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Disfigure   /dɪsfˈɪgjər/   Listen
Disfigure

verb
(past & past part. disfigured; pres. part. disfiguring)
1.
Mar or spoil the appearance of.  Synonyms: blemish, deface.  "The vandals disfigured the statue"



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"Disfigure" Quotes from Famous Books



... within these few years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. The plot of the Jodelle, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent; the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste, belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by a spirit of tenderness. The burlesque tone, which in many ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... in with a bush of Thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes in to disfigure, or to present, the person ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... lower nevertheless is present as dust of the ground. And if we oppose such a pedigree on account of the ugliness and wickedness which exist in the animal world, we have to point to the fact that, on the one hand, mankind also has stains which are uglier than those which disfigure the wildest beast of prey, and that, on the other hand, the animal world shows features which {319} are so noble that no man need be ashamed of them. It is certainly a right feeling to which Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... to a degree. Nothing in the world can disfigure a woman more successfully than an unbecoming hat and a cheap black veil, which imparts a dingy, leaden tint to the complexion. I had every reason to be satisfied with my disguise that afternoon, but I wasn't. Not a bit! I felt cross, and irritated, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... logical terms are all very well from a professor to his students in a lecture room, but introduced into ordinary conversation in company they are altogether out of place. No one with good taste, unless he has fearfully forgotten it, will disfigure his talk with them, however pure and efficient a logician he may be ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... obligation of dress, and of the pleasant little artificial graces belonging to high civilization. Some of her evening dresses were elegant, the colors harmonizing, and the style picturesque and becoming. If she had the good taste not to disfigure her classically-shaped head, or to load herself with flashy jewelry, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... his designs and of his conduct. The commissioners tried to induce him to submit, quoting the example of the ancient Roman generals. "We are always mistaken in our quotations," he replied; "and we disfigure Roman history by taking as an excuse for our crimes the example of their virtues. The Romans did not kill Tarquin; the Romans had a well ordered republic and good laws; they had neither a Jacobin club nor a revolutionary tribunal. We live in a time of anarchy. Tigers wish ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... not put on your corset; a cold in the head wouldn't oblige you to disfigure your waist and wear half a dozen petticoats, nor hide your hands in these old gloves, and your pretty feet in those hideous shoes, nor dress ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... while engaged in the details of those grateful episodes which frequently reward his progress through musty chronicles, to find himself suddenly arrested in his narrative by some of those rude interruptions by which violence and injustice disfigure so frequently, in the march of history, the beauty of its portraits. One of these occurs to us in this connection. Our Huguenot settlers on the Santee were not long suffered to pursue a career of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... sword-bearer, and chaplain; to despise the authority of the sheriffs; and to hold the court of aldermen as nought; but not on any account, in case the fulness of time should bring a general rising of 'prentices, to damage or in any way disfigure Temple Bar, which was strictly constitutional and always to be approached with reverence. Having gone over these several heads with great eloquence and force, and having further informed the novice that this society had its origin in his own teeming brain, stimulated ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... uninteresting work of sawing up the trunk, and disposing in an orderly manner of the branches. He also took great pains to cut his trees as close to the ground as possible, so as not to sacrifice the good timber at the butt, or leave a tall or ragged stump to disfigure the ground afterwards. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... compositions, such as the more effective fragments from the Romeo and Juliet Symphony, again made a particular impression on me, it is true; but I was now more consciously awake to the curious weaknesses which disfigure even the finest conceptions of this extraordinary musician than on those earlier occasions, when I only had a sense of general discomfort adequate to the magnitude ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... influence subversive of 'plantation discipline.' Consequently they must be made a warning to others. It is for the interest of the masters (at least they believe it to be) to put upon such slaves iron collars and chains, to brand and crop them; to disfigure, lacerate, starve and torture them—in a word, to inflict upon them such vengeance as shall strike terror into the other slaves. To this class may be added the incorrigibly thievish and indolent; it would be for the interest of the masters to treat them ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... have made it as an Indian would, using grass instead of thread. It is much more complete than mine, for the green stitches ornament the white bark, but the black ones disfigure it. I should know a man made your basket ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour—the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of hair never changed colour. Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we had known her, but as the years passed she became afflicted with a shaking palsy which made her nervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Her hands were so uncertain that she could no longer disfigure china, poor woman! As the couple grew older, they quarrelled more and more often about the ultimate disposition of their 'property.' A new law was passed in the state, securing the surviving wife a third of her husband's ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... no recommendation of ours to bring them into notice. This Volume, her History of Greece, is written with great clearness and fluency, the fabulous tales which disfigure so many professedly authentic histories of the Greeks are discarded. We cordially recommend this work for the School-room, or family ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... crumbling: the hand of death is upon them all. But down there, in the far distance, near to that silver streak which meanders through the plains, and which is the old Nile, the advent of new times is proclaimed by the chimneys of factories, impudently high, that disfigure everything, and spout forth into the twilight thick clouds ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... have watched the cultivators during the process, and observed the usual neglect; sometimes the spurs were shaved off completely, without a bud for next year's shoot, and at others too many buds were left, that would weaken and disfigure the parent stem. The instrument for pruning was similar to a very small reaping-hook, with a handle about a foot in length, and the delicate operation was conducted with a rapidity that rendered the necessary ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... softly, not caring to disturb his musings. He sat still, looking over his own broad fields, not thinking of them as his, however, not calculating the expense of the new saw-mill, with which he had been threatening to disfigure Carson's brook, just at the point where its waters fell into the pond. He was looking far-away to the distant hills, where the dim haze was deepening into purple, hiding the mountain tops beyond. But it could not be hills, nor haze, nor hidden mountain tops, that had brought ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... all, impressed by the many contradictions which disfigure the book. Hardly a page is free from conflicting doctrines and methods of life. It could not be otherwise in any effort to harmonize the mutually contradictory teachings of the conflicting schools of religious thought and practice in ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... argument that has kept a good many decent men from doing their duty. It will not work with me now." He put his folded paper into his pocket, and reached and took the other document that he had handed to Wasgatt earlier in the evening. "I'll not disfigure the perfect structure of your platform now, Presson, but I'll see how these sound from the floor of the convention, in spite of your resolutions to shut off free speech! Good-night, gentlemen." He turned to leave, still serene ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... one case when three days had elapsed, the patient (a young lady) was delirious and speechless, the whole face was so swollen as to entirely disfigure her features, raising the cheeks to a level with the nose, and closing the eyes. Her life was almost despaired of. The surface of a freshly cut onion was applied to the point where the sting entered, and changed about once an hour for a fresh piece. In a few hours consciousness returned, ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill

... short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... of the skin, characterised by the tuberculous eruptions which eat into the skin, particularly of the face, and disfigure it. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... overseers, may be used towards their Christian servants, that from and after the publication hereof, if any man smite out the eye or tooth of his man servant or maid servant, or otherwise maim or disfigure them much, unless it be by mere casualty, he shall let him or her go free from his service, and shall allow such further recompense as the court of quarter sessions shall adjudge him. 2. That if any person or persons ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... Character of his Annus Mirabilis. His rhyming plays. His impossible men and women. His tendency to bombast. His attempts at fairy imagery. His incomparable reasonings in verse. His art of producing rich effects by familiar words. Catholicity of his literary creed. Causes of the exaggeration which disfigure his panegyrics. Character of his Hind and Panther. And of his Absalom and Achitophel. Compared with Juvenal. What he would probably have accomplished in an epic poem. Compared ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was one of those working near the log raft, had instantly recognized Peveril, and at sight of him his hatred blazed up with redoubled fury. To be sure, his broken jaw had healed, but so awry as to disfigure his face and render it more hideous than ever. Now to find the man who had done him this injury again interfering with his ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... small capitals, and italics. And I cannot think that any irreverence could be charged against an editor who had the courage to put a moist pen through those expressions of egotism and naive self-satisfaction and vanity which do occasionally disfigure his pages. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... fear, struggled together in the shocked mind of Lady Isabel. Arrest the dead. She had never heard of a like calamity: nor could she have believed in such. Arrest it for what purpose? What to do? To disfigure it?—to sell it? With a panting heart and ashy lips, she turned from the room. Mrs. Mason happened to be passing near the stairs, and Isabel flew to her, laying hold of her with both hands, in her terror, as she burst into a fit ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... almost to the shoulder, a style just then new, even in France. His eyes were a deep blue, and his complexion, though browned by exposure, held a tinge of beauty which the sun could not mar and a girl might envy. He wore neither mustachio nor beard, as men now disfigure their faces—since Francis I took a scar on his chin—and his clear cut profile, dilating nostrils and mobile, though firm-set mouth, gave pleasing assurance of tenderness, gentleness, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... Bateese may use his fists, but I shall use those, so that I shall not disfigure him permanently. His face is none too ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... is scarcely regimental," said he, "this morning; and as for Fin, he was never remarkable for beauty, so, though they might cut and hack, they could scarcely disfigure him, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... the organs of speech yielding to social or moral influences, and losing the power of repeating certain sounds, was prominently observable amongst the Normans. No modern French gazette-writer could disfigure English names more whimsically than the Domesday Commissioners. To the last, the Normans never could learn to say 'Lincoln,'—they never could get nearer than 'Nincol,' or 'Nicole.'" The "chivalry" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... man was aware what his son had done on his return from Godalming, whither he had betaken himself to a fair, then he was furious. He stormed at Iver for daring to disfigure the sign-board, and at his wife for suffering him ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... girl's freedom, to adopt her. We must let her know, in the meantime, that she has still friends in the world, and that she must keep up her spirits. She must also endeavour to make herself of little value in the sight of the Barin, her owner. She must feign sickness or foolishness, and disfigure her countenance, or refuse to work; a woman's wit will advise her best, though, what ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... fully imbibing the spirit of Christ; and though he aspires to be an earnest and an efficient Christian and to love all his brethren, this remnant of Hinduism in his heart returns to rob him of the joys and blessings of his Christian birthright. I have seen this frequently disfigure what would otherwise have been a beautiful Christian character. I have witnessed it blast the prospects of Christian congregations dooming them to stagnation and death. I have known it to palsy the arm and deaden the heart of more than ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... No trace of passion on my face?—No sign Of ugly humours, doubts, or fears, or aught That may disfigure God's intelligence? I have a grievous charge against you, sir, That may involve your life; and if you doubt The candour of my judgment, choose your time: Shall I ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... other and more gentle scenes for the decoration of their homes. Flower-gatherers and dancing-girls, harvest festivals and religious processions, appealed to their minds far more than the endless and monotonous succession of horrors with which the Mesopotamian monarchs delighted to disfigure their walls; and even the dangers of the bull-ring, as seen on the Knossian frescoes, are mild and gentle when compared with the abominations where Teumman has his head sawed off with a short dagger, and other unfortunates are flayed alive, or ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... whip, or of wage-slaves, one step higher, under fear of want. Long ages wherein hunting and fighting were the only manly occupations, have left their heavy impress. The predacious instinct and the combative instinct weigh down and disfigure our economic development. What Veblen calls "the instinct of workmanship" grows on, slowly and irresistably; but the malign features of our industrial life are distinctively androcentric: the desire to get, of the hunter; interfering with the desire to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... sum up the points which we have just indicated, three sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of time. Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... he had been imbued with the judgments of the party of 1814, on Bonaparte. Now, all the prejudices of the Restoration, all its interests, all its instincts tended to disfigure Napoleon. It execrated him even more than it did Robespierre. It had very cleverly turned to sufficiently good account the fatigue of the nation, and the hatred of mothers. Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster, and in order to paint him to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... out why I awakened from general anesthetic with two breasts, but I have since supposed that due to my tender age the surgeon was reluctant to disfigure me without at least asking me for permission, or giving me some time to prepare psychologically. When I came out of anesthesia he told me that the lump was malignant, and that he had removed it, ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... mentions the man in the moon. First, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. Scene 1, Quince the carpenter gives directions for the performance of Pyramus and Thisby, who "meet by moonlight," and says, "One must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of Moonshine." Then in Act v. the player of that part says, "All that I have to say is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog." And, secondly, in the Tempest, Act ii., Scene ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... ringlets who pass in the terra-cotta show of the Palais Royal for our countrywomen, have long ago ceased to warm my indignation. All I can say now is, that the artists and modellers have not travelled. They have studied the strange British apparitions which disfigure the Boulevard des Italiens in the autumn, their knowledge of our race is limited to the unfortunate selection of specimens who strut about their streets, and—according to their light—they are not guilty of outrageous ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... surpassed for its majesty and tenderness, and for a beauty which even those tiresome allusions to the classics, that give a faded air to so much of the poetry of the sixteenth century, cannot seriously disfigure ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... his chin," he ended, "he's got a little scar, sort of scar you see on German students' faces, only quite small—doesn't disfigure him ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... relieved by the sight of the young people returning across the lawn—Fitzjocelyn with his ash stick, but owing a good deal of support to Mary's firm, well-knit arm. They showed well together: even lameness could not disfigure the grace of his leisurely movements; and the bright changefulness and delicacy of his face contrasted well with the placid nobleness of her composed expression, while her complexion was heightened and her eyes lighted by exercise, so that she was almost handsome. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have only spoken of the artificial splendour of Eaton. The natural beauties with which it is environed will, however, present equal, if not superior, attraction for the tourist. The stiff, formal walks of Vanbrugh no longer disfigure the grounds, which are now made to harmonize with the contiguous landscape, and are enlivened by an inlet of the Dee, which intervenes between the eastern front of the mansion, and the opposite plantations. These alterations have, however, been made with great judgment, ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... forever. Why don't they cut their own children's ears into points to make them look sharp? Why don't they cut the end off their noses to make them look plucky? One would be just as sensible as the other. What right have they to torment and disfigure God's creatures?" ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... with the civil magistrate at the head of them. At this sight he stood motionless, and had not power to utter one word. "Ganem," said the favourite, "there is no time to be lost; if you love me, put on the habit of one of your slaves immediately, and disfigure your face and arms with soot. Then put some of these dishes on your head; you may be taken for a servant belonging to the eating house, and they will let you pass. If they happen to ask you where the master of the house is, answer, without any hesitation, that he is within." "Alas! madam," answered ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... called a Scripture style. One of their most striking characteristics, by the way, is a severely simple taste; a uniform freedom from the vulgarities of conception, the exaggerated sentiment, the mawkish nonsense and twaddle, which disfigure such an infinitude of volumes of religious biography and fiction which have been written since. Could such men attain this uniform elevation? Could such men have invented those extraordinary fictions,—the miracles and the parables? Could they, in spite of their gross ignorance, have so interwoven ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... Lys is a sublime work, without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf does not need those horrible regrets; they injure the beautiful letter she writes.' Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced a hundred lines, which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation. I have not regretted a single word, and each time that my pen was drawn through one of them, never was the heart of man more deeply stirred. I thought I saw that grand and sublime woman, that angel of friendship, before me, smiling as ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... who wants to abolish sex. He believes in spirit. He is timid and womanly, his mind is pure and inexpressibly shocked at the carnal desires which disfigure the otherwise fair picture of humanity. Love, marriage, procreation, cannot these be purged from the base and degrading obsessions of sex? By abstinence, by concentration, we may eliminate them. Surely the story of the Fall makes it quite clear that we were never meant to perpetuate ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... contentious; can they make him wise? They exhaust the mind by a certain jejune and barren subtlety, without fertilizing or inspiring it. By their stammering and by the stains of their impure style they disfigure theology which had been enriched and adorned by the eloquence of the ancients. They involve everything whilst trying to resolve everything.' 'Scotist', with Erasmus, became a handy epithet for all schoolmen, nay, for everything superannuated ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... has all the appearance of stone, nevertheless the outer surface shaves off with a knife without materially dulling the blade. This was tried, but of course was not allowed to proceed to disfigure Mr. Giant. A scale that fell from the bottom of one of the feet, looks much like gold quartz, but still is softish and crumbles readily, with a sort of soft sand stone result. It rests on half sand, half clay bottom, the earth above being, as we have ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.

... natural idea of a broken heart. The incoherences are gone; the contradictions have vanished; and the gross physical absurdities, which under mistranslation had perplexed the reverential student, no longer disfigure ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... we, His noblest works on earth, instead of adding to the universal harmony of His creation, make monsters of ourselves, moral blots upon the beautiful face of His world? It were idle for Him to give us the knowledge of His will and then to stand by and let us disfigure His fairest designs; to bid us do what is right, and then let us do wrong without exacting redress or atonement. If He is wise, He must not only lay down the law, but He must also enforce it; He must make it our highest interest to keep His law, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... something touching in her way of doing things. Her baptismal name was Raissa, but we called her "Little Black-Lip," for she had a little mole, like a berry-stain, on her upper lip, but this did not disfigure her; indeed, it had the contrary effect. She was just a year older than David. I had for her a feeling akin to reverence, but she had very little to do with me. Between her and David, on the other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... added Anne. "No, children, you haven't wept enough to permanently disfigure your charming faces. If the boys had not appeared we might now be weeping in a melancholy row. I had no idea that Jessica's secret was to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... bulbous-rooted fumitory," said the young man, pulling a piece at random in the reckless way in which men do disfigure forest flower-beds. "It isn't strictly indigenous, but it is naturalized in many places, and you must have seen it before, though you fancy ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... they may; and egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make them ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... business purposes, which must soon take place even if there be no change in the character of business, conducted with a little system and uniformity. The streets themselves have been made so fine that it will require some moral courage—a thing for which Washington is not noted—to disfigure them by the hideous jumbles that accorded so well with the old ways. Such splendid monstrosities as the Treasury—as a whole, the worst public building in the city, although good in parts, so situated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... without danger or opposition. One of the ships laid at the wharf, the others a little way out in the stream, with their warps made fast to the wharf. To prevent discovery, we agreed to wear ragged clothes and disfigure ourselves, dressing to resemble Indians as much as possible, smearing our faces with grease and lamp black or soot, and should not have known each other except by our voices. Our most intimate friends among the spectators had not the least knowledge of ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... is no doubt of it. Such beauty as they have never seen here in their lives! Fanciful extravagances in dress, and atrocious hair-dressing, cannot disfigure her; and by Jove! she has tried both. And one has only to imagine that woman dressed and "coiffeed," as she might be, to conceive such a triumph as London has not witnessed for the century! And I do long for ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... the lower part is heavy and over-sensuous. Now, not only does this, in my opinion, entirely disfigure a woman's looks, but it suggests unpleasant ideas of her character. A man may have that ponderous chin and voluptuous mouth, without their disturbing the harmony of an otherwise handsome face. I do not think a woman can; and as in the physical ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... has been graduated from college without the loss of his front teeth or an eye. He has a few scars, which will not permanently disfigure him; and though he halts slightly as the result of a strained tendon in the calf of one of his legs, Dr. Meredith assures us that this is chiefly a nervous symptom, which will pass off presently. He says Fred is a little run down, and he advises raw eggs and milk between meals. I assume that ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... always be called the Abbot of Westminster. How picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet—'Home Secretary and Abbot of Westminster, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.' The first duty of the Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700 coming under its consideration. A small tablet would recall what has been taken away. Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring gaps would ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... nature is divine no less than his soul, and he vindicates the "flesh" from the attacks made on human character by certain forms of Christianity. The body, according to Nachmanides, is, with all its functions, the work of God, and therefore perfect. "It is only sin and neglect that disfigure God's creatures." In another of his books, "The Law of Man," Nachmanides writes of suffering and death. He offers an antidote to pessimism, for he boldly asserts that pain and suffering in themselves are "a service of God, leading man to ponder on his end and reflect about his destiny." Nachmanides ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... spending all their spare time in firing at targets. They boasted that they could hit an opponent in any part of his body they pleased, and made up their minds before the encounter began whether they should kill him, disable, or disfigure him for life — lay him on a bed of suffering for a twelve-month, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... for a sun bath. He sprawled and spread himself, every feather standing independent of its neighbor, till he looked as if he had been smashed flat, and more like some of the feather monstrosities with which milliners disfigure their hats than a ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... up with sour cream and softening lotions that will not hurt the skin. There, child, go with Patty, who will get thee into something proper. But she is like her mother in this respect, common garb does not disfigure her." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... garment before the household flame, she turns it, by portions, now to and now from the sun heart of fire. Oh joy that all the hideous lacerations and vile gatherings of refuse which the worshippers of mammon disfigure the earth withal, scoring the tale of their coming dismay on the visage of their mother, shall one day lie fathoms deep under the blessed ocean, to be cleansed and remade into holy because lovely forms! May the ghosts of the men who mar the earth, turning her sweet rivers into channels of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... the line of the arch, clambered up with difficulty only to slide headlong on the other side. The bridges of these parts are very picturesque, giving an added charm to the landscape, in glaring contrast to the hideous, shed-like structures that disfigure many a ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... seldom takes time to display high intelligence. Naturally we dislike men, women, children or wild animals who are always ready to make fools of themselves, stampede, and disfigure the landscape. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... of importance in that verse, 'that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour'. I mean the word, 'Saviour'. I am so glad that is there to meet those who say, 'Ah! you talk about adornments, but I am distressed because I see so many things about me that disfigure and discredit the doctrine'. You feel that you need a power which can give deliverance from the worldly spirit, the light and frivolous disposition, bad tempers, resentments, and other selfish and sinful ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... think the same of the charge of Untruthfulness, and select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable but because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, "Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick, but not, will stain. I think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... wall. Unimportant windows built with distinctly utilitarian purpose successfully light this small, simple room, and no kindly shadow hides its bareness or diminishes the unhappy effect of the paintings which disfigure the walls. The Cathedral's exterior is so surrounded by irregular old houses that the traveller had discovered it with some difficulty. It has little that is worthy of description, and after having entered ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... mark used by Laundries in England, by which the owner of the article washed is identified. This nut is called, I believe, "Areca nut." When applied to the human skin it causes a sore. The illness from which the poor girl was suffering was an "inclination to maim or disfigure oneself," commonly found with imbeciles. (I have touched wood, you medical people, so please don't abuse me if ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... for me a certain chemical preparation which he said would alter and disfigure my features so that I never could be recognized, even by those who were most intimately acquainted with me. He was as good as his word; he furnished me with a colorless liquid, contained in a small phial, directing me to apply it to my face at night, but cautioning me particularly to avoid getting ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... buildings are in ruins. The Ganges here and there undermines the foundations, and palaces and temples sink into the soft earth or fall entirely down. Miserable little huts are in some places built upon these ruins, and disfigure the fine appearance of the town, for even the ruins themselves ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... that lay beyond a prolonged martyrdom; she spoke of stakes and flaming pyres; she spread the adjectives thickly on her finest tartines, and decorated them with a variety of her most pompous epithets. It was an infringement of the copyright of the passages of declamation that disfigure Corinne; but Louise grew so much the greater in her own eyes as she talked, that she loved the Benjamin who inspired her eloquence the more for it. She counseled him to take a bold step and renounce his patronymic for the noble name of Rubempre; he need not mind the little ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... secluded dell of evergreens, cedar, hemlock, and pine, enlivened by a few deciduous trees. Through this dell there is a road-track leading to a fine cleared farm, the green pastures of which were rendered more pleasing by the absence of the odious stumps that disfigure the clearings in this part of the country. A pretty bright stream flows through the low meadow that lies at the foot of the hill, which you descend suddenly close by a small grist-mill that is worked by the waters, just where they meet ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... at this Fair have had an opportunity of witnessing its operations and judging for themselves of its merits. An effective machine of this kind is of incalculable value to the farmer in removing at once from his fields the unsightly stumps that disfigure them, and which adds so much to the labor of cultivating those fields. Of the machine itself, I may be permitted to say, by way of digression, that it surpasses in the effectiveness of its operations anything of the kind which I have yet ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo

... against me." cried she, indignantly. "You are trying your best to disfigure me, and to make me look old before my time. Who ever saw such a ridiculous structure as this headdress, that makes me look like a perambulating castle on a chessboard? Come, another coiffure, and let it not be such a ridiculous one ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... horrible meeting when—her mind having dabbled in crime as if with her fingers—she had determined to disfigure her rival with vitriol and had believed that she had done so, Germinie returned to Rue de Laval with a bottle of brandy procured at ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... flushed, and his keen blue eyes shone with a half angry, half impatient light. With a curious gesture of suppressed feeling he passed a hand over his clean-shaven mouth, as though to smooth the whiskers that had never been permitted to disfigure it. "It makes me feel a darn selfish, useless hulk of a man. And I'm not," he cried. "I'm neither those things. Say An-ina," he went on, more calmly, and with a light of humour in his eyes, "Don't you dare ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... leaning over the sluice, looking in at one of the things human industry has failed to disfigure, nearly as beautiful to-day as long ago on Pactolus' banks when Lydian shepherds, with great stones, fastened fleeces in the river that they might catch and gather for King Croesus the golden sands ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... the young duchess, the very first day of her arrival at the Wells. This happy inspiration of a wit never failing at a pinch has rescued one of our princeliest houses from the assaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter and disfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms; insomuch that the ballad, to which we are indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the ducal pair, speaks of Dewlap in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... it might become porous. The whole was then heated until the wax or wood disappeared. The mold was then ready for use. The great advantage of this method was that there were no projecting lines of junction to disfigure the complete implement. This seems to have been the most common method employed. This explains the fact, that we seldom find any two bronze objects exactly similar to one another. Any impression left on the wax model would ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... recognize no other subjects for thought or admiration than the subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of the Sybarite. It seems strange, when thus definitely stated, that such a school should exist. Yet consider a little what gaps and blanks would disfigure our gallery and chamber walls, in places that we have long approached with reverence, if every picture, every statue, were removed from them, of which the subject was either the vice or the misery of mankind, portrayed without any moral purpose: consider the innumerable groups having reference ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... Disfigure several of our rivers, and are not only a source of danger to navigation, but are liable to cause deposits which may hereafter render dredging necessary. I have endeavoured—without success—to find owners for the vessels referred to. Ownership has evidently been transferred from one to another with ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours

... every little incident as it occurred, yet it cannot be imagined that I all this while neglected to peruse the defence of the articles published in the bishop's name. No: it was my very first employment, on my arrival in town; and though considerable trouble had been bestowed to disfigure the work, as written by me, yet in substance I found it to be the same. The wrongs of Miss Wilmot quickened my feelings, and, angry as I was with Wakefield, I felt emotions of ten fold bitterness against ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear not; ye who are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disfigure your faces that ye may seem unto men to fast; learn healthy cheerfulness, and mild contentment, from the deaf, and dumb, and blind! Self-elected saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child may teach ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... uneven and dilapidated, but in picturesque keeping with the building. The gate hung loosely on its hinges, just opposite an old-fashioned porch, that shot over the front door, much after the fashion of that hideous thing called a poke, with which English women disfigure their pretty travelling bonnets and protect ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... sophistry has not warped it. It follows from this, that religions vary, are changed, and may be falsified until the primitive meaning is lost. But whatever may be the faith and the rites of religions—whether fanaticism disfigure them or fetichism make a caricature of them, whether politicians use them as an ally, or the traces of the apostolate fade beneath the materialism of speculation,—there will always remain at the bottom, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... prophesying various results. Neither Pico nor Castro looked amiable. The Governor had arrived in the morning to find that the General had allowed pasquinades representing his Excellency in no complimentary light to disfigure the streets of Monterey. Castro, when taken to task, had replied haughtily that it was the Governor's place to look after his own dignity; he, the Commandante-General of the army of the Californias, had more important matters ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... Crewe dared not address a word to Margaret lest he should anger his captors into doing him some injury that might lessen his powers of thought or action, and the girl, seeing that no immediate gain could be had from speech, dreaded to be smitten on the mouth in a way that might disfigure her in her lover's eyes. Only at times, when a wind would blow the smoke and flame aside, she looked across the camp-fire into the young man's face, and in the look and in the smile of the steady lips he read not only an unswerving ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... flower-enameled green of the extended plain stretched its beautiful borders to the deepening woods. All nature smiled; all seemed in harmony and peace but the breast of man. He who was made lord of this paradise awoke to disturb its repose, to disfigure its loveliness! As the thronging legions poured upon the plain, the sheep which had been feeding there, fled scared to the hills; the plover and heath-fowl which nestled in the brakes, rose affrighted ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... broad-shouldered and massively built, he would have been called unusually good-looking, but for a certain lazy expression in his deep-set blue eyes, and that perpetual inane laugh which seemed to disfigure ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... both tunnels gave excellent results, as far as smoothness of finish was concerned, but, owing to the imperviousness of the steel, small air holes were formed in the surface, though not in sufficient numbers or size to cause trouble or disfigure ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis

... in a classical coil, so that her head in profile brought up to the beholder's mind a vision of an antique statue. Rare was her taste; no clashing colors or absurd puffs and furbelows were ever allowed to disfigure her graceful form, and thus her appearance always charmed the artistic eye, although many of her schoolmates called her "odd" and "quakerish." Sibyl had already obtained her little triumphs. An artist of world-wide fame had asked permission ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... a volley of peculiarly southern oaths, with which we cannot disfigure our page, even in deference to the necessity of painting a correct picture of the scene we have described. Tom had a vein of humor in his composition, which has already displayed itself in some of the rough experiences of his career; ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... universal, make no difference between one man and another, and can never be the object of blame. It is only when the disposition gives a PROPENSITY to any of these disagreeable passions, that they disfigure the character, and by giving uneasiness, convey the sentiment of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... is not your fault at all, Mr. Bathurst; I put a great deal more on than you said, but I was so anxious to disfigure myself that I was determined to do it thoroughly; but it is nothing to what it was. As you see, my lips are getting all right again, and the sores are a good deal better than they were; I suppose they will leave scars, but that won't ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... of my retainers. Two hours of life are always two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while as that. And, besides, if I understand her appearance, my niece has something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by want of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Nothing comparable to this state of affairs had been known in the previous history of warfare, unless we take such a case as that of a nineteenth century warship attacking some large savage or barbaric settlement, or one of those naval bombardments that disfigure the history of Great Britain in the late eighteenth century. Then, indeed, there had been cruelties and destruction that faintly foreshadowed the horrors of the aerial war. Moreover, before the twentieth century the world had had but one experience, and that a comparatively ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... while I'm about it I want to add that, at Mrs. Ascott's suggestion—which really is my own idea—I have decided not to build all those Rhine castles, which useless notion, if I am not mistaken, originated with you. I don't want to disfigure my beautiful wilderness. Mrs. Ascott and I had a very plain talk with Hamil and we forced him to agree with us that the less he did to improve my place the better for the place. He seemed to take it good-humouredly. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... lived poorly; but there was now no pitiful straining to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth a moment's thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards at things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another:] i.e., Heaven hath given you one face, and you disfigure his image by making ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... dissolute Lady Townley, rather than the cold, the sober, though virtuous Lady Grace? How odious ought writers to be who thus employ the talents they have from their maker most traitorously against himself, by endeavouring to corrupt and disfigure his creatures! If the comedies of Congreve did not rack him with remorse in his last moments, he must have been lost to all ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... be accepted gratefully: the penitence of sinners ought not to be mixed with questions of worldly interest; the returning prodigal, when asking pardon at his father's feet, had made no conditions; the English nation must not disfigure their obedience by alluding, in the terms of it, to the pope's ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... carelessness on the one hand, and without extravagance on the other. When we may, why should we not choose the best and most becoming? Why are we to mortify ourselves and annoy our friends by choosing something because it is especially hideous? No law, human or divine, enjoins us to disfigure ourselves. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... found, proportion, Pythagorean symmetry or music, and bold as they could be in their exercises (it was a Lacedaemonian who, at Olympia, for the first time threw aside the heavy girdle and ran naked to the goal) forbade all that was likely to disfigure the body. Though we must not suppose all ties of nature rent asunder, nor all connexion between parents and children in those genial, retired houses at an end in very early life, it was yet a strictly public education which began with them betimes, and ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... is, however, much more simply designed, but cannot be fairly judged now, on account of the retouching and frequent varnishing which disfigure it. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... moment no crowd in Palace Yard. And he probably felt that that crowd would assist him with his old Tory enemies. When, in the last words of his speech, he declared that under no circumstances would he disfigure the close of his political career by voting for the ballot,—not though the people, on whose behalf he had been fighting battles all his life, should be there in any number to coerce him,—there came another round of applause from the opposition benches, and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... that in protesting against hypocrisy he has occasionally been led beyond the limits prescribed by good taste. He is at times abusive of those who differ from him. This, with other offences against decorum, which here and there disfigure his pages, can only be condoned by an appeal to the general tone of his writing, which is reverential. Burns had a firm faith in a Supreme Being, not as a vague mysterious Power; but as the Arbiter of human life. Amid the vicissitudes of his career he responds to the cottar's summons, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... of the guild of scholars would here use his privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and phrases,—abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and written speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, the pages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken or lead to general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is many centuries distant from the period when it may ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of ironmongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... best." He thus selects for compliment on one page the very women whom he has traduced on another. His own witnesses testify against him. It is a pity that such phrases of discourtesy and unfairness should disfigure an essay which in many respects says good words for women, recommends that they should study Greek, and says, in closing, that their elevation "is at once the measure and the means ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... much overdone, for nature. The usual amount of common-place remarks were made, too, on the lucky diversity that was to be found in tastes, and on the happy necessity there existed of all being able to find the means to please themselves. But these were no more than the moral blotches that usually disfigure human commendation. The sentiment and the sympathies of the mass were powerfully and irresistibly enlisted in favor of the unknown maiden—feelings that were very unequivocally manifested as she drew nearer ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... The Daily Times as "that little villain, Raymond;" and replying to an offensive charge against him by The Evening Post, he began with, "You lie, villain, wilfully, wickedly, basely lie." Other passages at arms like these occasionally enlivened, if they did not disfigure, the editorial columns of The Tribune, over which Greeley exercised a personal censorship which, in later years, he found it necessary to relax. He was sincerely and ardently devoted to the cause of Protection, to the interests of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... combatants is frequently found dead. (12. Layard, 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' vol. xiv. 1854, p. 63.) An Indian partridge (Ortygornis gularis), the male of which is furnished with strong and sharp spurs, is so quarrelsome "that the scars of former fights disfigure the breast of almost every bird you kill." (13. Jerdon, 'Birds of India,' vol. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... cutting peat for fuel, which is often done within the dyke, instead of doing this in parallel lines, leaving a considerable space between them to become a future corn-field, the people cut in every direction, disfigure the ground, and very often form reservoirs for water to accumulate in. The outfield is allowed to remain fallow for one, and sometimes two years in succession, but the infield is generally turned over every year.'** [Vol. i ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... (himself a dramatist), and others of the minor Caroline poets; but it is far more noticeable in drama, and resulted in the production, by some of the playwrights of the transition period under Charles I. and Charles II., of some of the most amorphous botches in the way of style that disfigure English literature. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... be said on this subject; but, to the wise, a word is sufficient. And it would ill become one who is endeavouring to recommend conciseness, to disfigure that very endeavour ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... and it was very kind in you to take it off their hands; but now it is paid for, it can't make much difference whether you disfigure ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... money in his hand; and the tree, which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,—the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things—melancholy antitheses—sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had better ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is historically valuable, but technically imperfect and unequal. The plot is rambling, without method: most of the scenes lie in the country or in obscure English towns; the meetings are as theatrical as stage encounters; the episodes are awkwardly introduced, and disfigure the unity; the classical introductions and invocations are absurd. His heroes are men of generous impulses but dissolute lives, and his women are either vile, or the puppets ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... meant to his person, and alleging the example of the ancient Roman generals, they contended that it was his duty to submit to the republic. To this Dumouriez rejoined, "Gentlemen, we are constantly committing mistakes in our quotations from the classics; we parody and disfigure Roman history in citing their virtues to excuse our crimes. The Romans did not kill Tarquin: the Romans had a well-regulated republic and good laws; and they had neither a Jacobin Club nor a revolutionary tribunal. We are plunged in anarchy; we are wading in blood." "Citizen general," said Camus, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... prefers a deep, rich, loamy soil near water, but grows in almost any situation; of more rapid growth than almost any other native tree, and formerly planted freely in ornamental grounds and on streets, but fungous diseases disfigure it so seriously, and the late frosts so often kill the young leaves that it is now seldom obtainable in nurseries; usually propagated from seed. The European plane, now largely grown in some nurseries, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... wounded; still feeding the famishing and housing the homeless, and this on the fourth day following the one on which Johnstown was swept away. The situation of horror has not changed; there are hundreds, and it is feared thousands, still buried beneath the scattered ruins that disfigure the V-shaped valley in which Johnstown stood. A perfect stream of wagons bearing the dead as fast as they are discovered is constantly filing to the improvised morgues, where the bodies are taken for ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... of "the mathematical infinite" into metaphysical speculation, especially by Kant and Hamilton, with the design, it would seem, of transforming the idea of infinity into a sensuous conception, has generated innumerable paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infinity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... fellow: Now praise God that he hath thus mercifullie preserv'd thee, and see thou ever make much of this kinde woman that so friendly saves thy life. With that the Fellow viewing her and seeing a great skarre in her face, which did greatlie disfigure her, a long nose, thin lips and of a sowre complexion, hee said unto the Hangman: On (my good friend) doe thy duty: Ile none of ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... round its reefs, while its rough crags, bare rocks and desolate aspect make it more terrible still.... He sees the glory of God which even the apostles saw not, save in the desert. He beholds, it is true, no embattled towns, but he has enrolled his name in the new city. Garments of sackcloth disfigure his limbs, yet so he will the sooner be caught up to meet Christ in the clouds. Round the entire island roars the frenzied sea, while the beetling crags along its winding shores resound as the billows beat against them. Precipitous ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... admonish us to lament that the vices of government should pervert the direction and tarnish the lustre of those bright talents and exalted endowments for which the favored soils that produced them have been so justly celebrated. From the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty. They have decried all free government ...
— The Federalist Papers

... result will be to lengthen the bulb into a uniform cylinder, as shown in b, Fig. 10. Otherwise the result will be a series of bulbs, as in c, Fig. 10, separated by thickened ridges which will be almost impossible of removal later and will disfigure the final bulb. This operation of heating, blowing and pushing together is repeated several times, until the cylinder becomes as long as can be conveniently handled (about 1-1/4 inches to 1-1/2 inches). If more glass is needed than is then contained in the ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary

... not find in many other Epics that sense of wistful sorrow for man's brief and uncertain life which is the finest breath of all poetry that seeks to touch the human heart. The marks of rude or crude workmanship which disfigure much Epic have nearly all disappeared from the Iliad. The characterisation of many of the figures of the poem is masterly, their very natures being hit off in a few lines—and it is important to remember that it is not really the business of Epic to attempt analysis of character at all except ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... widely read of the author's works. Many of the readers of Don Juan have, it must be confessed, been found among those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable—who have been attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the work in other quarters is as indubitably ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... women, very few (Johnson's fair friend, Sophy Streatfield, was one), whom weeping does not disfigure. Their eyelids do not get red or swollen; only the iris softens for a moment; and the drops do not streak or blot the polished cheeks, but glitter there, singly, like dew on marble; their sobs are well regulated, and follow in a certain rhythm; and the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... be filled with reverence for the idealized portrait of themselves that the poet has drawn, and the intervention of the reformer will be unnecessary, since they will voluntarily tear off the shackles that disfigure them. The poet, said Shelley, "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." Emerson said of Wordsworth, "He more than any other man has done justice to the divine in us." Mrs. Browning said (of Carlyle) "He fills the office of a poet—by analyzing humanity back into ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... better than her husband. She fairly revelled in the opportunity his command gave her to indulge in carnal pleasures once again, for it was exactly a week since she had been delivered of a child. But God sent the angel Gabriel to her to disfigure her countenance. Suddenly signs of leprosy appeared on her forehead, and the marks of other diseases on her person. (35) In this state it was impossible for her to show herself to the king. She made ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... keep up the illusion, which the rivers have little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines, which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which mark the course of rivers in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... But why do you make yourself so picturesque? Why not disguise yourself, disfigure yourself, anything to escape ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... the overpowering luxuriance of the landscape loses its oppressiveness, the hills assume more rounded forms, and from the general obscurity, the palms, a tree made for moonlight, stand out in soft distinctness. At such a time we forget the foul crimes which disfigure the past, and the vices which degrade the present of this fair land, and can easily imagine ourselves in the garden where the yet unfallen progenitors of mankind walked under a firmament 'glowing with living sapphires,' and together hymned the praises of their Creator. Daylight chases ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... means let us substitute Belzebub, Asmodeus, and Leviathan, in the room of Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, which is, in his Opinion, perfect Pedantry and Affectation; and is extreamly afraid, lest any of those Barbarous Hebrew Words should disfigure the purity of the Latin Tongue; when surely he cou'd not but know, that this pure Latin Tongue it self, for which he's so much concerned, is nothing but the gradual Corruption or Barbarizing of the Greek; as that ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley

... branch of the tree, said: "Good dervish, I want to have some talk with you, but your whiskers prevent my understanding what you say; and if you will consent, I will cut off some part of them and of your eyebrows, which disfigure you so much that you look more like a ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... before several. Among the new-comers was a man who particularly interested me: his name was Jung, the same who afterwards became known under the name of Stilling. In spite of an antiquated dress, his form had something delicate about it, with a certain sturdiness. A bag-wig did not disfigure his significant and pleasing countenance. His voice was mild, without being soft and weak: it became even melodious and powerful as soon as his ardor was roused, which was very easily done. On becoming better acquainted ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... is not long, my Antony, since, with these hands, I buried thee. Alas! they were then free, but thy Cleopatra is now a prisoner, attended by guard, lest, in the transports of her grief, she should disfigure this captive body, which is reserved to adorn the triumph over thee. These are the last offerings, the last honors she can pay thee; for she is now to be conveyed to a distant country. Nothing could part us while we lived, but in death we are to be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... devil, but not begotten: or that they are real devils with a human body either simulated or purloined. For if the devil, by divine permission, may take possession of the whole man and change his mind, is it strange that he may disfigure also his body, causing men to be born ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... doctrine, which cannot be too often or too strongly urged, although it is not new,—indeed, it is old as the universe,—you will, I think, be puzzled to find an excuse for yourself if you disfigure a charming landscape or a village street by an uncouth building. Build plainly if you will, cheaply if you must, but, by all that is fair to look upon or pleasant to the thought, be honest. It will require some study and much ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... powers over the exhibition of indecent or other objectionable advertisements. The Societe pour la protection des paysages, founded in 1901, has for one of its objects the prevention of advertisements which disfigure the scenery ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... prognosis must be pronounced when the lesion assumes more important dimensions, and though a capped knee may be comparatively of little importance we have seen cases in which not only extensive blemishes were left to disfigure the patient, but the animals had become worthless in consequence of the extension of the diseased process to the various elements composing the joint, and giving rise to the most complicated ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... original purpose. The fact that this work was contemporaneous with the siege of Veii, has given to ancient annalists occasion to connect the two events, but modern critics are inclined to reject Livy's account of the matter, as one of the many improbable fables which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is, however, repeated by Cicero and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and it is by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and soothsayers monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the little which yet existed of physical ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... town of Morlaas, which, ruined as it is, is said to be rich (!) is about to restore this fine entrance. A new town-hall and market-place are being built, and, when completed, the miserable huts which disfigure the church will be cleared away, and the facade allowed to appear. Above this door is a fine steeple, crested with figures, which we could scarcely distinguish, but which we found were the Cows of Bearn clustered ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... was not very hopeful about the removal of the buildings which disfigure the Parks. The most he could say was that he was doing his best to get the camouflage school out of Kensington Gardens, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... heads, their hair naturally curled and short, which they shave into several forms, and dye it also of divers colours, namely red, white and yellow. They have broad round faces with great bottle noses, yet agreeable enough, till they disfigure them by painting, and by wearing great things through their noses as big as a man's thumb and about four inches long; these are run clear through both nostrils, one end coming out by one cheek-bone, and the other end against the other; and ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... and lii, published to men of letters, taste, and learning in Florence and all Italy, is the strongest vindication of their innocence against editors and scholars who in various ways have attempted to disfigure or to ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... I state it, who (you please subjoin) Disfigure such a life and call it names. While, to your mind, remains another way For simple men: knowledge and power have rights, But ignorance and weakness have rights too. There needs no crucial effort to find truth If here or there or anywhere about: We ought to turn each side, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning



Words linked to "Disfigure" :   spoil, pit, mangle, pock, mark, impair, scar, maul, mar, vitiate, deflower, disfiguration



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