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More "Smirch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to me, dear Bobus, a man of notorious gallantry, to find that the ladies, after consenting to smirch their rosy fingers with Erebean ink, are among the first who are discarded. If you will go into the College Library, Mr. Sibley will show you a charming copy of the works of Mrs. Behn, with a roguish, rakish, tempting little portrait of the writer prefixed. Poor Mrs. Behn was a notability ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... kitchen, was sickening. Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that awful woman washed frequently. Such was the contagiousness of degradation. When she looked at Martin, she seemed to see the smirch left upon him by his surroundings. She had never seen him unshaven, and the three days' growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her. Not alone did it give him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva house, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... school closes I am coming back to you. Perhaps you can make me see the sunsets. And what do you say about life now? Is it what we make it? Did I have anything to do with this mad adventure? Yet the memory of it will always—smirch. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... girth girl'ish ness first gird'le thirst mirth'ful ness firm irk'some firth thir'ti eth skirt vir'gin smirch ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... convincing. As Prince of the Republic, as Chief Pontiff of Rome, I proclaim this Priestess cleared of all imputations whatever. Manifestly she is dear to Vesta, and worthy of the favor she has shown her. Henceforward let no man dare to smirch her with any slur ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... doubtless the world. In the cloistered picturesqueness of the place, its mediaeval memorials, and its ancient peace, I found myself again in those dear Middle Ages which are nowhere quite wanting in England, and against which I rubbed off all smirch of the modernity I had come to ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... to get the window open, and put out the lamp. Then mamma looked at the eggs. Alas, again! There they lay covered with fine black soot. She took up one and tried to wipe it, but succeeded only in making a smirch which she could not wipe off. She knew then that the ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Valencia with the Cid the Campeador they stand. On Carrion's Heirs of knavery the three have put the brand, And paid the debt the lord Cid set upon them furthermore. On that account right merry was the Cid Campeador. Upon the heirs of Carrion is come a mighty smirch. Who flouts a noble lady and leaves her in the lurch, May such a thing befall him, or worse fortune let him find. Of Carrion's Heirs the dealings let us leave them now behind. For what has been vouchsafed them now ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... the rule. The little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's lap. And as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. The street-car conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, and their manners were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the mysterious power which makes body and soul—master and man—thrill as one string. The musician played several bars, beautiful in themselves, but unconnected; and ever and anon there sounded a discordant note, like a smirch upon a fair picture. The execution, however, showed a master hand, and the themes betrayed the soul of a true musician, albeit tainted with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... reading Ruskin. You are never again quite the same man after doing a poor job, after botching your work. You cannot be just to yourself and unjust to the man you are working for in the quality of your work, for, if you slight your work, you not only strike a fatal blow at your efficiency, but also smirch your character. If you would be a full man, a complete man, a just man, you must be honest to the core in the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... country. We must contrive some machinery of the law which shall command respect. We must not continually drag the name of the South—the name of America— in the mire of lawlessness. To do that is to smirch the flag—the one flag of America. But we denounce and will always denounce that false decree which says that black is white; that inequality is equality; that lack of manhood is manhood itself; that the absence of a hearthstone can mean a home; ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... was the fly in the ointment, the abiding smirch on the otherwise radiant surface—as she now hailed it—of this strangely moving fraternal relation. The fact of it did come, and, as she feared, would inevitably continue to come between her and her father, marring ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Mr. Johnson's lasting credit, he proved that he possessed the honesty and courage to dare his enemies to do their worst—he would not smirch his own name and disgrace his country and his great office, by using its power for the-promotion of an enterprise not far removed from a scheme of personal plunder, let it cost him what it might. It was a heroic act, and bravely, unselfishly, ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! —And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... grace, If it rings on the plate of the church: And money can neatly erase Each sign of a sinful smirch.' For I saw men everywhere, Hotfooting the road of vice; And women and preachers smiled on them As long as they paid ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... evil: a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian. The worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is mistaken if he thinks I can do nothing. I may as well go up to London and see for myself whether he is still on his feet to-morrow night. It is a mere formality, but I will do it. I might have guessed that she would try to smirch her own name, and the boys through her, if she had the chance. She will defeat me yet, unless I am careful. Oh, ye gods! why did I marry a fool who does not even know her own interests? If I had life over again ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life; and life Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes, And they stood wide with horror; and he seized In both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his head, and smirch'd his hair,— His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms; And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him; and he clutch'd his sword, To draw it, and forever let life out. But Sohrab saw