"Blindness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Creary's (Variety) Theatre in Eighth Avenue. A bookmaker (one of the kind that talent wins with instead of losing) sat in the audience, asleep, dreaming of an impossible pick-up among the amateurs. After a snore, a glass of beer from the handsome waiter, and a temporary blindness caused by the diamonds of a transmontane blonde in Box E, the bookmaker woke up long enough to engage Del Delano for a three-weeks' trial engagement fused with a trained-dog short-circuit covering the three ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... smoke must be a very marked phase of London fog. It did not perceptibly thicken in-doors that night, but the next day no day dawned, nor, for that matter, the day after the next. All the same the town was invisibly astir everywhere in a world which hesitated at moments between total and partial blindness. The usual motives and incentives were at work in the business of men, more like the mental operations of sleep than of waking. From the height of an upper window one could look down and feel the city's efforts to break the mesh of its weird captivity, with an invisible ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... longer a Conscience Williams then. He could only realize that some hideous mistake had made absolute a life-wrecking edict which—had he only known before—might, perhaps have been set aside. Now it was irrevocable and his own blindness and a stubbornness masquerading as ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the magnificent future the infinite Father has prepared for them and their descendants, and how from the beginning the plan has been cordinate with man's help to his brother man and his sister woman; and my whole soul was penetrated, even as it is now, with pity for the blindness, mental and physical, that cannot see how to use the gifts the Infinite holds out, patiently waiting for us to take from his indulgent hands. I was thinking how much, how very much, of all our suffering comes ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... to destroy them. When the angels came to Sodom, the people showed the most villainous and depraved appetites. The angels warned Lot to flee. Blindness (darkness?) came upon the people of the city, so that they could not find the doors of the houses. The angels took Lot and his wife and two daughters by the hands, and led or dragged them away, and told them to fly "to the mountain, lest ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... write of I had no conception of this, and I am sure that my blindness to so plain a fact kept me even from seeking and knowing the highest beauty in the things I worshipped. I believe that if I had been sensible of it I should hays read much more of such humane Italian poets and novelists as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was with The Hunky Kid. In his homicidal blindness He lifted his hand against Rosalind, Not in the way of kindness. He chased poor Celia off at L., At R. U. E. Le Beau, And he put such a head upon Duke Fred, In fifteen seconds or so, That never one of the courtly train Might ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... bulked largest in the eyes of the world have dwindled and shrunk into insignificance in comparison with him. The witty, dissolute king, Charles II., is now seen to be a wretched pigmy: Milton, who died in blindness and political disgrace, is the real king of that era, overtopping all the rulers, cabals, and intriguers. So, too, in Scotland, Burns is the giant of his period. During Burns's life, the Earl of Dundas was to all intents and purposes ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... monstrous—is seen in its extreme form. The hawk-like figure and markings of the cuckoo serve only to accentuate the disparity, which is perhaps greatest when the parent is the hedge-sparrow—so plainly-coloured a bird, so shy and secretive in its habits. One never ceases to be amazed at the blindness of the parental instinct in so intelligent a creature as a bird in a case of this kind. Some idea of how blind it is may be formed by imagining a case in widely separated types of our own species, which would be ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... uncurtained sky my head, Rain-deluged and wind buffeted; And many a thousand miles I crossed, And corners turned—love's labor lost, Till, Lady, to your isle of sun I came, not hoping, and like one Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes, And hailed my ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... line, and then subsides through the two tercets which make up the remaining six lines. If the sentiment expressed does not adjust itself to this ebb and flow, it is not suitable for a sonnet. Milton's sonnet on his blindness is one of the best. Notice the emotional transition in the middle of the eighth line. This sonnet will also illustrate the fixed ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the ways of life, he thought of confiding his case to the said lady d'Amboise. But he made first awkwardly and shyly certain twists and turns, finding no terms in which to unfold his case. And the lady was also perfectly silent, since she was outrageously struck with the blindness, deafness and voluntary paralysis of the lord of Braguelongne; and said to herself, walking by the side of this delicate morsel, a young innocent of whom she did not think, little imagining that this cat so well provided with young ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... it will not be denied by our ministers, that the affection and gratitude of posterity may atone for the obstinacy, blindness, and malice of the present age; since those measures which are now universally censured, may at some distant time be praised with equal unanimity; why, my lords, should they extend their vengeance to the succeeding generation? why should they endeavour to torture their limbs with pains, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... be said in this mannere, Wanting of blindness, for her greate light Of sapience, and for her thewes* clear. *qualities Or elles, lo, this maiden's name bright Of heaven and Leos comes, for which by right Men might her well the heaven of people call, Example of good and wise ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... shown such delicate consideration for his feelings that he should hesitate. "I do not see how you, with your artistic tastes and refinement, can find companionship in such a nature. I understand it very thoroughly. Beware, for you cannot plead even daffodil blindness, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... kingdom, whether its name be Israel or Judah, or whether it be called Egypt or Edom. The holy God has not by any means, as you in your blindness imagine, given you a privilege to sin. A difference exists between Israel and the others in this respect only, that utter ruin does not take place in the case of the former, as it does in that of the latter. For the distinction between the people of God and other nations ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... everywhere carried the first dawn of life into the night of Slavic antiquity, the early history of Poland affords more than any other part of the Christian world a melancholy proof, how the passions and blindness of men operated to counterbalance that holy influence. But although so unfavourably disposed towards the language, it cannot be said that the influence of the foreign clergy was in other respects injurious to the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... and spritely prince," and who was so persistent that he would not accept her refusal, actually sending "ambassadors" to carry her away. These men, however, when they approached her were smitten with blindness; and when Frideswyde saw that she would not be safe in "her own church" nor able to remain in peace there, she fled into the woods and hid herself in a place that had been made as a shelter for the swine. King Algar was greatly enraged, and, breathing out fire and sword, set ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the doctor called a halt and gave orders. "Spectacles at once," he said, "or I shall be having cases of snow-blindness to attend." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... superiority over the country girl striving hard to educate herself and to find a place in the world. But much had changed since then, and Dyce was beginning to feel that it would not do to reckon on any dulness, or wilful blindness, in Constance with regard to himself, his sayings and doings. Their talk yesterday had, he flattered himself, terminated in his favour; chiefly, because of his attitude of entire frankness, a compliment to the girl. That he had been, in the strict sense of the word, open-hearted, it ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... be—perhaps they cannot; but they are! I know it—I have heard, seen, partaken all! But if you can be convinced only by seeing that the plans of men, whose every action is insanity and frenzy, are wise and reasonable, perish yourself in your blindness, and let Rome perish with you! I can no more. Farewell! I leave you to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... putting on altogether too many airs as she pulled on her gloves; there was an inexcusable self-consciousness about her manner toward the Avalanche; and as for old Westlake himself, he was clearly taking advantage of Split's blindness and casting such glances at that giddy Kate as she, Sissy, would certainly not have tolerated—if she had been invited to go to the circus. If ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... 27th Wilson had a very bad attack of snow-blindness, which caused him the most intense agony. Some days before Scott had remarked in his diary upon Wilson's extraordinary industry: 'When it is fine and clear, at the end of our fatiguing days he will spend two ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Soul;—its unrest in and distaste for those conditions; but the mischief of it is that they make the sordidness seem the reality; and the truth about them is that their outlook and way of writing are simply the result of the blindness of the Soul;—its temporary blindness, not its essential glory. But the true business of Poetry never changes; it is to open paths into the inner, the beautiful, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... direction taken by most of the fugitives, was almost choked and bridged over with the slain, the difficulty of the ground retarding the fugitive horsemen till the lancers were upon them. Others, and in great numbers, rushed into the river Forth, in the blindness of terror, and perished there. No less than twenty-seven Barons fell in the field; the Earl of Gloucester was at the head of the fatal list: young, brave, and high-born, when he saw the day was lost, he rode headlong on the Scottish spears, and was slain. Sir Robert Clifford, renowned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... I a Sahib that I should regard night as the time wholly sacred to sleep and day as the time when to sleep is sin? I will tell the Sahib the tale of the Blindness of Ibrahim Mahmud the Weeper, well knowing that he, a truth-speaker, will believe the truth spoken by his servant. To no liar would it ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... the old days when he and Phil were together, and of the plans they had sometimes made for keeping if possible together even after they went out into the world to work. He had the impatience of one who has recently put a doctrine by for the blindness, as it seemed to him, which kept Phil still in the power of the old superstition; but with his friend's white face, marked with mental suffering, there to soften him, he dwelt little on this, and much on his affection for his ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... these pamphlets were known and esteemed at Jena; and it may easily be comprehended what effects were produced by such insults upon these young heads and noble hearts, which carried conviction to the paint of blindness and enthusiasm to that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... one of the many harassing interviews that beset her during the days following the trial, when judgment was withheld, according to the express command of the vacillating Elizabeth, and the case remitted to the Star Chamber. Lord Burghley considered this hesitation to be the effect of judicial blindness—so utterly had hatred and fear of the future shut his eyes to all sense of justice and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their Superscription (of the most 190 I would be understood) in prosperous days They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head Not to be found, though sought. Wee see, O friends. How many evils have enclos'd me round; Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me, Blindness, for had I sight, confus'd with shame, How could I once look up, or heave the head, Who like a foolish Pilot have shipwrack't, My Vessel trusted to me from above, Gloriously rigg'd; and for a word, a tear, 200 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... peace. To the true believer in the efficacy of non-resistance, and in the demoralizing influence of all wars, how striking the contrast between these different periods in our political history! How infinitely inferior to the rulers in later times were those, who, in the blindness of their infatuation, appealed to physical force, rather than surrender their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness! Let us trace out ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in the neighborhood, people used to inquire after Francis, and Jacques would discourse on his steward's little ailments, and talk of his wife in the second place. So curious did this blindness seem in a man of jealous temper, that his greatest friends used to draw him out on the topic for the amusement of others who did not know of the mystery. M. du Hautoy was a finical dandy whose minute care of himself had degenerated into mincing affectation and childishness. He ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... not slow in learning from such a master; and the people were as ready to believe in the emperor's miracles as in the philosopher's. As Vespasian was walking through the streets of Alexandria, a man well known as having a disease in his eyes threw himself at his feet and begged of him to heal his blindness. He had been told by the god Serapis that he should regain his sight if the emperor would but deign to spit upon his