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Deface   /dɪfˈeɪs/   Listen
Deface

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



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"Deface" Quotes from Famous Books



... with one little worry, one little thought which destroys your perfect peace. It is like the polish on a mirror, or an exquisite toilet table, one scratch will destroy it; and the finer it is the smaller the scratch that will deface it. And so your rest can be destroyed by a very little thing. Perhaps you have trusted in God about your future salvation; but have you about your present business or earthly cares, your ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... spread their fame in ages past, And poets once had promised they should last. Some fresh engraved appear'd of wits renown'd; I look'd again, nor could their trace be found. Critics I saw, that other names deface, And fix their own, with labour, in their place: Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd, Or disappear'd, and left the first behind. 40 Nor was the work impair'd by storms alone, But felt the approaches of too warm a sun; For Fame, impatient of extremes, decays ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... through the whole book and deface and defile it all. But the next picture arrested his attention, and he forgot himself in studying it. It represented the explosion of a factory, and consisted of little beyond a huge mass of smoke and fire, around and above which ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... stepped on one side from the immediate subject because this is as good an instance as any we are likely to come across of a certain almost extraneous fault which does deface the work of Bernard Shaw. It is a fault only to be mentioned when we have made the solidity of the merits quite clear. To say that Shaw is merely making game of people is demonstrably ridiculous; at least a fairly systematic ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... to submit to the impertinence of the idle; but, as soon as a man has had the misfortune to make himself a name, he becomes public property. Every one rakes into his life, relates his most trivial actions, and insults his feelings; he becomes like those walls, which every passer-by may deface with some abusive writing. Perhaps you will say that I have myself encouraged this curiosity by publishing my Confessions. But the world forced me to it. They looked into my house through the blinds, and they slandered me; I have opened the doors and windows, so that they should at least ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... this reason I suppose I ought not to call it Dead Man's Rock, the "Rock" being superfluous, but I give it the name by which it has always been known, being to a certain extent suspicious of those antiquarian gentlemen that sometimes, in their eagerness to restore a name, would deface a tradition. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... If it's the truth, why shouldn't one say it? But if it's the truth, again, you have no right to deface the beauty. Do ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... pale conclusions; yea! Because of this, how fares the Leader dead? What kind of mourners weep for him to-day? What golden shroud is at his funeral spread? Upon his brow what leaves of laurel, say? About his breast is tied a sackcloth grey, And knots of thorns deface his ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... the shabby tricks which now disgrace our politics, those tricks which shame the devil; I ask the voters to deface corruption and our country place upon a higher level. Through endless wastes of words I roam to make the Fireside and the Home the nation's shrine and glory; and Purity must ring again in every offspring of my pen, in every screed ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... of rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my invisible devotion. I should violate my own arm rather than a church, nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; for though ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... Israels Faith, In Israels Heir, deserve a murmuring Breath? Or to preserve Religion, Liberty, Peace, Nations, Souls, is that a Cause so high, As the Right Heir from Empire to debar? Forbid it Heav'n, and guard him every Star. Alas, what if an Heir of Royal Race, Gods Glory and his Temples will deface, And make a prey of your Estates, Lives, Laws; Nay, give your Sons to Molocks burning paws; Shall you exclude him? hold that Impious Hand. As Abraham gave his Son at Gods Command, Think still he does by Divine Right succeed: God bids Him Reign, and you should ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... is one of these proud States her arms have defended—her best blood has cemented this happy Union! And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse, this happy Union we will dissolve—this picture of peace and prosperity we will deface—this free intercourse we will interrupt—these fertile fields we will deluge with blood—the protection of that glorious flag we renounce—the very name of Americans we discard. And for what, mistaken men! For what do you throw away these inestimable blessings—for what would you ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... enabled me onely to write; howbeit the excellencie of trueth and the in bred affection I beare to my countrey enforceth me to do the best I can: sithens it hath pleased some strangers by false rumours to deface, and by manifolde reproches to iniurie my sayd countrey, making it a by word, and a langhing-stocke to all other nations. To meet with whose insolencie and false accusations, as also to detect the errours of certeine writers concerning this Island, vnto good and well affected men ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... the rust of time, That doth all fairest things on earth deface, Or through unnoble sloth, or sinfull crime, 435 That doth degenerate the noble race, Have both desire of worthie deeds forlorne, And name ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... read the ancient poets; not unmindful that the blessed Paul himself, in those writings which are the food of our spirit, takes occasion to cite from more than one poet who knew not Christ. If you would urge the impurity and idolatry which deface so many pages of the ancients, let me answer you in full with a brief passage of the holy Augustine. "For," says he, "as the Egyptians had not only idols to be detested by Israelites, but also precious ornaments of gold and silver, to be carried off by them in flight, so ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... penetrating teachers have these prophetic moments sometimes)—is, of course, possible; but that Sterne's master was "very much hurt" at the boy's having been justly punished for an act of wanton mischief, or that he recognized it as the natural privilege of nascent genius to deface newly-whitewashed ceilings, must have been a delusion of the humourist's later years. The extreme fatuity which it would compel us to attribute to the schoolmaster seems inconsistent with the power of detecting intellectual capacity in any one else. On the whole, one inclines ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... that have gone before. To make these obstacles more annoying, you have sometimes to wait while a black boar clambers sedately over the so-called pig fence. Nothing can more thoroughly depict the worst side of the Samoan character than these useless barriers which deface their only road. It was one of the first orders issued by the government of Mulinuu after the coming of the chief justice, to have the passage cleared. It is the disgrace of Mataafa that the thing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a staircase leading up to a "pawne" or covered walk on the south side of the building there had been set up the arms and crest of Gresham himself, which some evilly disposed person took it into his head to deface. A proclamation made by the mayor (16 Feb., 1569) for the apprehension of the culprit does not appear from the city's records to have proved successful.