which never blot out the relationship. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... whitey-brown form, advancing to put a blot on all this, had been diminishing in the shade; and now suddenly disappeared beside a weir. There was the noise of a flounce in ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the memories of the feudism of the countryside, the sole blot on its simple yet aristocratic modes. He remembered the fragmentary stories of the ancient Marcum-Jarvis quarrel ... this had cost the lives of men for three generations, in an equity of vengeful settlement based strictly on the Mosaic law of "an eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth." The ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... bottle a black eye, i.e. drank it almost up. He cannot say black is the white of my eye; he cannot point out a blot in my character. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... every man who sells or uses this liquor, as a beverage, encourage his neighbor to drink, and thus contemn God's authority? Does he not aggravate his guilt by sinning against great light? And would he not aggravate it still further, should he charge the blame on the sacred word? O, what a blot on the Bible, should one sentence be added, encouraging the common use of intoxicating liquor! "If any man thus add, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... she were to send him away, life would not be worth having, that nothing remained for him in the 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 follies of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... my mind now who ruined nearly all the sons in his neighborhood. Mothers and fathers went to him and begged him not to sell their children liquor. He told them it was his business to sell liquor, and he was going to sell liquor to everyone who came. The saloon was a blot upon the place as dark as hell. But the man had a father's heart. He had a son. He didn't worship God, but he worshiped that boy. He didn't remember that whatsoever a man soweth so shall he reap. My ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... in the instance of Mr. H. but Polly is a good sort of body enough so far as I know; but that is such a blot in the poor girl's escutcheon, a thing not accidental, nor surprised into, not owing to inattention, but to cool premeditation, that, I think, I could wish Mr. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... never worn a more becoming guise; the sun shone, the air was lively, the people had flowers in their button-holes and smiles upon their faces; and as I made my way towards Jim's place of employment, with some very black anxieties at heart, I seemed to myself a blot on the surrounding gaiety. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Switzerland, that I received a long, overflowing letter, full of flamboyant oddities, written from London. Two or three hours later came a telegram. "Burn letter. Blot it from your memory. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... I see it all clearly; now I have a purpose in my life. It is to make you look upon me with r-respect,—with so much r-respect that you will for-rget that on one of those turned-over pages of my life there is a blot." ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... 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? ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... flat, baking, quivering expanse of alkali the crawling splotch of black showed up as plainly as a blot of ink on a sheet of clean white blotting paper. Peering over the edge of the chassis they ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... of the cliff she looked back, and saw that he was still standing—a squat, fantastic figure like a goblin out of a fairy-tale—outlined against the shining sea behind him, a blot upon the blue. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... Further, by the beginning of the last 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 her 'scutcheon. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of the world were upon her, New Orleans went to sleep that night serene in the certainty that she had vindicated herself, had upheld her laws, and proved her ability to deal with that organized lawlessness which had so long been a blot ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... replied the young woman, "ye ken it is a blot that spreads to kith and kin.—Ichabod—as my poor father says—the glory is departed from our house; for the poorest man's house has a glory, where there are true hands, a divine heart, and an honest fame—And the last has ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... infantry regiments, which had risen to an excessive price. This venality of the only path by which the superior grades can be reached is a great blot upon the military system, and stops the career of many a man who would become an excellent soldier. It is a gangrene which for a long time has eaten into all the orders and all the parties of the state, and under which it will be odd if all do not succumb. Happily it is unknown, or little ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Kinsman-Redeemer's sympathy was still there! Though all heaven was then doing Him homage—though He had exchanged the chilling ingratitude of earth for the glories of an unsullied world of purity and love—yet nothing could blot out from His heart the names of those whom He had still left for a little season behind, to be bearers of His cross before they became ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... this luxuriant valley, full of human beings, would become a waste of waters." Well, there are hundreds of such cases. Every lake is a valley "wasted by water," and in some cases (as the Dead Sea) it is a positive evil, a blot upon the harmony and adaptation of the surface of the earth. Again, he might say—"If rain did not fall here, but the clouds passed over us to some other regions, this verdant and highly cultivated plain would become ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to deceive you for ever," he confessed with emotion. "I hate that past episode in my life; hate to think of it: I wish I could blot it out of remembrance. But for Pratt I should not have told ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... time are scattering fast. Pont Audemer is being modernised, and many an interesting old building is doomed to destruction; whilst cotton-mills and steam-engines, and little white villas amongst the trees, black coats and parisian bonnets, all tend to blot out the memories of mediaeval days. Let us make the most of the place whilst there is time—and let us, before we pass on to Lisieux, add one picture of Pont Audemer in the early morning—a picture which every year will seem ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... this occurrence, Karpik declared that he was now in his heart convinced that the blood of Jesus could blot out his exceeding great sins—that he wept daily before him, entreating him to wipe away his iniquities, and declared that the ardent desire of his soul was to cleave more closely to the Saviour; that he was resolved to follow him only, and to give up all connection with the unbelievers. And ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... have now passed away since the enactment of this tragedy, the dreadful horrors of that time and scene, are recalled before me with frightful vividness, and make me shudder even now, when I think of them. A life time was crowded into those few short hours, and death alone may blot out ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... O God, according to Thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... ghost of Marius walks to-night By Anio's banks in shaggy plight, And laughs with savage glee; And Sylla from his loathsome death, Scenting red Murder's reeking breath, Doth rise to look on thee. Signs blot the sky; the deep-vex'd earth Breeds portents of a monstrous birth; And augurs pale with fear have noted The dark-vein'd liver strangely bloated, Hinting some dire disaster. To right the wrongs of human kind Behold! the lordly Rome to bind, A Roman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... advance, running new lines and opening broad highways, and inviting fields for the less sturdy but oncoming multitude. As he had battled to prevent this, his adopted State, from being desecrated by the blot of human slavery, so now he voted, preached, lectured, wrote, that it might be delivered from the body and soul destroying curse of the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them—a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!—if ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Gourgues, happy once more to cross swords with the Spaniards, gladly embraced this offer; but, on his way to join the Portuguese prince, he died at Tours of a sudden illness. The French mourned the loss of the man who had wiped a blot from the national scutcheon, and respected his memory as that of one of the best captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy of honor, then is such tribute due to Dominic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... rice and "so long as colour is colour and life is life will the youth with his sublime folly wait for the meeting of his loved one." What matter if the winter days will come to them or if "the snow is always sure to blot out the garden—" to-day is spring, and love is love and ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... headache). You are not to suppose that the volume was slovenly or in anywise unworthy of a gentleman and officer of those days. It was bound in red and gold, had two handsome silver-gilt clasps and red edges, the writing being exquisitely straight and legible, and without a single blot. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... then begins a fall of snow, making the crow, who skims away so close above the ground to shirk the wind, a blot of ink upon the landscape. But though it drives and drifts against them as they walk, stiffening on their skirts, and freezing in the lashes of their eyes, they wouldn't have it fall more sparingly, no, not so much as by a single flake, although they ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of its landscapes is affected by them, may, upon the whole, be considered fortunate. The country is, indeed, subject to much bad weather, and it has been ascertained that twice as much rain falls here as in many parts of the island; but the number of black drizzling days, that blot out the face of things, is by no means proportionally great. Nor is a continuance of thick, flagging, damp air, so common as in the West of England and Ireland. The rain here comes down heartily, and is frequently ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the women the constant war that prevails among savages, and the necessity which they frequently labour under of exposing their aged and helpless parents, and of thus violating the first feelings of nature, and the picture will not appear very free from the blot of misery. In estimating the happiness of a savage nation, we must not fix our eyes only on the warrior in the prime of life: he is one of a hundred: he is the gentleman, the man of fortune, the chances have been in his favour and many efforts ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... scutcheon kept free from stain or blot! The story has descended from days now half forgot; 'Twas eleven hundred and forty this happened, as I've heard, The flower of German princes thought shame ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... had been written down, and the direction concerning him. He met us by the way, and smote the hindmost of us, even all that were feeble, when we were faint and weary; and it had been said to our fathers that when we had rest from our enemies round about us, we were to blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven—"Thou shalt not forget it" was the word delivered to us. I had the record of the battle in Rephidim when Joshua discomfited Amalek, not in his ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... myself within 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. 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 the outlook together. The lake once more showed its white expanse unbroken; the little blot of moving dots having withdrawn. Stane stared on the waste, with an expression of blank dismay upon his face, then ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... the 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 ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mother's love struggling with a sense of shame—a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn hope. There she had crawled on her knees to one of those relentless parents on whose heads lie the utter loss of their children's souls. The false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his house—when a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise the penitent in her misery from the dust—whispered him to turn her from his door. He ordered the footman to put her out. The man, a nobleman in plush, moved by his young mistress's ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... your part, when defending Courvoisier against the charge of having murdered Lord William Russell. Considering that you fill a responsible judicial office, and have to leave behind you a name unsullied by any blot or stain, I think you ought to lose no time in offering, as I believe you can truly do, a public and peremptory contradiction to the allegations in question. The mere circumstances of your having been twice promoted to judicial office by two lord chancellors, Lord Lyndhurst and Lord ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... difficulties every day, but she was too sensitive not to be aware of disturbances which were not in direct contact with herself. She never forgot what she had overheard that night Lloyd's had shut down; it was always like a blot upon the face of her happy consciousness of life. She often overheard, as then, those loud, dissenting voices of her father and his friends in the sitting-room, after she had gone to bed; and then, too, Abby Atkins, who was not spared ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and Guy Foster bit his lip, for he felt that this piece of false economy was a blot on the firm to which he belonged. In order to change the subject, he inquired for Lucy, who, since the time of her rescue, had ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... his gloves and laid them on the inlaid bureau. He had the physique of a director of public companies, and the grave manner that impresses shareholders. He talked of the weather, drew Cornish's attention to a blot of ink on the high-art wallpaper, and then put on his gloves again, well pleased with himself and his ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... a great sin," he cried, "and have made them gods of gold, yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin, and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of the book which thou has written," so great was the love of Moses for ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... conscious of any atrocious villanies, which he cannot certainly secure from discovery, will snatch this opportunity of committing one crime more, to set himself free from the dread of punishment, and blot out his own guilt for ever, by charging lord ORFORD as one of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... said the killer to himself—"an even break, him or me." But, perhaps, the repetition of this did not serve to blot out a certain mental picture. I have had a bad man tell me that he killed his second man to get rid of the mental image ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... could not blot out Jack Ramsey from his memory. There was a "reason," he would say, for ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... ahead, a fire-blot in the darkling swamp, a primitive mirage of primitive folk, of palmetto wigwams and log-wheel fires among the live ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Maggie Lee. The world has long since selected the proud Helen as the future bride of Graham Thornton, who, as he walks slowly back across the snow-clad field, tramples upon the delicate footprints you have made, and wishes it were thus easy to blot out from his heart all memory of you! Poor, poor Maggie Lee, Helen Deane is beautiful, far more beautiful than you, and when in her robes of purple velvet, with her locks of golden hair shading her soft eyes of blue, she flits like a sunbeam through the spacious rooms of Greystone Hall, ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... any way. He told me he'd got over it, the same as he'd got over his measles days—he'd outgrown it and was going to throw himself at the feet of another goddess. Oh, yes, he meant you!" she laughed, her voice a little too high, perhaps, with an odd note of