his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law. And in one as in the other the finer ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the hollow tree; the idyllic devotion of Little Emily, dating from the morning when you saw her dress fluttering on the beam as she ran along it, lightly, above the flowing tide—(devotion that is yet tender, for, God forgive you Steerforth as I do, you could not smirch that pure heart;) the melancholy, yet sweet sorrow, with which you saw the loved and lost Little Eva borne to her grave over which the mocking-bird now sings his liquid requiem. Has it not been sweet good fortune to love Maggie Tulliver, Margot ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... on silken wings, With bridal lights of diamond rings,— Not foul with kitchen smirch, With ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... again the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyes which held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years in those silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow to smirch ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... go," said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. "I will cut off my hair, and put on boy's clothes, and smirch myself brown with walnut leaves; and I will go. I can talk their French tongue. I know their French ways; and as for a story to cover my journey and my doings, trust a woman's wit to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... do not concern me," said the priest at last, lowering the large lids over his eagle eyes to veil his emotions. ("Ho! ho!" thought he, "you can't compromise me. Thank God, those damned lawyers won't dare to plead any cause that could smirch me. What do these Listomeres expect to get ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... to the prince of fiends, Do with his smirch'd complexion all fell feats Enlink'd to waste and desolation? What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career? We may as bootless ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... have done me a bitter wrong. It was a foul deed to seek to shame me in this ugly fashion, and to smirch the honour of the Queen. Is it folly or lightness which leads you to boast of that lady, the least of whose maidens is fairer, and goes more ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... outsiders," he said quietly, "about the things which I have told you in confidence. My God! It's well that you and I are not married; well for you and well for me that we haven't to smirch our names in order to get the release of ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... injury, spot, blur, defect, dishonor, reproach, stain, brand, deformity, fault, smirch, stigma, crack, dent, flaw, soil, taint, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell it—not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, for gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? Vain, vain, vain—and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she came upon a bunch of great Alaskan violets. Throwing herself at full length, she buried her face in the fragrant coolness, and with her hands drew the purple heads in circling splendor about her own. And she was not ashamed. She had wandered away amid the complexities and smirch and withering heats of the great world, and she had returned, simple, and clean, and wholesome. And she was glad of it, as she lay there, slipping back to the old days, when the universe began and ended at the sky-line, and when ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... selfe in poore and meane attire, And with a kinde of vmber smirch my face, The like doe you, so shall we passe along, And neuer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a smirch o' pouther on your breast, "Below the left lappel?" "Oh! that is fra' my auld cigar, ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... crossing the river, the distance making it appear but a speck, while the number of occupants was indistinguishable. To the southwest, almost in the line of the Susquehanna, he observed a black cloud resting like a smirch of dirt against a clear, blue sky. This, he had no doubt, was the smoke from some ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... course, it is a sacred, delicate subject from which we naturally shrink, but it is overmodesty to allow a lad to fall into the abuse of his manhood, either alone or in twos, when a wise word, spoken in time, would save the smirch on two lives or more. In fact, we are beginning really to understand that it is just as imperative for us to teach a boy how to live his life with the utmost happiness as to show him how to procure the wherewithal to feed his body. For this reason it is being advocated today that the boy should be ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... not now. After years of such honorable service as yours, go because you have reached the fullness of years and have earned your rest. Don't let these fellows smirch your name and the name of the Service. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... in the morning there passed a church, At ten there passed me by the sea, At twelve a town of smoke and smirch, At two a forest of oak and birch, And ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... of beetles, and, standing upright, said to Nelly, "Listen to me. My name is Pitpat; and I am a fairy. I see how tired you are with work. Your father, though a good man, is a blacksmith; and there is often a smirch on his face when he stoops to kiss you. Your mother wears calico dresses, and doesn't fix her hair with false braids and waterfalls. Would you not like to be the daughter of a king and queen, ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various
... now, and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossip goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a moment's contemporary publication. But by-and-by it may all be used to smirch or brighten unjustly some one's character. Suppose a man in the Army of the Potomac had recorded daily all his opinions of men and events. Reading it over now, with more light and a juster knowledge of character and of measures, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Or mad, and loving some one else, And she, much moved that nothing quells My constancy, or, simply wroth With such a wretch, accept my troth To spite him; or her beauty's gone, (And that's my dream!) and this man Vaughan Takes her release: or tongues malign, Confusing every ear but mine, Have smirch'd her: ah, 'twould move her, sure, To find I loved her all the more! Nay, now I think, haply amiss I read her words and looks, and his, That night! Did not his jealousy Show—Good my God, and can it be That I, a modest fool, all blest, Nothing of such a heaven guess'd? Oh, chance too frail, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... are so unkind, Georgie!" There was a little quaver in Cynthia's voice. "Philip's a very old friend of mine, and I'm very sorry and troubled about him. Why do you smirch it all with ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... some day have to know. For awhile, no doubt, the boy would be kept in merciful ignorance of the tragedy, but then, when the lad was growing into manhood, some blundering fool, or more likely some well-intentioned woman, probably his aunt, Sophy Pargeter, would feel it her duty to smirch for him his ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... gate A Thing is footing it, cares not much Whether he creep through an Emperor's portal And steal the fate Of a Prince, or into a poor man's hutch— For the grief will be everywhere as great And he'll everywhere spread the smirch of sin— So long as a taste of our blood he may win, So long as he may ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... pelting rain can make us stay When we have tickets for the play; But let one drop the side-walk smirch. And it's too ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... statements as "unqualifiedly and atrociously false." If Judge Parker's attack had any effect on the election it was to reduce his own votes. Later, Edward H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, tried to smirch Roosevelt by accusing him of seeking Harriman's help in 1904, but this charge also was ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... indignation; for they, as he told them, were themselves insulted in the person of their general: they all swore, on their honour, that if he would put the matter in their hands, and not yield to his rage, which could only work his own undoing, either his bride should be rendered up to him without a smirch upon her bridal veil, or else a punishment should be dealt out proportioned to the affront. And without delay, as a proof of the energy wherewith the noble tribunal would take action in the affair, Luigi Manenti, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... must come on silken wings, With bridal lights of diamond rings,— Not foul with kitchen smirch, With tallow-dip for torch." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! —And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... in the air—do you tell me that he went from that field, where he lost his life in defense of the liberties of men, to an eternal hell? I tell you it is infamous!—and such a doctrine as that would tarnish the reputation of a hyena and smirch the fair fame of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... coming back to you. Perhaps you can make me see the sunsets. And what do you say about life now? Is it what we make it? Did I have anything to do with this mad adventure? Yet the memory of it will always—smirch. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... after doing a poor job, after botching your work. You cannot be just to yourself and unjust to the man you are working for in the quality of your work, for, if you slight your work, you not only strike a fatal blow at your efficiency, but also smirch your character. If you would be a full man, a complete man, a just man, you must be honest to the core in the quality of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... beheld," he said, "a miracle marvellous and convincing. As Prince of the Republic, as Chief Pontiff of Rome, I proclaim this Priestess cleared of all imputations whatever. Manifestly she is dear to Vesta, and worthy of the favor she has shown her. Henceforward let no man dare to smirch her ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... epitome of ills. Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; And when upon the wan green of his eye I marked the gathering lustre of a tear, Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch His pallid features at his misery. And laugh did I, to see the little snares He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool To seat such elephantine parts as ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong; no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere—in any company—without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been—what you are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the same wish ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... to-night, wait till to-morrow! To-night we gather our young love's red rose; 'Twere sacrilege to smirch it with the prose Of common day. [The door into the garden-room opens. Your mother's coming! Hide! No eye this night shall see thee ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... they are served at half price. While the common people must be careful not to traduce their neighbors lest they be sued for libel, the Levite in surplice and gown from his pulpit (aptly called the coward's castle) may smirch the fairest characters and defame the noblest ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... in England, and doubtless the world. In the cloistered picturesqueness of the place, its mediaeval memorials, and its ancient peace, I found myself again in those dear Middle Ages which are nowhere quite wanting in England, and against which I rubbed off all smirch of the modernity I had ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... they have little courage or because they permit compliance with fashion's demands to stifle the best parts of their nature—such people, I say, will actually be found to protest, with the sort of canting righteousness which does its best to smirch the Right, against this doctrine, Marry, but do not have children, as the rule of life in the cases under discussion. Nevertheless, this is the moral doctrine; this is the right fruit of knowledge, and knowledge will more and ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... was not for him to settle the girl's destiny. For all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels. Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their virtues. This smirch in Harold's life was a question for the two of them to settle ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... contributed the observations, "Dirty lies!" "Coward!" "Caddish!" "Unspeakably low!" "Shut up!" Only for coolness, courage and prompt decision of WHITLEY in the Chair discreditable scene would have worthily taken its place among others that smirch pages of Parliamentary record. Having occupied two hours of time assumed to be valuable it died out from sheer exhaustion. On division what was avowedly vote of censure on PREMIER negatived by majority ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
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