(1533) Some years later (21 March, 1577) the mayor had occasion to issue another ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... seems to me utterly groundless. The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, for instance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c., painted all over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches to Paris; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminated advertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the august spectacle of the Thames by night. It ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... also a considerable number of penal actions which the praetor has introduced in the exercise of his jurisdiction; for instance, against those who in any way injure or deface his album; or who summon a parent or patron without magisterial sanction; or who violently rescue persons summoned before himself, or who compass such a rescue; ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... did our best to acquiesce in it. After all, we could admire, without any breach of sincerity, the natural beauties of this spot, which very much resembles the more open parts of the glen where Matlock is situated, and which all these abominations could not entirely deface. How to account for this perversion of eye in a people of sensibility and taste, I am rather at a loss; but this last is by no means a singular instance. "Bientot vous allez sortir de ces tristes bois," compassionately observed a ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... than either of his models, and is not without other remarkable merits of his own. As a man Cignani was eminently amiable, unassuming and generous. His success, however, made him many enemies; and the envy of some of these is said to have impelled them to deface certain of his works. He accepted none of the honours offered him by the duke of Parma and other princes, but lived and died an artist. On his removal to Forli, where he died, the school he had founded at Bologna was fain in some sort to follow its master. His most ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... shrilly, loudly, And reared upon his hind-legs proudly; In utter wonderment each stood and cried: "The noble regal beast!" But, woe betide! Two hideous wings his slender form deface, The finest team he else would not disgrace. "The breed," said they, "is doubtless rare, But who would travel through the air?" Not one of them would risk his gold. At length a farmer grew more bold: "As for his wings, I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... words had produced a deep effect in the mind of the worthy Burgomaster. 'If a Christian minister,' said he to himself, 'sees it his duty on this special occasion to encourage the weak, that they may make a valorous deface, surely I, who rule over strong men, should be the last to think of surrendering into an enemy's hands the ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... once belonged to the Rochester Monastery, no less than eighty-three are in the old Royal Collection. They are on vellum, partly illuminated, and many contain terrible anathemas against any who should deface or steal them. Two others have been found among Archbishop Parker's MSS. at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and one in Archbishop Laud's bequest to the Bodleian. The famous Gundulf Bible has an interesting history. All traces ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... Consider how thy Corin being drenched In seas of woe, to thee his plaints incline, And at thy feet with tears doth sue for grace, Which art the goddess of his chaste desire; Let not thy frowns these labours poor deface Although aloft they at the first aspire; And time shall come as yet unknown to men When I more large ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... the sharp corner of a table; others are made to lean against that, till the pressure of the whole forces the corner of the table through the canvas of the first. The frame and glass of a fine print are to be cleaned; the spirit and oil used on this occasion are suffered to leak through and deface the engraving—no matter. If the glass is clean and the frame shines, it is sufficient—the rest is not worthy of consideration. An able arithmetician hath made a calculation, founded on long experience, and proved that ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... y-red ben or y-songe, The pleynte that she made in hir distresse? 800 I noot; but, as for me, my litel tonge, If I discreven wolde hir hevinesse, It sholde make hir sorwe seme lesse Than that it was, and childishly deface Hir heigh compleynte, and therfore I it ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... true. The magical, mysterious power of beauty which had been given her, which might have helped to lighten the burden of the sad old world wherever she passed, she had used to destroy and deface and mutilate. The debt against her—the debt of all the pain and grief which she had brought to others—had been mounting up, higher and higher through the years. And now the time had come when payment ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... as I could learn, was either scalped or carried away prisoner. The Hurons had gone about an hour or two, when I came up to the place where they fought, and I sat down looking at the dead bodies, and thinking to myself what creatures men were to deface God's image in that way, when I saw under a bush two little sharp eyes looking at me; at first, I thought it was some beast, a lynx, mayhap, as they now call them, and I pointed my rifle toward it; but before I pulled the trigger, I thought that perhaps I might be ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... these phases of animal life, which winter has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter to be gone, since he, too, is fugitive and cannot keep his place. Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and weather-worn,—the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone; and what was a grace and an ornament ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... wind, and other leaves danced in in whirls. A stronger gust still, as if the western storm that had strewn those dead over the sea, wished to deface the very inscriptions that remembered their names ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... delusion as to the merits of Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the Fare Well, with far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, and in execution contemptible. 'Though my many faults deface me,' etc. Can worse doggerel than such a stanza be written? One verse is commendable: 'All my madness none can know.'" The criticism, as criticism, confutes itself, and is worth quoting solely because it displays the feeling of a sane and honourable man towards a member of the "opposition," ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... the spring, for man had done what he could to deface it. Here is a curious fact: the human being is capable of a certain amount of civilization under the pressure of the necessities of city life. He—or she—will learn to dispose inoffensively of the waste and rubbish that drag after him ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That Down with Superstition cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? Religion they bawl out, yet know not what Religion is, unless it ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... be all it is alleged to be or less, little harm is done. Suffice it that thousands, gifted with faith and sixpences, have visited the room, ceilings and windows bear countless traces of the desire that besets the most commonplace people to deface walls with their uninteresting names. Shakespeare's alleged birthplace is a charming little residence enough, with dormered roof and penthouse entrance, and sixpence is a small price to pay ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... argued Mademoiselle Valle, "should one fill a white young mind with ugly images which would deface with dark marks and smears, and could only produce unhappiness and, perhaps, morbid broodings? One does not feel it is wise to give a girl an education in crime. One would not permit her to read the Newgate Calendar for choice. She will be protected by those who love ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in vapors blind; 180 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 190 I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... may break, but the poor may not! They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... great rooms of the castle were got in readiness—that is, they proceeded to deface them with decorations; for there was a solemnity and stateliness about them in their ordinary condition, which was at once felt to be unsuitable for the light-hearted company so soon to move about in them ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... but barely kept alive, And with old Greece unequally did strive: Till Goths, and Vandals, a rude northern race, Did all the matchless monuments deface. Then all the Muses in one ruin be, And rhyme began to enervate poetry. 50 Thus, in a stupid military state, The pen and pencil find an equal fate. Flat faces, such as would disgrace a screen, Such as in Bantam's embassy were seen, Unraised, unrounded, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... having suffered change. They are usually more or less disturbed or obliterated by the too soft nature of the mud, the coarseness of the materials, and by many other circumstances which we may easily see would deface them, so that although the general form of the foot may be apparent, the minute traces of its appendages are almost invariably lost. In general, except in thick-toed species, we cannot discover the distinct evidences of the structure of the toes, each ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... who shall willfully or maliciously cut, write upon, injure, deface, tear, or destroy any Book, Newspaper, Plate, Picture, Engraving, or Statue belonging to the Chicago Public Library, shall be liable to a fine of not less than five dollars, nor more than fifty dollars for every ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... passion, but when it is, it changes, heightens, and sanctifies. Thus it is not engaged in lust, where satisfaction ends the chapter; and it is engaged in love, where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of the desire, and where age, sickness, or alienation may deface what was desirable without diminishing the sentiment. This something, which is the man, is a permanence which abides through the vicissitudes of passion, now overwhelmed and now triumphant, now unconscious of itself in the immediate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... distractions, irreconcilable contradictions, disquieting doubts, discouraging outlooks, inharmonious and jangling opinions, unaccountable delusions, clashing and crashing dissonances, cruel hatreds, bitter enmities and stormful convulsions, which so largely enter and deface the course of human history, proceed mainly from his influence. We know that "the heart of a lost angel is in the earth," and as we know its throbbings carry misery and despair to millions of our fellow-beings, we can surmise the intensity of we ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... continued streams. His hair is clotted with it. That cheek, that lately glowed, is now pale and sallow. All his features are deformed. The fire in his eye is extinguished for ever. Who has done this? What wanton and sacrilegious hand has dared deface the work of God? It could not be his preceptor, the man upon whom he heaped a thousand benefits? It could not be his friend? Oh, Rinaldo, all thy errors lie buried in the damp and chilly tomb, but thy blood shall for ever rise ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... can not be daily read in the classes without diminishing the reverence with which it ought to be regarded as the book of God. But I would have it used chiefly by the older scholars, who, if the teachers are not in the fault, will rarely deface it. A few words now and then, reminding them of its sacred contents, will be sufficient to protect it from rough ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... noght dissevere Fro hire, in whom is al my liht: And thanne I curse also the nyht 2840 With al the will of mi corage, And seie, "Awey, thou blake ymage, Which of thi derke cloudy face Makst al the worldes lyht deface, And causest unto slep a weie, Be which I mot nou gon aweie Out of mi ladi compaignie. O slepi nyht, I thee defie, And wolde that thou leye in presse With Proserpine the goddesse 2850 And with Pluto the helle ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... high in bodies did enclose; And thus from noble seed all men did first compose. Why brag you of your stock? Since none is counted base, If you consider God the author of your race, But he that with foul vice doth his own birth deface. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... case—it is clear that these difficulties must augment in a corresponding ratio, until at last they will become insurmountable. I therefore come to the conclusion, either that territory must be set apart in America itself for the negro's home, or that the black bar of slavery must deface the escutcheon of the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... the Lord sing praises, All you within this place, And with true love and brotherhood Each other now embrace; This holy tide of Christmas All others doth deface. O tidings, etc. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... seemed, at random over boulders and dead trees; but the lad wound in and out and up and down without a check, for these paths are to the natives as marked as the king's highway is to us; insomuch that, in the days of the man-hunt, it was their labour rather to block and deface than to improve them. In the crypt of the wood the air was clammy and hot and cold; overhead, upon the leaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured, but only here and there, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single drop would fall, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... work of fiction, we see also a moral beauty, idealized of course, such as was rivalled only in Spanish art in the Madonnas of Murillo. I believe that in the imaginary sketches of Spanish life as portrayed by Byron, slanders and lies deface the poem from beginning to end. Who is the best authority for truthfulness in the description of Spanish people, Cervantes or Byron? The spiritual loftiness portrayed in the lives of Spanish heroes and heroines, mixed up as it was with the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... Kinge, upon whome he had attended in Spayne, loved his Country with to unskilfull a tendernesse, and was of so excellent a temper and disposition, that the barbarous tymes, and the rough partes he was forced to acte in them, did not wype out or much deface those markes, insomuch as he was never guilty of any rudenesse towards those, he was oblieged to oppresse, but performed always as good offices towards his old frendes, and all other persons, as the iniquity of the tyme, and the nature of the imployment ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. Nothing of Europe here, 175 Or, then, of Europe fronting morn-ward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 180 I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... read aright now that my hair is grey, And I can manage the original. At five years old—how ill had fared its leaves! Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite, At least I soil no page with bread and milk, Nor crumple, dogsear and deface—boys' way. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... our minds with his conspire to grace The Gentiles' great apostle, and deface Those state-obscuring sheds, that, like a chain, Seem'd to confine, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... and chipped off small pieces of the freestone for relics. This modern habit of chipping monumental stones for relics is inexcusable; for it is not done by ignorant or otherwise lawless persons, but too often by the educated, who carry their mawkish sentiment to such an extreme as to deface and sometimes, as in the present case, entirely to ruin a monument. It is in vain to urge that this was only a stranger's stone, and that there were none to care. It was all the more an outrage, if there were no friends to protect it. We are glad to learn ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... you have!" thundered a voice from behind, that filled the apprentice with dismay. "Come down, sirrah, and I'll teach you how to deface my walls in future. Come down, I say, instantly, or I'll make you." Upon which, Mr. Wood caught hold of Jack's leg, and ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... mother's glass and calls back the April of her prime; asks him why he abuses the bounteous largess given him to give; calls him a profitless usurer; tells him that the hours that have made him fair will unfair him; that he should not let winter's rugged hand deface ere he has begotten a child, though it were a greater happiness should he beget ten. He asks if his failure to marry is because he might wet a widow's eye, and then in successive Sonnets cries shame on his friend for being so improvident. He tells him that when he shall ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... Rome in our museums. Let them realize that these monuments in our cathedrals and churches are just as valuable, as they are the best of English art, and then no sacrilegious hand would dare to injure them or deface them by scratching names upon them or by carrying away broken chips as souvenirs. Playful boys in churchyards sometimes do much mischief. In Shrivenham churchyard there is an ancient full-sized effigy, and two village urchins were recently seen amusing themselves by sliding the whole ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... will tell you with long faces that my enchanting, quieting, soothing volume, my all-sufficient anodyne for cross, peevish, won't-be-comforted little bairns, ought be laid aside for more learned books, such as they could select and publish. Fudge! I tell you that all their batterings can't deface my beauties, nor their wise pratings equal my wiser prattlings; and all imitators of my refreshing songs might as well write another Billy Shakespeare as another Mother Goose—we two great poets were born together, and shall go out of the ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous

... beguile. But God grant Hospitality be not by them overprest, In whom all our stay and chiefest comfort doth rest: But Usury hates Hospitality, and cannot him abide, Because he for the poor and comfortless doth provide. Here he comes that hath undone many an honest man, And daily seeks to destroy, deface, and bring to ruin, if he can— Now, sir, have you taken possession, as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... this sin you cannot sin alone; think that you are dragging down to the nethermost abyss others besides yourself. Remember the wretched victims of your infamous passions, and tremble while you desecrate and deface for ever God's image stamped on a fair human soul. Think of those whom your vileness dooms to a life of loathliness, a death of shame and anguish, perhaps an eternity of horrible despair. Learn something of the days they are forced to spend, that they may pander to the worst instincts of your degraded ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... Pay him six thousand and deface the bond, Double six thousand, and then treble that, Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair thro' my Bassanio's fault. ——You shall have gold To pay the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... month, where can I catch a single leisure day? For at earliest dawn I go to pick, and not till dusk return; Then the deep midnight sees me still before the firing pan— Will not labor like this my pearly complexion deface? ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... savage bands Lead fire and slaughter o'er the labor'd lands; They sack the temples, the gay fields deface, And vow destruction to the Incan race. The king, undaunted in defensive war, Repels their hordes, and speeds their flight afar; Stung with defeat, they range a wider wood, And rouse fresh tribes for future fields ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... Jove hath willed To found this new-born city, here to reign, And stubborn tribes with justice to refrain, We, Troy's poor fugitives, implore thy grace, Storm-tost and wandering over every main,— Forbid the flames our vessels to deface, Mark our afflicted plight, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... friend, if thou dost acknowledge that man is formed in God's image, it must be obvious to thee that to deface His image must be contrary to His law and will. The world is large, and God intends it to be peopled; whereas, by wars, the population ceases to increase, and that happy time when hymns of praise shall ascend from all quarters of the ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... invention of man, is no creation of the convention, but is given us by Providence in the living constitution of the American people. The merit of the statesmen of 1787 is that they did not destroy or deface the work of Providence, but accepted it, and organized the government in harmony with the real orders the real elements given them. They suffered themselves in all their positive substantial work to be ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... as a warning for the future. But why were soldiers and thieves allowed to steal the bric-a-brac and furniture and break the mirrors of the Emperor's personal apartments, wantonly to shatter beautiful columns, deface rare works of art, punch holes in gilded statues, maliciously smash the heads of thousands of exquisitely-carved figures and lions, and wreck venerable places associated with learning and art? The world is poorer for some of this havoc, and it will be a generation before it can ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... Chapter had thought fit to deface the Gothic columns, and to have them colour-washed by a Milanese lime-washer, of a yellowish pink speckled with grey; then they had abandoned to the town-museum some magnificent pieces of Flemish tapestry that screened the inner circuit of the choir aisles, and had put in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... conceal from himself that the whole thing was romantic, romantic despite the little tinkling dog, the decrepit diligence, the palavering natives, the super-idiotic dragoman. It was fine, It was from another age and even the actors could not deface the purity of the picture. However it was true that upon the brigantine the previous night he had unaccountably wetted all his available matches. This was momentous, important, cruel truth, but Coleman, after all, was taking-as ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... of evil daemons. They have annihilated and drowned works that were worthy to live forever! And why? Shall I tell you? Because they shun the Beautiful as an owl shuns light. Aye, they do! There is nothing they hate or dread so much as beauty; wherever they find it, they deface and destroy it, even if it is the work of the Divinity. I accuse them before the Immortals—for where is the grove even, not the work of man but the special work of Heaven itself? Where is our grove, with its cool grottos, its primaeval trees, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... legal offence for any one wantonly to injure or deface a shade tree, shrub, rose, or other plant or fixture of ornament or utility in a street, road, square, court, park, or public garden, or carelessly to suffer a horse or other beast driven by or for him, or a beast belonging to him and lawfully on the highway, to break down or injure a tree, not ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... men do? They shut their eyes to all these truths. They live as if they and everything in the world were to last for ever—as if there were no God to obey and love; and, like the madmen we have just seen, they separate into parties, hating each other, and fight, and quarrel, and deface God's image in which he made man, utterly regardless of the terrible doom awaiting them—just as the people aboard that ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... authentic): 'Of all the contrivances to impoverish the laboring classes of mankind, paper money is the most effective. It fertilizes the rich man's field with the poor man's sweat.' They tried to punish us for defacing money, but we beat them. We didn't deface it; we only printed something on the back of it. Isaac and I often worked all night putting up handbills for our meetings, for in those days there were ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... merchant buried his disciple by night; and on the next morning, there appeared a beautiful cross, printed on the ground, which covered the body of the martyr. The spectacle extremely surprised the infidels. They did what they were able, to deface, and (if I may so say) to blot out the cross, by treading over it, and casting earth upon it. It appeared again the day following, in the same figure, and they once more endeavoured to tread it out. But then it appeared in the air, all ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... be unlawful to cut, destroy, injure, deface or break any ornamental, nut bearing, food producing or shade tree upon any public highway or place, except where such trees shall interfere with the proper construction or maintenance of such highways. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... how to combine these simple materials, so as to produce with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts of heaven. His earthly passions have prompted him so to wield these instruments of destruction, as to deface God's image in his fellow-men. The power is so divine—the causes that impel him to use that power are so paltry! The intellect that creates these messengers of death is so near akin to divinity—the motives that put them in action are so poor, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... bowers and palace brave Guyon broke down with rigor pitiless, Ne ought their goodly workmanship might save Them from the tempest of his wrathfulness, But that their bliss he turned to balefulness; Their groves he felled, their gardens did deface, Their arbors spoil, their cabinets suppress, Their banquet-houses burn, their buildings rase, And of the fairest late now made ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... at once two forms admit, Except the one the other do deface; But in the soul ten thousand forms do fit, And none intrudes ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... many public buildings are defaced by persons who desire that their names shall remain when they are gone." "They disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast." Disfigure applies more generally to persons; deface, to things. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... Itone, who deigns defend our race and Erectheus' dwellings, grant thee to besprinkle thy right hand in the bull's blood, then see that in very truth these commandments deep-stored in thine heart's memory do flourish, nor any time deface them. Instant thine eyes shall see our cliffs, lower their gloomy clothing from every yard, and let the twisted cordage bear aloft snowy sails, where splendent shall shine bright topmast spars, so that, instant discerned, I may know with gladness ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... them too shed their leaves, to trample that, which it called heavenly, in the mire, and—far worse than the comparatively innocent beasts of the field, that are driven by a blind instinct without anything of volition—to deface and spoil everything which but now it worshipt as holy. From this conflagration then shoot forth ever and anon those disasterous sparks, which again grow into children, and again awaken to the consciousness of woe, if not of sin. And so the wheel goes evermore round and round, through a measureless ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... money can buy, and it is thus that they prefer to express themselves and their ambitions. What, then, is tolerable in Chicago? Lincoln Park, which the smoke and fog of the city have not obscured, and the grandiose lake, whose fresh splendour no villainy of man can ever deface. And at one moment of the day, when a dark cloud hung over the lake, and the sun set in a red glory behind the sky-scrapers, each black, and blacker for its encircling smoke, Chicago rose superior ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... I cannot feel that, though I believe I ought to do so. That vast groined roof, with its enormous weight of hanging stone, seems to crush one—to bar out the free sky above. Those pointed windows, too—how gloriously the western sun is streaming through them! but their rich hues only dim and deface his light. I can feel what you say, when I look at the cathedral on the outside; there, indeed, every line sweeps the eye upward—carries it from one pinnacle to another, each with less and less standing-ground, till at the summit the building gradually vanishes in a point, and leaves the spirit ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... they feel what lordly Love can do, That proudly practise to deface his name; In vain they wrastle with so fierce a foe; Of little sparks arise a blazing flame. "By small occasions love can kindle heat, And waste the oaken breast to cinder dust." Gismund I have enticed to forget Her widow's weeds, and burn in raging lust: 'Twas I enforc'd her ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... betrayed of the God you blindly believed in and the man and the woman who had your passionate love, your absolute faith, have your revenge upon the One—as upon those two others. Degrade, cast down, deface, the image of your Maker in you. Hurl back every gift of His, prostitute and debase every faculty. Cease to believe, denying His Being with the Will He forged and freed. Your Body, is it not your own, to do with as you choose? Your Soul, is it not your helpless ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... Jacob, both the Latter being at the same Time Idolaters; I say, if we may judge of it by all these, there were still very sound Notions of Religion in the Minds of Men; nor could Satan with all his Cunning and Policy deface those Ideas, and root them out of the ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... envies even memory the power of preserving images of the things that he has done away or altered; and he is sure, if possible, to deface the pictures altogether, or to leave the lines less clear. With Wilton he had done much to blot out and to confuse. At first, memory seemed all a blank beyond the period of his schoolboy days; but gradually one image after another rose out of the void, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... page 149. On the occasion of our visiting the grave in question (at Port Lihou, on Muralug) Giaom told me that we were closely watched by a party of natives who were greatly pleased that we did not attempt to deface the tomb; had we done so—and the temptation was great to some of us, for several fine nautilus shells were hanging up, and some good dugong skulls were lying upon the top—one or more of the party ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... a good complexion; it should be thoroughly washed in plenty of luke-warm water with some mild soap—then rinsed in clear water well; dry with a thick soft towel. If suds is left or wiped off the skin, the action of the air and sun will tan the surface, and permanently deface the complexion; therefore one should be sure to thoroughly rinse off all soap from the skin to avoid the tanning, which will leave a brown or ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... like a romance here to repeat all the kind things he said to me on that occasion, but I can't omit one passage. As he saw the tears drop down my cheek, he pulls out a fine cambric handkerchief, and was going to wipe the tears off, but checked his hand, as if he was afraid to deface something; I say, he checked his hand, and tossed the handkerchief to me to do it myself. I took the hint immediately, and with a kind of pleasant disdain, "How, my lord," said I, "have you kissed me so often, and don't you know whether ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... cursed them by reason of their infidelity; therefore a few of them only shall believe. O ye to whom the scriptures have been given, believe in the revelation which we have sent down, confirming that which is with you; before we deface your countenances, and render them as the back parts thereof; or curse them, as we cursed those who transgressed on the Sabbath day; and the command of God was fulfilled. Surely God will not pardon the giving ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... longer employed in the service of idolatry, might have been protected from the destructive rage of fanaticism. Many of those temples were the most splendid and beautiful monuments of Grecian architecture; and the emperor himself was interested not to deface the splendor of his own cities, or to diminish the value of his own possessions. Those stately edifices might be suffered to remain, as so many lasting trophies of the victory of Christ. In the decline of the arts they might be usefully converted into magazines, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... into desuetude, and the last cause heard concerning the right of bearing arms (Blount versus Blunt) was tried in the year 1720 (George I.). In the old arbitrary times the Earl Marshal's men have been known to stop the carriage of a parvenu, and by force deface his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... practice. If I hunt a usurper and tyrant to death, it shall be by honourable means. If his character deserves no respect, I know what is due to my own. I hold no tenets in common with regicides. Man cannot commit a crime that can so far deface the image of his Maker impressed upon him as to reduce him to the level of a beast of prey. Would that this unnerved arm had strength, and that this sinking frame were again erect with youthful vigour, then, if the awakened feelings of the nation ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... which it required all the force of that beauty to maintain itself. One ineffaceable spot was upon the soul of that fascinating being; and though, like the spots on the sun's disk, it was hidden in the effulgence which surrounded it, still he could not conceal from himself that it DID exist, to deface the symmetry of the whole. It was his knowledge of that fearful blemish that had driven him to seek in drunkenness, and subsequently in death, a release from the agonizing tortures of his mind. Virtue and a high sense of honor had triumphed so far, as ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... restored your antique liberty, Though Graecia frowned, and all Mollossia stormed, Though brave Antigonus, with martial band, In pitched field encountered me and mine, Though Pandrassus and his contributories, With all the route of their confederates, Sought to deface our glorious memory And wipe the name of Trojans from the earth, Him did I captivate with this mine arm, And by compulsion forced him to agree To certain articles which there we did propound. From Graecia through ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... than could be found in the other: at length the king gaue licence to [Sidenote: Pauline licenced to preach the gospell.] Pauline openlie to preach the gospell, and renouncing his worshipping of false gods, professed the Christian faith. And when he demanded of his bishop Coifi who should first deface the altars of their idols, and the tabernacles wherewith they were compassed about? He answered, that himselfe would doo it. "For what is more meet (saith he) than that I, which thorough foolishnesse haue worshipped them, should now for ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... these lying sects of perdition deface the benefits of Christ to this day. They rob Christ of His glory as the Justifier of mankind and cast Him into the role of a minister of sin. They are like the false apostles. There is not a single one among them who knows the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... irreverently of thee, that give themselves that liberty in speaking of thy vicegerents, kings; for thou who gavest Augustus the empire, gavest it to Nero too; and as Vespasian had it from thee, so had Julian. Though kings deface in themselves thy first image in their own soul, thou givest no man leave to deface thy second image, imprinted indelibly in their power. But thou knowest, O God, that if I should be slack in celebrating thy mercies to me exhibited by that royal ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... taken from the world the grace And virtue which are woman's praise, And in youth's gayest days The charm of loveliness thou dost deface. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages he had been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to deface and defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes of benevolence and love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and leads them to throw ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... is His, but we deface it," she murmured, reverting to her thoughts, and unconscious that it was to ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... as thou hast for me Galors hath also. And shall I let my looks undo me with thee, and thee with me? I will follow thee as a servant, and never leave thee without it be thy will. I beseech of thee deface not thine own image which I carry here. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... knowledge of that land's geography . . . "east o' the sun, west o' the moon" . . . is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never deface it or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the spits, scouring the kettles, and making clean the dressers, and told him he must come to his Master presently into the parlor. The poor man excused himself, that his shooes were dirty and the room was rubb'd, and if he should but touch any thing there he should spoyl and deface those things in the room. But still the master of the House called for Master Whittington, sending one servant after another till he was brought before him; and having scraped some few legs, instantly his master took him by the hand, and called ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.

... character of Mr. Croftangry,—it is clear that he is conscious of such slips and carelessness as I have before pointed out. I am therefore at a loss to understand why he should allow them to remain like spots that deface the general beauty of his productions, as by submitting them for perusal to the merest Tyro in grammar or composition before they were sent to press, they could not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various

... immortal soul from its clay, and hurled it, unprepared, into its Maker's presence. My conscience would rebuke my hand, should it willfully shatter the sculptor's marble wrought into human shape, or deface the artist's ideal pictured upon canvas, or destroy aught that is beautiful and costly of man's ingenuity and labor. And yet these I might replace with emptying a purse into the craftsman's hand. But ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... Decrease malkreski. Decree dekreto. Dedicate dedicxi. Dedication dedicxo. Deduce depreni. Deduct depreni. Deduction depreno. Deed faro. Deem pensi. Deep (sound) basa. Deep profunda. Deer cervo. Deface forigi, surstreki. Defame kalumnii. Defeat venki. Defeat (n.) malvenko—ego. Defect difekto—ajxo. Defend defendi. Defer prokrasti. Deference respektego. Deficiency deficito. Defile (n.) intermonto. Defile (soil) malpurigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... invisible ink, it is easy to apprehend how that appears black, when the same liquor, which serves to deface the other, is used upon it. For whereas the impregnation of saturn is only a lead suspended by the edges, of the acid liquor, this lead must needs revive, and resume its black colour, when that which held it rarefied is entirely destroyed; ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... are freed of that flame Wherewith her thralls are scorched to the heart: If Love would so, would God the enchanting dart Might once return and burn from whence it came! Not to deface of Beauty's work the frame, But by rebound It might be found What secret smart I suffer by ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... San Siro on Good Friday they hang the columns and the windows with black; they cover the pictures and deface the altar; above the high altar they raise a crucifix, and below they place a catafalque with the effigy of the dead Christ. To this sad symbol they address their prayers and incense, chant their 'litanies and lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage against the traitor Judas. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... Knez Alfanas, and Peter Gregoriwich in the Emperours name, that if Benet Butler or any English man complaine, deface, hinder in way of traffike or otherwise go about to discredit the worshipfull company, and their doings, that therein they shall not be heard, and the doers to be punished, as in such cases they shalbe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... and you destroy the usefulness of womankind. Tarnish the sacredness of girlhood and you scar the purity of womanhood. Deface the beautiful countenance of chastity, which is found in the bosom of girlhood, and you not only mar the happiness of girlhood, but you deface and obliterate the families of the future, for without that priceless treasure, virtue, the eternal principles ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... XI. being counselled by certain envious persons to deface his tomb, used these, indeed, princely words:— "What honor shall it be to us, or you, to break this monument, and to pull out of the ground the bones of him, whom, in his life time, neither my father nor your progenitors, with all their puissance, were once able to make fly a foot backward? Who ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... that the chapel was begun about 1580, and completed in 1594, but he refers probably to Tabachetti's reconstruction, for in the portico there is an inscription painted by order of the Bishop, and forbidding visitors to deface the walls, that is dated 1524, and the back of the chapel has many early 16th ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... chamber spreads apace The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; 5 The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change shall o'er his sleep ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... a burnished sword. A burned device or character, especially that of the broad arrow on government stores, to deface or erase ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... above-mentioned were up on Tuesday last. They are large and boldly printed, and attracted crowds of readers—but not a hand was raised to deface them, to damage them, to do them any injury whatever. I watched them for four-and-twenty hours, and not a finger was lifted against any one in the High Street or elsewhere, so far as ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... those Glories shall deface, Revenging all your cold Disdain, And Silvia shall neglected pass, By every once admiring Swain; And we can only Pity pay, When you in vain too late shall burn: If Love increase, and Youth delay, Ah, Silvia, who will ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... who cannot excuse this necessary appendage of trade, and particularly in a town on the Loire, where a walk of ten minutes will carry him from the narrow streets into one of the sweetest countries under Heaven. Even the necessary filth of commerce cannot destroy, or scarcely deface ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... something of a sportsman, had a mind to have a peep at the cocks. Opening the door of one of the buildings hastily, he disturbed the cock, who taking fright, flew about the barn with such violence, as to tear off several of his feathers, and very much to deface his appearance. Unfortunately, at this instant, White Connal and Mr. O'Tara came by, and finding what had happened, abused Moriarty with all the vulgar eloquence which anger could supply. Ormond, who had been ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... cannot deface This branch his hue, So let no change of love disgrace Your friendship true; You were mine own, and so be still, So shall we live and love ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... ready tongue and caustic wit were sufficient weapons of defence. In 1774, as town clerk of Worcester, he recorded a protest of forty-three royalist citizens against the resolutions of the patriotic majority. This record he was compelled in open town meeting to deface, and when he failed to render it sufficiently illegible with the pen, his tormentors dipped his fingers into the ink and used them to perfect the obliteration. He fled to Halifax, but after a few months returned, and was thrown into Worcester jail. The reply to his petition for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... perjuring myself, "has nothing whatever to do with Jaffery and me. As I've told you it was not among Adrian's papers which we went through together. We're narrowed down to 'The Greater Glory.' Possibly," said I, with a despairing flash, "Jaffery had to pull it about so much and deface it with his own great scrawl, that he thought it might pain you to see it, and so he told you that it had disappeared at the printer's. Now that I remember, he did ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... panges asaylde. Twyse thre and one he Children had, two sones, one kepes his name, And dowghters fyve for home he carde, y't lyve in honest fame. What booteth more, as he be kynde dyd come of Jentyll race, So Rouland Monoux good Desertes this grave can not Deface." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... taken my resolution. I am racing up-stairs. I have reached my room. I do not summon my maid. One requires no assistance to enable one to unbuild, deface, destroy. In a second—in much less time than it takes me to write it—I have torn off the mob-cap, and thrown it on the floor. If I had done what I wished, if I had yielded to my first impulse, I should also have trampled upon it; but ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... and moon's eclipses are, The moon's are often, but the sun's more rare The moon's do much deface her beauty bright; Sol's do not his, but hide from us his sight: It is the earth the moon's defect procures, 'Tis the moon's shadow that the sun obscures. Eastward, moon's front beginneth first to lack, Westward, sun's brows begin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... can we explain the statement of Epiphanius? It is a simple blunder, not more egregious than scores of other blunders which deface his pages. He had not seen the Diatessaron: this our author himself says. But he had heard that it was in circulation in certain parts of Syria; and he knew also that the Gospel of the Hebrews was current in these same regions, there or thereabouts. Hence he jumped at ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... gray as the water has evaporated less, a slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is none; and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of man by the returning sea. You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crow-quill—you may course over its dazzling expanse with ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... thou weary Of the heavenly vision, that thou seekest To deface its chosen vessel, wouldst degrade To common dust the Maid whom God has sent thee? Ye blind of heart! O ye of little faith! Heaven's brightness is about you, before your eyes Unveils its wonders; and ye see in me Nought but a woman. Dare a woman, think ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... are rent up by the roots. What is vain beauty but an idle breath? Why are we proud of that which so soon changes? But rather wish the beauty of the mind, Which neither time can alter, sickness change, Violence deface, nor the black hand of envy Smudge and disgrace, or spoil, or make deform'd. O, had my riotous husband borne this mind, He had been happy, I had been more blest, And peace had brought our quiet souls ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... pardon Hubert, for the detention," exclaimed Mrs. Verne who now made her appearance rustling in gros grain silk and sparkling with superb brilliants, while the cleverly artistic touches administered to deface the inroad of merciless Time would lead one at first glimpse to suppose that the radiant matron was none other than a pretty ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... educated sort of thing to travel through a country whose commonest advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelsea made unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare's Walks and Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been trying to realise, she said, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... the house, Knox," said Harley, hoarsely. "For God's sake keep the women away. Get Pedro, and send Manoel for the nearest doctor. It's useless but usual. Let no one deface his footprints. My worst anticipations have come true. The local police must ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... find him idle, I warrant you. And his office is to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry, to teach all kind of popery. He is ready as he can be wished for to set forth his plough; to devise as many ways as can be to deface and obscure God's glory. Where the devil is resident, and hath his plough going, there away with books, and up with candles; away with bibles, and up with beads; away with the light of the gospel, and up with the light of candles, yea, at noon-days. ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer



Words linked to "Deface" :   maul, vitiate, pock, mangle, spoil, deflower, pit, impair, disfigure, mark, scar, mar, blemish



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