eyelids. Another man, who had lost the use of a hand, had been told by the same god that he should be healed if the emperor would but trample on him with his feet. Vespasian ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... understanding darkened. And therefore, saith Paul, Do not you, believers walk as do other Gentiles, even "in the vanity of their minds; having their understandings darkened; being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance (or foolishness) that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." Walk not as those; run not with them. Alas! poor souls, they have their understandings darkened, their hearts blinded, and that is the reason they have such undervaluing thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the salvation of their ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... lovers of sunlight are in little danger of rushing into the professor's dungeon. Those who, having something to conceal, covet darkness, can find it there, to their heart's content. The hour cannot be far away, when upright and reflective minds at the South will be astonished at the blindness which could welcome such protection as the Princeton argument offers ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Christ, and spake of him, he also saw that he would be despised and rejected of men. And by all their hostility to the doctrines of grace, sinners are only verifying the description, which inspiration gave long ago, of their blindness and perverseness. By all their vain reasonings and presumptuous objections, they just corroborate revealed truth, and evince the desperate wickedness of ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... long with the information that Buckley would "see Mr. Stanley." Soon he found himself facing a pleasant-looking man of medium height, a moustache, wiry hair tinged with gray, a vailed expression of the eyes, which indicated some abnormality of vision, but did not reveal the almost total blindness with which early excesses had ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... describes, and even render his descriptions credible to the modern reader by referring to the authentic history of these delectable times? He is indeed so besotted as to the moral of his own story, that he has even the blindness to go out of his way to have a fling at flints and dungs (the contemptible ingredients, as he would have us believe, of a modern rabble) at the very time when he is describing a mob of the twelfth century—a mob (one should think) ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... first thought premature, if not indiscreet. If all lawful Sovereigns do not read in these words their proscription, and the fate which the most powerful usurper that ever desolated mankind has destined for them, it may be ascribed to that blindness with which Providence, in its wrath, sometimes strikes those doomed to be grand examples of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... me!" said the great physician, raising his glasses to his eye. "Such lovely specimens, too. Poor fellow! He must have slipped. A sad accident due to his blindness, of course, while ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... leaves from that of the red ripe cherries. Can it be possible that the eye becomes more perfect, because those who had less perfect eyes perished, and only those who could recognize colors survive until color blindness is finally eliminated? Is such a doctrine scientific? Is it more reasonable to believe it than to believe that an infinitely wise and powerful God created this organ of marvelous value and beauty? Of course, the ability to recognize color is only one of the many ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... my blindness, that the great things were the easiest to do, but now I see that drudgery is an inseparable part of everything worth while, and the more worth while it is, the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Sanskrit poets. We are thus confronted with one of the remarkable problems of literary history. For our ignorance is not due to neglect of Kalidasa's writings on the part of his countrymen, but to their strange blindness in regard to the interest and importance of historic fact. No European nation can compare with India in critical devotion to its own literature. During a period to be reckoned not by centuries but by millenniums, there has ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... his life were a time of peace and honor. His bark, after a fitful voyage, had glided into safe and peaceful waters. The calamity of blindness did not much depress him—"What matters it so long as I can hear?" he said. And good it is to know that the capacity to listen and enjoy, to think and feel, to sympathize and love—to live his Ideals—were his, even to the night of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... old woman in a firm yet pleasant voice, and Denison, looking to the right, saw that "Mary," in spite of her years and blindness, was still robust and active-looking. She was dressed in a blue print gown and blouse, and her grey hair was neatly dressed in the island fashion. In her smooth, brown right hand she grasped the handle of a polished walking-stick, ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... day by day she returned to his camp with the assiduity of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she cleaned and swept; then a little closer as she spread his table and laid out his bottle ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... is fated that he be the husband of Medea, Aeetes' daughter; do thou aid thy daughter-in-law as a mother-in-law should, and aid Peleus himself. Why is thy wrath so steadfast? He was blinded by folly. For blindness comes even upon the gods. Surely at my behest I deem that Hephaestus will cease from kindling the fury of his flame, and that Aeolus, son of Hippotas, will check his swift rushing winds, all but the steady ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... moments that his narrative moves, with a more reticent and effective symbolism than any other narrative known to me. They are the moments in which the soul has really lived, or has really seen; and the rest of life may well be a blindness and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... reasonable precautions, which rival the experiment of Rumford, a fortuitous result?—one of the innumerable combinations which fall from the urn of chance? If so, let us not recoil before the absurd: let us allow that the blindness of chance is gifted with ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to be so inalienable a part of the old order, with its intrepid faith in itself, with its militant enthusiasm, with its courageous battle against industrial evolution, with its strength, its narrowness, its nobility, its blindness, that, looking ahead, she could discern only the arid stretch of a civilization from which the last remnant of beauty was banished forever. Already she felt the breaking of those bonds of sympathy which had held the twenty-one thousand inhabitants of Dinwiddie, as ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and was prepared for a large measure of self-denial; but she could not have foreseen how severe she would find the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper, and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... fascinating. The use of these active medicinals in this way must be manifestly injurious; and when frequent, or long continued or carried to excess, must necessarily result in impaired vision, if not in actual blindness. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... kindly, by night and by day; Punish'd belike, or haply rewarded, As we go wrong or go right on the way; Wisdom and Mercy, twin angels of kindness, Take by both hands the child lost in the night, Leading him safely, in spite of his blindness, Guiding him well through the dark ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... pain, or the little disappointment? or was it the sense of his blindness brought home to him in that ludicrous commonplace way, and for that very reason all the more humiliating? or was it the sudden revulsion of overstrained nerves, produced by that slight shock? Or had he become indeed a child ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... nor Order Imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee. Submit—in this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction which thou canst not see; All Discord, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... was Mrs. Delarayne likely to be satisfied with this reply. She saw now that Agatha had been right, and blamed herself for her blindness hitherto. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... this deponent like the flashing of gunpowder, though she confessed she saw nothing in the child's hands.' Another witness was the mother of a servant girl, Susanna Chandler, whose depositions are of much the same kind, but with the addition that her daughter was sometimes stricken with blindness and dumbness by demoniacal contrivance at the moment when her testimony was required in court. 'Being brought into court at the trial, she suddenly fell into her fits, and being carried out of the court again, within the space of half ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... once on the lips of every rancher and cowboy, sheriff and Mounted Policeman, from the Montana Badlands to Medicine Hat—once cowboy and rustler, again cowboy and Mounted Police detective, then thrown back to rustling by the blindness of a political judge—was not now the model of physical fitness of a year ago when his rifle and rope were respected over a prairie Province and State. The bullet that had brought mistaken mourning to the Police, and particularly to Sergeant ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... developed in the male alone, whilst every other character is equally transferred to both sexes. Why, again, with cats, the tortoise-shell colour should, with rare exceptions, be developed in the female alone. The very same character, such as deficient or supernumerary digits, colour-blindness, etc., may with mankind be inherited by the males alone of one family, and in another family by the females alone, though in both cases transmitted through the opposite as well as through the same sex. (38. References are given in my 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... will return to the Jews; namely, when, by the preaching of Enoch and Elijah, they shall be converted to him. Whence the Apostle: "I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part has fallen upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles shall be come, and so all Israel shall be saved." Whence the place itself of Calvary, where the Lord was crucified, is now, as we know, contained in the city; whereas formerly it was ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... or caused him to be robbed, of his property, his character, his liberty, or his life, he can easily persuade the circle in which he resides that it has arisen, not from any false statements of his, but from the blindness of the judge, or the wickedness of the native officers of his court, because all circles consider the blindness of the one, and the wickedness of the other, to be ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... very bad often turn out just as well. I recollect an instance which was told me, which I'll give you as a proof that we never know what is best for us in this world. A man may plan, and scheme, and think in his blindness that he has arranged everything so nicely that nothing can fail, and down he lies on his bed and goes to sleep quite satisfied that affairs must turn out well as he has ordered them, forgetting that Providence ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... will not do for me. I can't see you go on living in blindness. The girl deserves to be a respectable woman. Since I have known her she has improved as ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... whatever you and Mary wish. But I anticipate blindness. I shall not mind very much if I have the light within. There will be the book to solace my age; and after a time I shall not ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... be not death, but blindness; loss of sight, more terrible perhaps than loss of life. The unhappy man ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... with its million harmonious agencies, and the mind more wonderful still; or when I sit down in my daily walk, and sink into the bosom of nature, with light and life and beauty all around me,—surely the author of all this is good. It would be monstrous fatuity to question it, utter blindness not to ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... is no explanation. It is further the work and the service of science to destroy and to remove from men's minds the baseless and pretended "explanations" which are no explanations but causes of error, blindness, and suffering. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Fill life's garden with alarms, Through its inner walks enchanted I will ever move undaunted. Love hath messengers that borrow Tragic masks of fear and sorrow, When they come to do us kindness,— And but for our tears and blindness, We should see, through each disguise, Cherub cheeks and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 1562, having brought his work down only to the year 1533. The original MS. is in the Royal Library at Stockholm. Svart writes in a forcible and at the same time easy style. Nor does he lack good sense; though the work is marred throughout by a bitterness toward popery and a total blindness to the errors ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... and trembled for the peace of both. She wondered at the blindness of the doctor, who did not perceive what was so plain to her own vision. Daily she looked to see the eyes of the doctor open and some action taken upon the circumstances; but they did not open to the evil ahead, for the girl and boy! for morning after morning their hands ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... with the little old man, who was so wise and great about everything else, and so foolish about his own boy. In the blindness of his love he robbed his ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... of the Jews was that, in accord with the ten commandments, the sins of the parents were visited upon the children. This is recognized as absolute law to-day; but it by no means follows that all afflictions are the result of sin. The blindness may have resulted from a combination of circumstances beyond the control of the parents. The statement does not disprove the law of transmission, but simply shows that defects are not always the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... dealing with obdurate sinners in a manner which clearly shows their belief that He never entirely withdraws His mercy. They insist that the light of grace is never extinguished in the present life. "God gave them over to a reprobate mind," says St. Augustine, "for such is the blindness of the mind. Whosoever is given over thereunto, is shut out from the interior light of God: but not wholly as yet, whilst he is in this life. For there is 'outer darkness,' which is understood to belong rather to the day of judgment; that he should rather ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... is the nature of the world's judgment," I said to myself. "I should have known that before. With head proudly erect I would have gone my way, uninfluenced by the glitter of false affection as by the blindness of wildly aiming hatred. I would have shaken praise and blame from me with the same joyous laugh and sought the norm of achievement in myself alone. Oh, if only I could live once more! If only there were a way out of these ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing eyes and bitter tongue, resenting en famille the devilish endearments she so sweetly suffered in company; but ever as she groped about in her soul's blindness she felt for the central props of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the groan of the giant as they take his eyes out, and then I see him staggering on in his blindness, feeling his way as he goes on toward Gaza. The prison door is open, and the giant is thrust in. He sits down and puts his hands on the mill-crank, which, with exhausting horizontal motion, goes day after day, week after week, month after month—work, work, work! The consternation of the world in ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... persuaded that no person, who has considered this work of Horace with due attention, and carefully examined the drift and intention of the writer, but will at least be convinced of the folly or blindness, or haste and carelessness of those Criticks, however distinguished, who have pronounced it to be a crude, unconnected, immethodical, and inartificial composition. No modern, I believe, ever more intently studied, or more clearly understood ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... had experienced this, though still young. The friend of his youth was dead. The bough had broken "under the burden of the unripe fruit." And when, after a season, he looked up again from the blindness of his sorrow, all things seemed unreal. Like the man, whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld men, as trees, walking. His household gods were broken. He had no home. His sympathies cried aloud from ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... affected with blindness, they fed even with unclean things, till his eyes got the power of vision. Him who is bitten by a mad dog, they fed not with the caul of his liver. But R. Mathia Ben Charash said, "it is allowed"; and again said R. Mathia Ben Charash, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... long-suffering does pour down many a blessing upon men who never trust in Him for them. To us all, indeed, God gives blessings before we are old enough to trust in Him for them, and to many He continues those blessings in after-life in spite of their blindness and want of faith. "He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." He gives—gives—it is His glory to give. Yet strange! that men will go on year after ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... throats to help them count their votes Is asinine—nay, worse—ascidian folly; Blindness like that would scare the mole and bat, And make the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... its application to the sun, with the moon seems to refer to its supposed influence on certain diseases and in causing "moon-blindness." ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... be here always, in the darkness, with me. And I shall love my blindness because it shuts out anything but ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for some of the draughtmanship; but not for all. There was an ugly deliberation in the glorification of the raw, the uncouth; there was a callous hardness in the deadly elaboration of ugliness for its own sake. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his Samson Agonistes, whom ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pursuit of them, Captain Lyon discovered a lake two or three miles long and a quarter of a mile broad, a short distance from the tents, which we concluded to be that of which I was in search. As some of our party were suffering from snow-blindness, and, what is scarcely less painful, severe inflammation of the whole face, occasioned by the heat of the sun, we remained here for the rest of this day to ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... hope of the people now buddeth and groweth - Rest fadeth before it, and blindness and fear; It biddeth us learn all the wisdom it knoweth; It hath found us and held us, ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... life, or in all your life together, you have done the best that you could. The Pharisee said it when he went up into the temple, and all the world has looked on with mingled pity and scorn at the blindness of the man who stood there and paraded his faithfulness; while all the world has bent with a pity that was near to love, a pity that was full of sympathy because man recognized his condition and experience, for the poor creature grovelling upon the pavement, unwilling ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... a soothing and sweet voice. A gracious figure passed before me and bended over the bed of the Earl. I was near blinded. It was not a natural blindness. It was an artificial blindness which came from my emotion. Was she tall? I don't know. Was she short? I don't know. But I am certain that she was exactly of the right size. She was, in all ways, perfection. She was of ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the Supreme Court, and his speech of August 7th, in the House of Representatives, in defense of his motion, gave very plausible reasons for his apprehensions; but the Dred Scott decision of a few years later showed how completely he misjudged that tribunal, and how opportunely his blindness came to the rescue of freedom. It seems now to have been providential; for in this Continental plot against liberty the superior sagacity of Calhoun and his associates was demonstrated by subsequent events, while Mr. Stephens, with his great influence in the South, could almost certainly have secured ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... even the active Dick could do. Her walls were soon covered with fairies; but, as Lubin observed, no one could think the cottage of Head well furnished with a paper so poor and thin,—you could almost see the bricks through it. Matty was, however, well pleased; and even, in the blindness of self-love, had some hopes of the silver crown. Pride flattered her skill and her quickness, and was always a welcome guest at her cottage as well as in Dick's. Neither the brother nor the sister yet knew the evils that might ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... some way of escape through the bars. He must get a horse—it is only exercise he wants; he must have a longer vacation—it is only rest he wants; he must have more society—it is only recreation he needs; he must have less society—it is only quiet he requires. His blindness is inexplicable. He will walk in a garden and point out to you a tree that cannot last longer than such a time; he will point to a worn-out beast of burden that must die at such a time; he knows the death date of everything that springs from earth except himself. In his blind hope he grasps ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... gibing at me for ever so long: 'You are reaping what you have sown,' that was what it said. 'Why do you grumble at your harvest—there is no ripening without sunshine? Young hearts must be won by love and not severity; it is your own fault, your own obstinacy, your own blindness'—that is what it has been saying over and ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... than the blindness of parents," answered Edward, "when they imagine their existence to be of so much importance to their children. Whatever lives, finds nourishment and finds assistance; and if the son who has early lost his father does not spend so easy, so favored a youth, he profits, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... they are doing it, Master Simon; they are digging their own graves, only they do not see it, and do not know it; for the divinity which means to destroy them has smitten them with blindness. There is this queen, this Austrian woman. Do you not see with your wise eyes how like a busy spider she ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... of yore. autrui, m., other people, others. avancer (s'), to advance. avant, before (in time); — tout, first of all. avantage, m., advantage, privilege, merit. avec, with. avenir, m., future. aversion, f., aversion, dislike, hatred. aveugle, blind. aveuglement, m., blindness. aveugler, to blind. avide (de), greedy, thirsting (for). avis, m., opinion, advice, notice, information. avoir, to have. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... enormous a deed is beyond thy power. Thy qualities are marvellous. Every new act of thine outstrips the last, and belies the newest calculations. But this—this perfidy exceeds—this outrage upon promises, this violation of faith, this blindness to the future, is incredible." There he stopped; while his looks seemed to call upon Mervyn for a contradiction of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... who in his presumption challenged the Muses to a trial of skill, and being overcome in the contest, was deprived by them of his sight. Milton alludes to him with other blind bards, when speaking of his own blindness, "Paradise Lost," ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... much progress was possible. Take, for example, one dangerous trade, that of the manufacture of china and earthenware, in which during the early nineties suffering which caused paralysis, blindness, and death, was frequent and acute. Speaking as late as 1898 on the Home Office Vote, and quoting from the official reports, Sir Charles showed that the cases for the whole country amounted to between four and five hundred out of the five to six thousand ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... point of view under which it was drawn up appears in a declaration inserted in the edition of 1549: 'the most weighty cause of the abolishment of certain ceremonies was, that they were abused partly by the superstitious blindness of the unlearned, and partly by unsatiable avarice.—Where the old (ceremonies) may be well used there they [their opponents] cannot reprove the old only for their age. They ought rather to have reverence unto them for their antiquity, if they will declare ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... hard; yet he had no alternative but to accept the position which Elisabeth, in the blindness of her heart, assigned to him. Sometimes he felt the burden of his lot was almost more than he could bear; not because of its heaviness, as he was a brave man and a patient one, but because of the utter absence of any joy in his life. Men and women can ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Sebastian got up, put his hand through the lattice of the bookcase, and copied the volume out by moonlight, to the permanent ruin of his eyesight (as is shown by all the extant portraits of him at a later age and by the blindness of his last years). When he had finished, his brother discovered the copy and took it away from him. In 1700 Sebastian, now fifteen and thrown on his own resources by the death of his brother, went to Lueneburg, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Instead of a white, fluffy stub of a tail as soft as cotton, he saw the dirtiest, blackest wad of hair waving in the air that had ever disgraced a rabbit. The truth flashed upon his mind in an instant. What he had supposed to be the blindness of the bats was nothing more than ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... turned into secret councils, which had even the semblance of conspiracy. Though many persons took part in this action, the priests were self-confident, or knew nothing of this in their blindness; and Sargon, though he felt the existing hatred, did not attach to it importance. He learned that Prince Ramses disliked him, but that he attributed to the event in the arena, and to his jealousy in the affair of the priestess. Confident, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of the man that the uppermost feeling in his mind was one of disgust at his late infelicity of speech, and at the blindness which had prompted it. That he had not divined, that he had been so dull as to assume that as he felt, or did not feel, so must she, annoyed him like the jar of rude noises or like sand blowing into ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... from the snow-clouds and the snow-drifts began to be troublesome enough. On the 22nd February accordingly snow-spectacles were distributed to all the men, an indispensable precaution, as I have before stated, in Arctic journeys. Many of the Chukches were also attacked with snow-blindness somewhat later in the season, and were very desirous of obtaining from us blue-coloured spectacles. Johnsen even stated that one of the hares he ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of the bridge, he lifted his face again to the shining stars where-among, as his fancy had it, she sat enthroned. Exultingly he felt under his feet the rungs of the ladder, and in the darkness he swore a great oath to have done forever with blindness and grovelling, to climb and climb, forever to climb, until at last he should stand where she was—cleansed and made worthy by long endeavor—at last meet her eyes and touch ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... descriptions of the effects of absence in intensifying devotion (cf. xlviii. l. cxiii.) There are many reflections on the nocturnal torments of a lover (cf. xxvii. xxviii. xliii. lxi.) and on his blindness to the beauty of spring or summer when he is separated from his love (cf. xcvii. xcviii.) At times a youth is rebuked for sensual indulgences; he has sought and won the favour of the poet's mistress in the poet's absence, but the poet is forgiving (xxxii.-xxxv. xl.-xlii. lxix. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... teach them here," he said, firing the words as though from a machine-gun, "is that blindness is not an 'affliction.' We won't allow that word. We teach them to be independent. Sisters and the mothers spoil them! Afraid they'll bump their shins. Won't let them move about. Always leading them. That's bad, very bad. Makes them think they're ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... deal said about a very questionable blind man—one Albricus (Alberich?)—who having been cured, not of his blindness, but of another disease under which he laboured, took up his quarters at Seligenstadt, and came out as a prophet, inspired by the Archangel Gabriel. Eginhard intimates that his prophecies were fulfilled; but as he does not state exactly what they were, or how they were ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 13:32 32 Neither will the Lord God suffer that the Gentiles shall forever remain in that awful state of blindness, which thou beholdest they are in, because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, whose formation ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... was a gushing spring, and thither in her despair she determined to go. Accordingly, she went forth into the fierce noontide blaze, and with almost superhuman efforts crawled to the place. But what! was it a film upon her eyes? Had blindness come upon her, or was the spring really dried up by the fervid ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... really were, by Charles I. in his distresses, when an earldom was sold for L.6000; and so pro rata for one step higher or lower. Meantime, we all know in England how entirely false this is; and, on the other hand, we know also, and cannot but smile at the continental blindness to its own infirmity, that the mercenary imputation which recoils from ourselves, has, for centuries, settled upon France, Germany, and other powers. More than one hundred and thirty thousand French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the wind did reap the whirlwind," it would be well. But the mischief is that the blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... to make a reply, I threw myself upon him to give him a hearty beating. His cries and screams soon brought my mother, who wished to tear from me the person at whom I was offended. She even ventured to add blows to her reproofs; and, in the blindness of my fury, I unfortunately struck her. When my father arrived, he was not more prudent, and I was at length put in chains. I recollect that, having put my hand across my mouth, it was covered with foam. In short, I lost my recollection, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... most delicate lavender," cried Elsie, in fresh shrieks of ecstasy at Tom's blindness. "Oh, I never saw such a ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... neighbors, as you all know, I have this day been saved—from committing, in my blindness and my stubbornness, a great crime,—for which the Lord be thanked. Unworthy as I am, this day my son has been restored to me, fine and strong, for which the Lord be thanked. And here, the young man brought up as a brother to him, is again among ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... he persists in trying to copy certain beautiful lines and shadings in wood, not as an art study, but for actual use, when he may just as well have the perfect original as his own faulty imitation. What conceit, what blindness, what impudence, this reveals! What downright falsehood! Not in the painter,—O, no, skill is commendable even when unworthily employed,—but in him who orders it. You may buy a pine door, which is very well; pine doors are good; you tell every man that comes ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... their fanaticism. Paris trembles in view of its danger. Surround its walls with an army of defense. Delay longer, and you will be deemed a conspirator and an accomplice. Just Heaven! hast thou stricken kings with blindness? I know that truth is rarely welcomed at the foot of thrones. I know, too, that the withholding of truth from kings renders revolutions so often necessary. As a citizen, a minister, I owe truth to the king, and nothing shall prevent ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... flatterers, and Shabbar felled them one after the other with his quarter staff of steel and killed them pitilessly, crying to the Sorceress, "This is the end of all thy machinations with the King, and this is the fruit of thy deceit and treachery; so learn not to feign thyself sick." And in the blindness of his passion he would have slain all the inhabitants of the city, but Prince Ahmad prevented him and pacified him with soft and flattering words. Hereupon Shabbar habited his brother in the royal habit and seated him on the throne and proclaimed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... semi-blindness amid a chaos. Then as he began to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... came to an end. I can no more tell how, than I can tell how it came. One moment, I was warm in her presence; the next, I was alone. I rose up staggering with blindness and woe—could it be that already, already it was over? I went out blindly following after her. My God, I shall follow, I shall follow, till life is over. She loved me; ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... could not be maintained for ever by a series of coups d'etat, and the only method of securing the interests of the rulers was to maintain the confidence of the majority and to presume occasionally on its apathy or blindness. This was the attitude adopted with reference to the proposals which had lately been before the people. Drusus's scheme of colonisation was not withdrawn, but its execution was indefinitely postponed,[766] and the same treatment was meted out to the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... heretofore, from the blindness and infirmity of his passion for Miss Walladmor: merely to see her—is perhaps some relief to his unhappy mind: that however is a gratification he can seldom have; for she now rarely stirs out of the castle. His old anxieties too may be again awakened by the re-appearance of Sir Charles ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... consequence of this temporary visitation was an increased passion for music. The severe remedies used for my blindness frequently laid me on the sofa for days together, and then my fond father would bring home with him, after the afternoon service of the cathedral, of which he was also a canon, a party of the young choristers. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... about them. Her head still rested on his breast, and her hand stole to his face. She whispered, "So we pay the forfeit—for our blindness!" ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... his knife to one of the monkey's eyes, "there arises the question—how far is this intellectual blindness the result of incapacity of intellectual vision, or of averted gaze, or of the wilful ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... it until it disappeared into the cut at the landing. Then she sank upon a bench. For a long time she sat, dumb and immovable, her eyes on the floor. When, finally, she got up, she felt about her, as if overcome by blindness. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... blindness and remorse, pass sentence upon themselves, and weakly deliver their souls into the keeping of that inexorable jailer, Despair, forgetting the possibilities—nay, certainties—of good that ever dwell in God. If man had no better friend than ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit. I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... promise you a sketch of our commencement abounding in local color, for, if one were afflicted with color-blindness, he would probably be unable to discover many points of difference between commencement at Fisk and the same exercises at an Eastern college of about ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... looked up the clearing and saw the hatter standing straight behind the fire, with his arms folded and his face turned in our direction. He looked ghastly in the firelight, and at that distance his face seemed to have an expression of listening blindness. I looked round on the dark bush, with, away to the left, the last glow of sunset fading from the bed of it, like a bed of reddening coals, and I looked up at the black loom of Aaron's Pass, and thought that never a man, sane or mad, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... the absolutely extraordinary thing was that he hadn't the slightest idea that Isabel wasn't as happy as he. God, what blindness! He hadn't the remotest notion in those days that she really hated that inconvenient little house, that she thought the fat Nanny was ruining the babies, that she was desperately lonely, pining for new people and new music and pictures and so on. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... to myself that it was a very evil law, and cruel; also that I would break it if I found opportunity, but made no answer, knowing when to be silent and that I might as well strive to move a mountain from its base as to turn Kari from the blindness of his folly bred of false faith. After all, could I blame him, seeing that we held the same of the sacredness of nuns and, it was said, killed them if they ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... been thinking, dear old Fan, about your words, "there would be a good deal to give and take if you came home for a time;" less perhaps now than before I was somewhat tamed by my illness. I see more of the meaning of that petition, "from all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a degenerate age; and recreant knights are among us far outnumbering the true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, which they who perform them, in their blindness, know not to be such; and which are recompensed by rewards as worthless, yet eagerly grasped at, as if they were the immortal guerdon ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... we are shocked and scandalized, even when we cannot help laughing. Worse, we dread and persecute those who can see and declare the truth, because their sincerity and insight reflects on our delusion and blindness. We are all like Nell Gwynne's footman, who defended Nell's reputation with his fists, not because he believed her to be what he called an honest woman, but because he objected to be scorned as the footman of one who was no better ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... "Certainly—his color-blindness. I confess, I'm puzzled. How could anyone else know it when Rogers himself didn't know it? That's what I should like to have explained. Perhaps there's only one man or woman in the world who ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... taught us how full of wonders is the night; and the night of blindness has its wonders, too. The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... visiting on his winter rounds in a delightful village some forty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital. The "swiles" (seals) had struck in, and all hands were out on the ice, eager to capture their share of these valuable animals. But snow-blindness had incontinently attacked the men, and had rendered them utterly unable to profit by their good fortune. The doctor's clinic was long and busy that night. The following morning he was, however, amazed to see many of his erstwhile patients wending their way seawards, each ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... in the whole undertaking, and in the mode of its execution, which makes one by turns wonder at the splendid will and undaunted perseverance of this Yankee teacher, and feel a well-bred annoyance at his blindness to the incongruous position which he occupied. One is disposed to laugh sardonically over this self-taught dictionary-maker, encamped at Cambridge, coolly pursuing his work of an American Dictionary of the English Language in the midst of all that traditional ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... memory—but then to leave Melisselda! To leave her warm breast and the sunlight and the green earth, and all that beauty of the world and of human life to which his eyes had only been unsealed after a lifetime of self-torturing blindness? ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... revolving in my mind, I felt a sense of my youth, compared with your age, my inexperience, the proneness of the human heart to the vanity of self confidence, the blindness of prejudice to which old and young are more or less subject, and also, the friendship which has hitherto happily subsisted between ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... this age to perceive the blessedness of another kind of poverty; not voluntary nor proud, but accepted and submissive; not clear-sighted nor triumphant, but subdued and patient; partly patient in tenderness—of God's will; partly patient in blindness—of man's oppression; too laborious to be thoughtful, too innocent to be conscious; too much experienced in sorrow to be hopeful— waiting in its peaceful darkness for the unconceived dawn; yet not without its sweet, complete, untainted happiness, like intermittent notes ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... flooding the heavens with glory, with a companion who showed no sign of perceiving the splendor? Ah! perhaps he was blinded to it by some secret grief or care, some trouble which you might have discovered in him and comforted, had your sympathy been as acute as your sense of beauty. But did his blindness, whatever its cause, suggest to you that you perhaps were at that moment in the presence of sublime realities, to which your consciousness was closed as his ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of Miss Francis' blindness to her own interest I still had a prospective superintendent for the gathering and shipping of the grass: George Thario. Unless his obsession had sent him down into Mississippi or Louisiana, I expected to find ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... didn't whisper to Guy about Will's faults and his blindness to my remarkable soul. I didn't! Matter of fact, Will probably understands me perfectly! If only—if he would just back me up in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis |
