"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject almost violently. John Williamson made a practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore be taboo on ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... nuts and pine-branches, which supplied body-building material, and which she weighed out with scrupulous accuracy, in accordance with the directions of the "Uric Acid Monthly." Tea and coffee were taboo, since they flooded the blood with purins, and the kitchen boiler rumbled day and night to supply the rivers of boiling water with which (taken in sips) she inundated her system. Strange gaunt females ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... true. It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in the first place. How else are we to explain that the Nipe, for all his tremendous technical knowledge, is nonetheless a member of a society that is still in the ancient ritual-taboo ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... who will never more smile on me as they were wont to smile! How many flowers of rhetoric have been wasted on me by the irony of fate! How many billets-doux, so perfumed and pretty, lie in my desk addressed to my nether garment! And how many mammas have encouraged Mr. Christopher, who will forever taboo Miss Bloggs! And then the parties and the picnics! Ah, my dear Orphea, what do I not sacrifice on the altar of my sex. ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... she answered lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour the sea by such a discussion in its ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... as religion itself was simple. Certain things were permitted, certain things prohibited as part of a cult. These permissions and prohibitions are often strangely capricious, but we may trace behind taboo and caste and the ceremonially clean and unclean an always emerging standard of right and wrong and a fundamental relationship between religion and ethics. Religion from the very first felt itself to be the more august force and through ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... habit, some good besides piety may come out of a memorial Eleventh of November. Pitying, recording, respecting the dead or perhaps the bereaved, it may presently become a fixed idea with us that avoidable death is taboo. It may be borne in upon us on the next occasion when stung pride, outraged feeling or panic fear is sweeping like a plague over our land, that nothing but sorrow and loss was gained by the Four ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... taboo am I placed?" said he, gayly, as he laid his hand on her shrinking arm. "I inquire for Helen,—she is ill, and cannot see me. I come to sun myself in your presence, and you fly me as if gods and men had set their mark on my brow. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night studying how little I could ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... books was an English guide-book. I read it. It was full of lies, so gross and palpable that I told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that the people were superstitious—it is false. They have no taboo about days; they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned psychical rubbish, no damned "folk-lore," no triply damned mumbo-jumbo ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... these general principles that the moralist is concerned. The anthropologist may regard it as his duty to spend much labor in the attempt to discover why this or that act, this or that article of food, happens in a given community to be taboo to certain persons. The student of ethics is not bound to take up the detailed investigation of such matters. Human nature, in its general constitution, is much the same in different races and peoples. The influence of environment is everywhere apparent. There ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... this unsexing of ourselves, and worse Effeminizing of the male. We were Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain. All we have done, or wise or otherwise, Traced to the root, was done for love of you. Let us taboo all vain comparisons, And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand, Companions, mates and comrades evermore; Two parts of ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... Cigarette was Taboo among these Good People, although Father could Fletcherize about 10 cents' worth of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... offenders of the most dangerous class are confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as a prison for dangerous Confederates; and here later three ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... in the office when he appeared the next morning, with her harness over her head. It was the sign in a way that she was strictly business and all personal confidences were taboo, but Rimrock did not take the hint. It annoyed him, some way, that drum over her ear and the transmitter hung on her breast, for when he had seen her the evening before all these things had ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... aided him, as occasion required, in his boot-legging operations or other questionable enterprises—were lounging, some standing, some sitting, watching a slow poker game going on at the last table. Cards, under the laws of Texas, are taboo, but for some reason Sabota managed to get by and games were ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it. For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is therefore much to the credit of Little John, the famous follower of Robin Hood, and reflecting favorably on his character, that his ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... controversies. Law and order have become stock phrases, dinned into their ears at every turn. The man who would settle his difficulty by trying the physical metal of his adversary is of the past. By the new order he is taboo as a savage. Individual self-restraint rings out in our vocabulary as nationally descriptive. The babe at the mother's knee learns first the virtue of it; the child at school is tutored to it soundly; the man in life is lectured with it ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... Gilberts was at the port of Butaritari in the island of Great Makin, their arrival being unfortunately timed to strike the town just when the taboo against strong drink had been temporarily lifted by the king, and the whole population was engaged in a wild carouse. For a few days their situation seemed precarious, but the king at length restored the taboo, and after that peace ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... with those of most African peoples, monogamous. At any rate only the rich among them had more than one wife, while the poor or otherwise ineligible often had none at all, since inter-marriage with other races and above all with the Black Kendah dwelling beyond the river was so strictly taboo that it was ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... have lately expressed themselves in this sense, and it is probable that a reaction is at hand that will benefit the cause of serious opera. There is absolutely nothing in any of the operas given at the Metropolitan that could not be fitly sung before a Sunday-school audience. Why, then, taboo the opera and jeopardize its existence, leaving the field to the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... defence of London, he, K., was not, and as he had already explained, big demands would make his position difficult with France; difficult everywhere; and might end by putting him (K.) in the cart. Besika Bay and Alexandretta were, therefore, taboo—not to be touched! Even after we force the Narrows no troops are to be landed along the Asian coastline. Nor are we to garrison any part of the Gallipoli Peninsula excepting only the Bulair Lines which had best be permanently held, K. thinks, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... to a sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one to enter upon ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... foot had come to this threshold, no one had directed a friendly thought to the woman who lived here, nor to the child; yet woman and child had lived on happily in spite of this, and now to Pearl, on whom the taboo of the neighborhood had also fallen, there came the peace of mind which could set quietly at defiance the opinion of the ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... a branch of art are prepared even to sacrifice a pipe or a cigar in the pursuit of their peculiar and hardly popular pleasure. Moreover, it is likely the theatres would exhibit the snobbishness of the fashionable halls and restaurants and taboo the pipe which every wise man prefers to the cigar or cigarette ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... time too when the hapless English traveller is expected to write like a young lady for young ladies, and never to notice what underlies the most superficial stratum. And I also maintain that the free treatment of topics usually taboo'd and held to be "alekta"—unknown and unfitted for publicity—will be a national benefit to an "Empire of Opinion," whose very basis and buttresses are a thorough knowledge by the rulers of the ruled. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... not one of those who hold that the previous romances of married people should be taboo between them in after life. On the contrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may be derived from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and this is why we, in our old age (or rather in mine), find a still unfailing topic in the story of which ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... There is a universal taboo in India against killing a snake. When a cobra is slain it is supposed that its mate always avenges its death (Crooke, "Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India," ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... spirits. But Fleur heeded not these sounds; her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice, which was taboo. And she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek. Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would have thought. The new girl was unobtrusive, attended strictly to her studies, and made few demands on those about her; yet it was true that there was among them at least an unacknowledged conspiracy to taboo her, or an understanding that she was to be ignored almost completely. This Bernice attributed to her looks. Ever since she could remember, she had been called "homely," "ugly," "plain," and similar epithets. Now, though she preserved a calm exterior, she could ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Daramulun only as Papang (Father). {85c} The uninitiated among the Kurnai do not know the sacred name, Mungan-ngaur. {85d} The Australian did not borrow this secrecy from Egypt. Everywhere a mystery is kept up about proper names. M. Foucart seems to think that what is practically universal, a taboo on names, can only have reached Greece by transplantation from Egypt. {86a} To the anthropologist it seems that scholars, in ignoring the universal ideas of the lower races, run the risk of venturing on theories at ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... into the war. Although the Osage chieftain was an American (who could claim such proud estate if Totantora could not?), the show by which he was employed had gone direct to Germany from England, and anything English had, from the first, been taboo in Germany. Now, of course, the Indian girl had no idea as ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... En route to the interior. Native flora and fauna. We arrive at the capital. A lecture on Filbertine architecture. A strange taboo. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the period of taboo the workers go to the fields and, in the center of each, place a tambara[21] fitted with a white dish containing betel nut. This is an offering to Eugpamolak Manobo, who is besought to drive from the field any ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Diogenes and others—was conducted on a large scale, but the human body was still taboo. Aristotle confesses that the "inward parts of man are known least of all," and he had never seen the human kidneys or uterus. In his physiology, I can refer to but one point—the pivotal question of the heart and blood vessels. To Aristotle the heart was the central organ controlling ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... order of ideas, only still further extended, may be detected in the sacredness attached to certain animals by so many nations of antiquity. It is now generally admitted that this 'sacredness' has two sides. A sacred animal may be 'taboo,' that is, so sacred that it must not be touched, much less killed or eaten; and, on the other hand, its original sanctity may lead people to regard it as "unclean," something again to be avoided, because of the power to do ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... cabin—because "shure, he paid the rint"—I feel bound to take care of myself as a household animal of value, to say nothing of any other grounds. So, much as I should like to be with you all on the 3rd, I must defer to the taboo. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... not the weaker. But the subject is what you English call 'taboo.' It is treading on delicate ground to talk politics in ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... discourteous to mention money at table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a number of firms the executives have lunch together, meeting ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... N. prohibition, inhibition; veto, disallowance; interdict, interdiction; injunction, estoppel [Law]; embargo, ban, taboo, proscription; index expurgatorius [Lat.]; restriction &c (restraint) 751; hindrance &c 706; forbidden fruit; Maine law [U.S.]. V. prohibit, inhibit; forbid, put one's veto upon, disallow, enjoin, ban, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seen another omit his lunch because water had been spilled upon the cloth, and still another leave the dining-car, with the announcement that he would forego his meal because informed by the conductor that men's shirt waists without coats were taboo. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?" he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah or so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "is there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up my residence ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... of composure but in truth she was badly shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the look in his face that there was something dubious about ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Johnson. Also, one would feel safer; one didn't really trust Vyvian not to be doing little private deals of his own; so little, in fact, did one trust him that the names of dealers were rigorously taboo now on the Gem. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... trifle. "Forgetting exact principles for a moment, ud Klavan, you realize that the actuality will sometimes stray from the ideal. Our citizens, for example, do not habitually carry weapons except under extraordinary conditions. But that is a civil taboo, rather than a fixed amendation of our constitution. I have no doubt that some future generation, mores having shifted, will, for example, ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... said quietly; "your congratulations are premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo for three years—at Mr. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... have led him to conclusions which are, on the whole, true, although perhaps incorrect in matters of detail. Most children, unable to ask their mother or father direct questions upon matters which they feel instinctively are taboo, have pieced together, from their reading and observation, a faulty theory of sexual life. The pursuit of such knowledge, in secret, is not a healthy occupation for the child. His parents' silence has given him the feeling that the unexplored land is forbidden ground. In satisfying ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... is not true." But there was another and more extensive class of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic taboo, or tapui (tapooe), as they call it. Of this there was a great variety, and the ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... finally said. "But don't snap my neck for it. I'm gambling that your civilized mind can control your reflexes. Because I have to talk about things that are strictly taboo on Pyrrus. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... the early Friends ceased, the place of woman began to be circumscribed by new rules, and crystallized in a reaction under the influence of purely social forces; so that this most sensible people made women equal to men in meetings and in religious legislation through a form of sexual taboo. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... captain to one of the members, "I would but the devil take it, how can a man go around asking for a job in a dress suit? And I'm so rotten big that none of my friends can loan me a suit. And my credit is gone with at least twelve different tailors. I'm sort o' taboo as a borrower. Barry, old top, if you will chase the blighter after another highball, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... such circumlocutions as the writer, the reporter, or the correspondent. In a signed story, however, the pronoun I is used somewhat freely, while such stilted phrases as the scribe, your humble servant, etc., are absolutely taboo. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... images are clothed. They were not represented as clothed in order to make easier the work of the sculptor. His carving shows he had great skill, was observant, and had true artistic feeling. Apparently the taboo against "nakedness" ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... fool a duke, in hope With Heaven's taboo to palter; Then told a priest, who told the Pope, Who damned ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... little doubt that if the people had sufficient intelligence and moral strength to taboo tobacco, this comparatively senseless outgo would be largely devoted to supplying these and other necessities of an exalted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... disposed of. Since time's beginning, every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things—more or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function—as the things which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all there is to say concerning this topic, apart from ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews—no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar and ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... bringing of newspapers to Brussels from the outside world, and announcing that any one who brings newspapers here or is found with papers in his possession will be severely punished. Two German papers will be distributed by the authorities, and everything else is taboo. They evidently intend that their own version of passing events shall be the only ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... remembering Anscombe's story I reflected to myself that our venerable host was an excellent liar. Or more probably he meant to convey that he wished the subject of his youthful reminiscences to be taboo. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... of misery and ignorance covered over and clamped down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible superstition of sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor's office trembling with excitement over this situation. Oh, why had not some one warned him in time? Why didn't the doctors ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... not greatly interested in ships, but, because Uncle Cy was making it, she pretended to be vastly concerned about this one. On Saturdays and after school hours she sat on a box in the wood shed, where the captain had put up a small stove, and watched him work. The taboo which so many of our righteous and Atkins-worshiping townspeople had put upon the Whittaker place and its occupants included her, and a number of children had been forbidden to play with her. This, however, did ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... enough, though there was a noticeable effort on the part of each member of the family to keep the conversation from touching upon the subject of Ralph's affairs. Any reference to Cambridge was taboo, as Darsie swiftly discovered, but there were many points of interest left, which were both ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the symptoms, and outlook or intentionally ignore the hidden cause, the deviations from the Word of God, which disturb the unity of the Spirit. And doctrinal discussions, which alone can bring about a real cure, are intentionally omitted and expressly declared taboo, as, e. g., by the Federal Council. The Church, suffering from blood-poisoning, is pronounced cured when the sores have been covered. They put a plaster over the gap in Zion's wall, which may hide, but does not heal, the breach. Universally, sectarian henotics have proved to ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... thing in rather a fine style; but if it was gone about a little cheaper, or there were two of us to bear the expense, it ought to pay hand over fist. I've got the influence, you see. I'm a chief now, and sit in the speak-house under my own strip of roof. I'd like to see them taboo me! They daren't try it; I've a strong party, I can tell you. Why I've had upwards of thirty cowtops sitting in my front ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins of the Humans. These, in turn, would ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... the steel embroidery on a gray suede bag which lay on the table. She had got it the other day to serve as understudy for the gold bag which was "taboo" for public use at present. She was glad that the forest creature did not know, and never would know, that she had secretly bought back his gold bag. If he found out, it might be his turn ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... negotiations aside, Anna and myself had a mighty good time in Vienna (I forgot to say that Emperor Francis Joseph agreed with me that Danilo and Alexander were quite impossible and that henceforth Balkan marriages should be taboo). ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Sun Singer, this Star-Born One, this mysterious deity, as bestial-conducted as the black and kinky-headed and monkey-like human beasts who worshipped it, and whose silver-sweet, bull-mouthed singing and commanding he had heard at the taboo distance ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... bride by the hero because he breaks a taboo (the cause of the forgetting is usually a parental kiss, which the hero ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... for diseases are supposed to be cured by charms and incantations of the shaman or priest; and everything in the way of hunting, fishing, cooking, or of clothing themselves must be done in a prescribed way or it is "taboo" or "hoodoo" as the negroes say. When you read "The Baby Eskimo" you will see just a tiny bit of the hardships, but I should not like to tell you how much more terrible a time he might have had, if he had happened to be ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... so he did not have to take any steps to avoid them. Now we know that loose, luxuriant whiskers are unsanitary, because they make such fine winter quarters for germs; so, though the doctors still wear whiskers, they do not wear them wild and waving. In the profession bosky whiskers are taboo; they must be landscaped. And since it is a recognized fact that germs abhor orderliness and straight lines they now go elsewhere to reside, and the doctor may still retain his traditional aspect and yet be practically germproof. Doctor X was trimmed in accordance with the ethics of the newer school. ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... Toomeys meant. Naive, ingenuous, he felt were better words. She knew nothing of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon subjects which he had been taught were taboo. He admired and was accustomed to soft, helpless, clinging femininity, and it grated upon him to see Kate at the woodpile swinging an axe in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding to the number ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... come for a book like this to command the attention of medical men, since now an awakened public demands from them, as the conservers of life and the directors of physiological living, explicit directions in everything pertaining to the physician's calling, not omitting the intimate, intricate, long taboo and disdained details of sex ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... very despicable bulletin of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent TIMES article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still TABOO; the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article. 'Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day, with a bad headache, and ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the other's thought). Yes, some patients play and sing. (With a smile.) If you'd call the noise they make by those terms. They'd dance, too, if we permitted it. There's only one big taboo—Home, Sweet Home. We ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... she was speaking, and the child ran away; for the little ones aped their elders in making Laura taboo. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... their race—a slip of native cloth about the loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion which would ensue, were the natives—men and women—allowed to come off ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... not know how strong a hold the religion of the Ho-don had upon them, for since the time that he had prevented Ta-den and Om-at from quarreling over a religious difference the subject had been utterly taboo among them. He was therefore quick to note the evident though wordless resentment of Ko-tan at the suggestion that he entirely relinquish his throne to his guest. On the whole, however, the effect had been satisfactory as he could see from the renewed evidence of awe upon the faces ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... theatres, of which two are subsidized by the government and one by the municipality. The performances are almost exclusively in Hungarian, the exceptions being the occasional appearance of French, Italian and other foreign artists. Performances in German are under a popular taboo, and they are never given in a theatre ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... him and afterwards to talk with him. I found the one subject to avoid was Fairyland. On everything else he was open and amiable in a commonplace sort of way, but on that he had been worried—it was a manifest taboo. Only once in the room did I hear the slightest allusion to his experience in his presence, and that was by a cross-grained farm hand who was losing to him. Skelmersdale had run a break into double figures, which, by the Bignor ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... rights of conscience are not, in my opinion, pooled and placed at the command of the majority, as are the actions and behaviour of the units that make up the State. The Will of the People even cannot command the minds of men and women. That region is under an eternal taboo, which even the majority must not attempt to violate. If they do make the attempt, they must expect resistance. Christ taught us to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," but a man's conscience is not one ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... imagine you would reach me so swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous tribes; they stick ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... little while ago, to be an Infidel was to be socially taboo. But a little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But a little earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject to ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... us a lot of information, as far as she could, on the crops and animals. The big things, the size of rhinoceroses, are draft animals and nothing else; they're not eaten," Dorver said. "I don't know whether the meat isn't good, or is taboo, or they are too valuable to eat. They eat all the other three species, and milk two of them. I have an idea they grind their grain in big ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... to Orofedabe; so we returned to the village, gave the taro we bought to the people, paid our attendants and for the house where our things were, and away we went. Our friends were glad to see us, and rejoiced greatly when the taboo was taken off the salt, and taro was bought. We are having rain ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... what could destroy and taboo both more effectually than the rigid and rigorous demands of a formal set of examinations prepared, as a rule, by pedantic specialists who know practically nothing of the fundamental problems and needs of the ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... placed that a certain combination is bound to emerge in a certain generation, such a state of affairs might have been prearranged. Now, if it was prearranged, the awful fact emerges that there must have been an arranger; in other words, a creative power. This explanation is taboo in certain circles. But one may reasonably ask, "What then?" Is it really suggested that these orderly sets of occurrences may occur not once or twice only but thousands and thousands of times, and this may all happen by chance? A very distant acquaintance with the mathematics of probability ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Religion' treats of early religion, from the point of view of Anthropology and Folk-lore; and is the first attempt that has been made in any language to weave together the results of recent investigations into such topics as Sympathetic Magic, Taboo, Totemism, Fetishism, etc., so as to present a systematic account of the growth of primitive religion and the development ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... the Knight of the Swan who came to the succour of the youthful Duchess of Brabant is based upon motives more or less common in folklore—the enchantment of human beings into swans, and the taboo whereby, as in the case of Cupid and Psyche, the husband forbids the wife to question him as to his identity or to look upon him. The myth has been treated by both French and German romancers, but the latter ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... take precautionary measures against unwelcome intrusion. Summoning the maid who had just speeded the departing St. Michael, she gave the order: "I am not at home this afternoon to Lady Caroline Benaresq." On second thoughts she extended the taboo to all possible callers, and sent a telephone message to catch Comus at his club, asking him to come and see her as soon as he could manage before it was time to dress for dinner. Then she sat down to think, and her thinking was beyond ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... the Steels, as indeed, they could scarcely fail to do, having called on him already as a bachelor the year before. Nor were the Uniackes and the Invernesses the bell-wethers of the flock. Those august families had returned to London for the season; but the taboo half-suggested by Mrs. Venables had begun and ended in her own mind. Indeed, that potent and diplomatic dame, who was the undoubted leader of society within a four-mile radius of Northborough town hall, was the first to recognize the mistake ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... any special hate toward that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their love disappointments ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... questions, which put its seniors in a flutter. The seniors, under question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never till now dreamt of the need of any. If they are wise, they will put away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer these things out, and perchance clear their own minds ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... don't know." She shrugged. "Nothing very definite. War has been a taboo subject with him—I mean from the first when you all went in. I know he has strong feelings about it, terribly strong. But ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Akua—" they say, "he is a man like us, yet in his nature and appearance godlike. And he was the first-born of us; he was greatly beloved by our parents; to him was given superhuman power—ka mana—which we have not.... Only his taboo rank remains, Therefore fear not; when he comes you will see that he is only a man like us." It is such a character, born of godlike ancestors and inheriting through the favor of this god, or some member ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... times was unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... out from time to time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I'll do ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... necessary, following the death of an adult, for the men to put on white head-bands and go out on a head-hunt. Until their return it was impossible to hold the ceremony which released the relatives from the taboo. [97] During the first two days that the body is in the house, the friends and relatives gather to do honor to the dead and to partake of the food and drink, which are always freely given at such a time; but there is neither music, ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... The formula "youngest best," in which the youngest of three brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk- tales amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant literary relationships. There can be little doubt that Edgar, in his mad ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... upon the country, against the expressed wish of at least two-thirds of the people, by the political chicanery of the same organization, and yet no one, during the long fight, thought to attack it directly; to have done so would have been to violate the taboo described. So when the returning soldiers began to reveal the astounding chicaneries of the Young Men's Christian Association, it was marvelled at for a few weeks, as Americans always marvel at successful pocket-squeezings, but no one sought the cause in the character of the pious ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... commanding generals there is always an engine ready with steam up. Headquarters suddenly rolls off; and, after two or three days, it returns noiselessly, with its archives, its general staff, its restaurant, and its electric plant. The Grand Duke rules with an iron fist. Champagne and liquor is taboo throughout the war zone, and even the officers of the general staff get nothing except a little red wine. Woe to anyone who sins against this order, here or anywhere else at the front. The iron fist of the Grand Duke hits, if necessary, even the greatest, the most famous. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... celebrated after the Bladder Feast during the December moon. By the Yukon tribes it is repeated just before the opening of spring. During the day of the festival a taboo is placed on all work in the village, particularly that done with any sharp pointed tool which might wound some wandering ghost and ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... races of Cambodia, and notes that the ancient Chinese writers spoke of Queens in Fou-nan (Cambodia). If the Khmers were the ancient people of Cambodia, here we have an important landmark in common between them and the Khasis. M. Aymonier goes on to speak of priestesses, and the Cambodian taboo, tam or trenam, which Mr. Lowis, the Superintendent of Ethnography in Burma, suggests may be akin ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... girls of her own age would not speak to her. Many of the older girls made her feel by every glance and word they gave her that she was taboo. And it was whispered on the campus that Amy would be sent home by Mrs. Tellingham, if she could not be made to pay, or her folks be made to pay, something toward the damage ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... sip of Thackeray, reading at a venture, in "Vanity Fair," about the Battle of Waterloo. It was not like Lever's accounts of battles, but it was enchanting. However, "Vanity Fair" was under a taboo. It is not easy to say why; but Mr. Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom he found reading "Vanity Fair" under the table, that he had better read something else. What harm can the story do to a child? He reads about Waterloo, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... board a ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet—and urchins as they play marbles. And for the real noble a whole private dialect is set apart. The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo, a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of English ladies. Special words are set apart for his leg, his face, his hair, his belly, his eyelids, his son, his daughter, his wife, his wife's pregnancy, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accentuated craving of the girl who knows may ill be balanced by any thought of possible disagreeable consequences. Still more important, however, is a second aspect. The girl to whom the world sex is the great taboo is really held back from lascivious life by an instinctive respect and anxiety. As soon as girl and boy are knowers, all becomes a matter of naked calculation. What they have learned from their instruction ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... been a warning given once: No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly, To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes Into this mounded sward and rumple it; All trees stand back: taboo is ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo between them—their experimental work. ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... turned toward the distant flame, and waved his hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava. He has brought ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Missionaries established themselves in these islands in 1821, and are reported to have met with considerable success. The leading island is that which is called Tongataboo, or the 'consecrated island.' The name is properly two words 'Tonga Taboo,' signifying 'Sacred Island,' the reason of which appellative will appear, when I tell you that the priest of this island, whose name was Diatonga, was reverenced and resorted to by all the surrounding islands. Earthquakes are very frequent here; ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... previous eras of quasi-religious experience. Totemism not discernible. Taboo, and the means adopted of escaping from it; both survived at Rome into an age of real religion. Examples: impurity (or holiness) of new-born infants; of a corpse; of women in certain worships; of strangers; of criminals. Almost complete absence of blood-taboo. Iron. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... I find myself at the river's edge down among the Seine watermen. I am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," and the glances cast in my direction by the other customers indicate plainly enough that they consider the proceeding as something ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... century the taboo prevailed. Certain subjects were rarely mentioned in public, and then only in euphemistic terms. The home, the church, the school; and the press joined in the conspiracy. Supposedly, they were keeping ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... did not like, unless it was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given some other good book that I did like. There were certain books that were taboo. For instance, I was not allowed to read dime novels. I obtained some surreptitiously and did read them, but I do not think that the enjoyment compensated for the feeling of guilt. I was also forbidden to read the only one of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... We all passed but two, and we all had to get drunk to buck those two up. We went to the Empire and kicked up such a gory din that we were helped out. A little mamzelle from the Promenade took charge of me. I—I hadn't thought about those things much before. At home they were taboo. I'd always been terrified of girls—If I hadn't been drunk then I'd never have done it. I thought it unutterably beastly. For months after that I was afraid to look the Mater in the face. I thought she was unutterably beastly, as well, just ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... this taboo are that even very little children are often made unhappy and anxious, sometimes for days, if they know there is sickness at home, while in the second place boxes are so often delayed that they become the source of much disturbance of mind when ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... little thing I am going to talk to you about that really is a bigger thing than it seems—and that is gum—chewing gum. If you had had stage experience you would know that gum is taboo in the theatre, and the reason for this is not only that to chew in sight of an audience would be an insult and result in immediate dismissal, but also for this very important reason, that a cud of gum if dropped on the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... English expressions eschew, And on "gentleman" place an especial taboo; Well, the facts of the case their decision confirm, For they've clearly no more ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... responded, and he left the palm room with head down- bent, as if he were already pondering the problem, the solving of which was to free him from the self-imposed taboo ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Holland was overrun by the armies of the French republic, a French general, surrounded by his whole etat major, who had come from Amsterdam to view the wonders of Broek, applied for admission at one of these taboo'd portals. The reply was that the owner never received any one who did not come introduced by some friend. "Very well," said the general, "take my compliments to your master, and tell him I will return here ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... friend, Buck," he said, "take my tip an' don't try no fool stunts around that girl. Which she once belongs to Whistlin' Dan Barry an' therefore she's got the taboo mark on her for any other man. Everything he's ever ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... he said curtly. "I'm taboo." And then, with a little break in his voice: "Even your dog feels it. Don, good ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... with some success through her operetta, "The Snow Queen," but like Miss Smyth gave the world a more important work in the shape of a mass. Ethel Harraden, sister of the novelist, had her opera, "The Taboo," brought out at the Trafalgar Square Theatre, London, with excellent results. She has composed an operetta, "His Last Chance," besides vocal, choral, and violin pieces. Harriet Maitland Young has completed several operettas, of which "An Artist's ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... perhaps Mudge would manage by some means or other to obtain my liberty, should he not already have left the island. There was some risk of this being the case, we agreed; and if so, Harry said that he would come back to me rather than have to live alone in Taboo Land, as ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... officers were huddled around a small piano trying to make the best of a lightless evening, and, having sung every song from Keep the Home Fires Burning to You're in the Army Now, paused, longingly toyed cigarettes which were taboo by ship's order, and ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... his presence and love," I said. "But I try to keep him happy. I don't bother him with my troubles. I won't even let him talk of them. They're taboo." ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any more because ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... the United States; with the sea-lions of California, the wonderful revival of ibex in Spain and deer in Maine and New Brunswick, the great preserves in Uganda, India and Ceylon, the selective work of Baron von Berlepsch in Germany, the curious result of taboo protection up the Nelson river, and the effects on seafowl in cases as far apart in time and space as the guano islands under the Incas of Peru, Gardiner island in the United States or the Bass rock ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... and singing native songs that had been forbidden in the school, and, taking their shawls and Sunday dresses from their trunks, they arrayed themselves in all their finery and began dancing an old heathen dance which is taboo among the better class of natives and only practised in secret by the more degraded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... practice. But in theory it is admitted that an adult person in pursuit of knowledge must not be refused it on the ground that he would be better or happier without it. Parents and priests may forbid knowledge to those who accept their authority; and social taboo may be made effective by acts of legal persecution under cover of repressing blasphemy, obscenity, and sedition; but no government now openly forbids its subjects to pursue knowledge on the ground that knowledge is in itself a bad thing, or that it is possible for ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... and protect the waterers and other working parties that were to be on shore. The spot chosen was immediately marked off with wands by the friendly native priests, who thus consecrated the ground, or placed it under "taboo"—a sort of religious interdiction, which effectually protected it from the intrusion of the natives—for none ever ventured, during their stay, to enter within the tabooed space ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ear of one who was, apparently, in the same position of life as themselves. Smart clothing would be unnecessary also, and a hundred and one luxuries of a leisured life. I mentally drew up a list of things taboo, and regarded it with—let me be honest—lingering regret. I was quite, quite willing to deny myself, but it is folly to pretend that it didn't cost a pang. I like good clothes and dainty meals, and motor-cars, and space, and luxury, and people to wait upon ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