bitterness in it. "Then, determined to blot my rival out, I lied about you. I told him that you loved Corrigan and that you were in the game to rob him of his land. Oh, I blackened you, dearie! It hurt him, too. For when a man like Trevison ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... has upset me." For the first time he turns his head and regards her with a steady gaze. "I particularly object to your doing anything of the kind. It would be a disgrace, a blot upon our name forever. None of our family has ever been forced to work for daily bread. And I would have you remember ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the probabilities that are sufficiently apparent, of the scheming of Pandulfo to supplant Rienzi, and to obtain the "Signoria del Popolo." Still, however, if the death of Pandulfo may be considered a blot on the memory of Rienzi, it does not appear that it was this which led to his own fate. The cry of the mob surrounding his palace was not, "Perish him who executed Pandulfo," it was—and this again and again must be carefully noted—it was nothing more nor less ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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
... Who sets the holy and profane Apart, blot out our sins before His sight, And make our numbers as the sand again, And as the stars ...
— Hebrew Literature
... told Dr. 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... with another disabled witness: Peggy Black. That naive personage was nursing her deceased sister's children—in an affidavit: and they had scarlatina—surgeon's certificate to that effect. Compton opposed, and pointed out the blot. "You don't want the children in the witness-box," said he: "and we are not to be robbed of our trial because one of your witnesses prefer nursing other people's children ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... alas! I cannot suppress what I have published: 'teach man he's divine; the knowledge of his divinity will inspire him to manifest it.' Ah me, I see now that our divinity is like old Jupiter's, who made a beast of himself as soon as he saw pretty Europa. Would to God I could blot out all my book on German Philosophy! No, no, humanity is too weak and too miserable. We must have faith, we cannot live without faith, in the old simple things, the personal God, the dear old Bible, a life beyond ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... creation, and his will concerning it. There the sands are numbered, and the plants and trees, and their leaves, and the birds, and everything animate; there is thy history, and mine, and all of little and great and good and bad that shall befall us in this life. Death does not blot out the records. Everlastingly writ, they shall be everlastingly read—for the shame of some, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... should be Mr Snooks or Mr Smith, when I received a slap on the shoulder, accompanied with—"Well, captain, how are you by this time?" In despair I let the pen drop out of my hand, and instead of my name I left on the book a large blot. It was an old acquaintance from Albany, and before I had been ten minutes in the hotel, I was recognised by at least ten more. The Americans are such locomotives themselves, that it is useless to attempt the incognito in any part except the west side of the Missisippi, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... inconceivable and untold distances. His speed kept increasing; he thought he had never found flying so easy before; and the thunder of the following wings that held persistently on his track made it dangerous for him to slacken up for more than a minute here and there. The earth became a dark blot beneath him, while the moon, rising higher and higher, grew weirdly bright and close. How black the sky was; how piercing the points of starlight; how stimulating the strong, new odours of these lofty regions! He realised with a thrill of genuine ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... ground. It was the time of day that Landor had tried the door of Bob Manning's store, and the broad brim of the man's hat was pulled far forward to keep the glitter from his eyes. Under his head was a rolled-up blanket; an Indian blanket that even so showed against the brown earth in a blot of glaring colour. His hands were deep in his pockets; his moccasined feet were crossed. At first sight, an observer would have thought him asleep; but he was not asleep. The black eyes that looked forth motionless from beneath the hat brim, that apparently never for an instant left ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... all the needed proofs, my friend. Marry my soul's lady in peace and make her happy. There come some phases in a man's life which require all his will to face. I hope I am no weakling. I return to Russia immediately. Events there will enable me to blot out some ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... only one crime punishable with death. Think of it! Did I not tell you that we were now civilizing our gods? The tendency of those horrible laws, the tendency of those frightful penalties, was to blot the idea of justice from the human soul. Now, I want to show you how perfectly every department of human knowledge, or rather of ignorance, was saturated with superstition. I will for a moment refer to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the burning temple had come then to blot out the tragedy, but in my ears rang the single shriek as the knife fell. Then silence, and when the smoke had cleared, the revolving temple had shut off all sight or sound from the chamber in which the three beautiful women ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fresh historian sets the sum total down at a different figure. Take it, however, at the very lowest, it is still a horrible one. Let us shut our eyes and pass on. The history of those days remains in Carlyle's words, "Not a picture, but a huge blot: an indiscriminate blackness, one which the human memory ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... prison-bird; (Though they're gettin' over that, I guess, For all of 'em owe me more or less;) But I've learned one thing; an' it cheers a man In always a-doin' the best he can; That whether on the big book, a blot Gets over a fellow's name or not, Whenever he does a deed that's white, It's credited to him fair and right. An' when you hear the great bugle's notes, An' the Lord divides his sheep and goats, However they may settle my case, Wherever they may fix my place, My good old Christian mother, you'll ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... is defended by so sound a critic as Schlegel, seems to me a decided blot; I cannot accept it as right either in itself or on the score of dramatic fitness. Many like instances occur in Romeo and Juliet, King John, and other plays of that period; instances which I cannot help regarding not only as breaches of good taste in the speakers, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... government, by providing for the condition of political syncope into which they have fallen, and, during this interval, to substitute its own constitutional powers for the unconstitutional powers of the Rebellion. Of course, therefore, Congress will blot no star from the flag, nor will it obliterate any State liabilities. But it will seek, according to its duty, in the best way, to maintain the great and real sovereignty of the Union, by upholding the flag unsullied, and by enforcing everywhere within its jurisdiction the supreme law ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... son of the Alma Mater of Low-Dutch learning, what aileth thee? Is the leaf of the living world which we have turned over in company, less fairly written than thou hadst been taught to expect? Be comforted, and pass over one little blot or two; thou wilt be doomed to read through many a page, as black as Infamy, with her sooty pinion, can make them. Remember, most immaculate Nigel, that we are in London, not Leyden— that we are studying life, not lore. Stand buff against the reproach of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... is gone once fell before the sudden mania of a wind, and are resolved. What year was that? The leaves of an autumn that is long past are beyond time. The night is their place, and only the unknowing stars look down to the little blot of midnight which was us, and our pride, and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... she cried, "after 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 ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... you being funny, Mr. Purdie? You know quite well that there are not any trees for miles around. You have said yourself that it is the one blot on the landscape. ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... land's length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With the dilating spectre of her own Dark sin, uprisen from yonder spectral sands: Penitent more than to herself is known; England, appall'd by her ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... enlist in the Union army. How not to do it seems the whole study at Washington. Good, stiff-backed Union Democrats would dare to move; they would have nothing to lose and all to gain for their party. The present incumbents have all to lose; hence dare not avow any policy, but only wait. To forever blot out slavery is the only possible compensation for ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... they were returning by the same road, and overheard them binding themselves with fearful oaths. The Wanderer took leave of the young man at the entrance of the church, saying with wonderfully tender and conjuring tones: 'Be not deceived by those who would fain ruin thy soul, and blot out thy name from the number of honorable sounds on earth! Remember, whatsoever the splendor of the things thou shalt this night see, they are but deceptions from the lowest Hell! Then placing his hand on the heart of the young man, he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... valleys are deluged with tears, And her sighs, if united, were deeper by far, Than the thunderbolt's peal, when the clouds are at war. There is, not a bosom, that bears not within Its chambers, the blot and the burden of sin; Not a mind, but in many an hour bath felt The curse of its nature, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... little lad had we, chirruping in the chimney-tops, Twirling out a sooty broom, a blot against the blue. Ah, but when we called to him, and when he saw and ran to her, All our winter ended, and our ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... nights as he made up his ledgers and settled his accounts. In leisure moments he read in the intolerable book of the Past. Of all its sorrows and failures, its frantic follies and its besotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes. His mental clarity was unrelieved by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen crystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the day, so does forgetfulness draw a veil over the sad experiences of life and efface part of the past. And just as sleep is necessary for the recuperation of the exhausted vital forces, so must a man blot out from his memory certain portions of his past life if he is to face his new experiences freely and without prejudice. It is out of this very forgetfulness that strength arises for the perception of new facts. Let us take the case of learning to write. All the details which a child has ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Duke of Buckinghamshire. He built Buckingham House, where is now the palace, and there his wife, who was a left-handed descendant of the Stuart king, used to sit dressed in weeds on the anniversary of Charles the First's execution, and thus call attention to the royal blot upon her escutcheon. In the choir aisle another ugly memorial perpetuates her want of taste and the {98} forgotten fame of her pet doctor, one Chamberlain. Near his is a tablet to her other medical friend, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... to 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... feeling of joy, hoping soon to be lashed up in it, and find my grave in the deep blue sea. At first, my only consolation was enacting over and over again all the happy scenes with Josephine; but, as they invariably terminated in one dreadful point, this occupation became hateful. I then endeavoured to blot the whole transaction from my memory—to persuade myself that the events had not been real—that I had dreamed them—or read them long ago in some old book. But the mind is not so easily cheated—remorse not so ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... politicians declaimed on the necessity of ending a ruinous war by recognising the independence of the United States, and others advised a cessation of arms and conciliation, the vast majority of the nation soon burned with ardour to blot out the recollection of Burgoyne's disgrace, by deeds of arms, and by reducing the colonies to their original subjection to the mother country. Not only did public meetings of corporate bodies, towns, and counties, display their attachment to the cause of the crown by addresses, but some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... after such a fashion, be they who they may? Let me tell you, king, that it was an exceedingly great glory to you to have overcome Manfred, but a far greater one it is to overcome one's self; wherefore do you, who have to correct others, conquer yourself and curb this appetite, nor offer with such a blot to mar that which you have so ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... always heard yourself and the knights here spoken of as brave and gallant gentlemen, whose sole fault was that they chose to take part with a rebel prince, rather than with the King of England. I rejoice that you have cleared your name of so foul a blot as this would have placed upon it, and I acknowledge that your conduct now is knightly and courteous. But I can no more parley. The sun is within a few minutes of twelve, and I must surrender, to meet such ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... already long tormented itself over the obscure words of the Psalmist, and with a great effort he had striven to blot it out of his memory, and now the words danced again before his weary eyes, growing larger and larger. Those confusing black signs seemed to become a sneering doubt hovering round him: "A thousand years are but as a ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... 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 ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... painters are not without faults, so will we deal gently and considerately with the follies and sins of this much-talked-of baron; we grant him, therefore, though unwillingly, the desired dismissal. In addition to this, we abolish entirely this office so worthily filled by said baron, and wish to blot out the remembrance of it from the memory of man; holding that no other man can ever ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... came the image of Virginia Aydelot, who should be there instead; of the brown-handed farmer's wife, who had given up so much for the West. And yet, that face, framed in its dark hair, lighted by luminous dark eyes, seemed to blot out the dainty pink and white Jane Aydelot. A strength of will, a view of life at wide angles of vision, a resourcefulness and power of sacrifice seemed to deify the plainly clad prairie home-maker, winning, ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Settlement, indicate that he was not without 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 Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... "because you SCREAMED, and THEN I KNEW IT HAD FRIGHTENED YOU!" He stopped instantly as she momentarily recoiled from him, but the very brusqueness of his action had dislodged a tear from his dark eyes that fell warm on the back of her hand, and seemed to blot out the indignity. "Listen, Miss," he went on hurriedly, as if to cover up his momentary unmanliness. "I knew the bear was missing to-night, and when I heard the horses scurrying about I reckoned what was up. I knew no harm could come to you, for the horses were unharnessed ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... resting-place of the great members of the Medici family. Michelangelo planned and built the chapel and for it wrought six great pieces of art. These are the statues of Lorenzo de Medici, father of Catherine de Medici (who was such a large, black blot on the page of history); a statue of Giuliano de Medici (whose name lives now principally because Michelangelo made this statue); and the four colossal reclining figures known as "Night," "Morning," "Dawn" and "Twilight." This chapel is now open to the public, and no visitor at Florence ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... coldly received. "We admit," was the reply, "that there is much wrong here, but we do not admit the right of your country to rebuke it. There is a system now with you, worse than any thing which we know of tyranny—your SLAVERY. It is a disgrace and blot on your free government and on a Christian State. We have nothing in Russia or Hungary which is so degrading, and we have nothing which so crushes the mind. And more than this, we hear you have now a LAW, just passed by your National Assembly, which would disgrace the cruel ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... was you who saved the life of the only one my Wilfred loved, it was you who stood between Wilfred and his right position. It was you who kept Ruth from loving him, and although you went away you were ever the black blot on his life. And now you have come back again. Why? To breathe more poison, to carry out ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... though this had meant stagnation in their own environment. Still, the strain was pure! If one occasionally escaped these mountain fastnesses, why should he not—why should she not—with a free rein, dash out to regain lost prestige? Why should she not with one stroke blot out five or six generations of ignorance, and bring the stifled line of her honorable ancestry to the place it had been rightfully demanding for a century? But, in the face of uncertainties, would her blood commingled with the blood of established lineage now be ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... may blot out the insult—nothing less;" and with her head held high, and her whole air full of scorn, she swept out of the room, leaving the marquis on his knees. Then he started up to follow her, but dared not; and he flung himself ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... it seemed long in coming. Such a delay always aggravated the slow fire within him. He had nothing of Ladd's patience. He wanted action. The gray shadow below thinned out, and the patch of mesquite made a blot upon the pale valley. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the Po was now wasted to the heart's content of the invaders. Should they cross the Apennines and blot out Rome as they had blotted out Aquileia from among the cities of the world? This was the great question that was being debated in the Hunnish camp, and, strange to say, the voices were not all for war. Already Italy began to strike that strange awe into the hearts of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... overlooking Waterloo Street was, as far as I can remember, taken up by private suites. The palm court was built on the roof of the first floor and was a very great improvement to this part of the hotel as it removed from sight what had always been a blot and an eyesore. After the abolition of the shops, tiffin-rooms were established on the Waterloo Street side, which have since been converted into ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... summer's wandering as did Margaret Preston, yet it was on her "blind slate" that she was forced to write of these things and of the "crowning delight of the summer," the tour through Switzerland. She said, "My picture gallery of memory is hung henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindness cannot blot or cause ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... and then, I met people in Portland, and especially in Boston, who had known me in former years, and who knew something of my past life; but these were generally my friends who sympathized with my sufferings, or who, at least, were willing to blot out the past in my better behavior of the present. One day in Boston a young man came ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... shall be clothed[3:5] in white garments; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, and I will acknowledge his name before my Father, and before ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more than that he professed himself unable to read Chapman's translation of Homer, without rapture. His opinion concerning the duty of a poet is contained in his declaration, that "he would blot from his works any line that did not contain some motive ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... O Percy—pity thee! 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 ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... Christendom, and to restore his late queen to her place at his side. This letter, as it was originally written, was one of Clement's happiest compositions.[407] He abstained in it from using any expression which could be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character, which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had deserved ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... 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.
... {297} was written for Macready, and put on at Covent Garden Theater, but without pronounced success. He has written many fine dramatic poems, like Pippa Passes, Colombo's Birthday, and In a Balcony; and at least two good acting plays, Luria and A Blot in the Scutcheon. The last named has recently been given to the American public, with Lawrence Barrett's careful and intelligent presentation of the leading role. The motive of the tragedy is somewhat strained and fantastic, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... cruelty, and surpassed in treachery, the crimes of the September assassins of Paris and the Jacobinical butcheries of Lyons and Avignon. It was marked, not only by the fervour of the revolution, but by the subtlety of the league, and will long remain a blot upon the history of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox |
