"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... puis—Prince ne veux—Rohan je suis," is one which is theoretically strong among the country squires of England, the possessors of the bluest blood and longest deeds of hereditary lands; but the snobbishness of the nineteenth century is practically apt to taint the younger branches when they read of garden-parties given by the royal princes or balls where duchesses and cabinet ministers are as plentiful as blackberries. Their great-grandmothers, it is true, were sometimes troubled with the same longings, for among the many proclamations against ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... share— Brahma, the ruler of the sky, Sthanu, Narayan, Lord most high, And holy Indra men might view With Maruts for his retinue; The heavenly chorister, and saint, And spirit pure from earthly taint, With one accord had sought the place The high-souled monarch's rite to grace, Then to the Gods who came to take Their proper share, the hermit spake:— "For you has Dasaratha slain The votive steed, a son to gain; Stern penance-rites ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... you laugh," Mrs. