blemish vs pay one’s dues

blemish

verb
  • To tarnish (reputation, character, etc.); to defame. 

  • To spoil the appearance of. 

noun
  • A moral defect; a character flaw. 

  • A small flaw which spoils the appearance of something, a stain, a spot. 

pay one’s dues

How often have the words blemish and pay one’s dues occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )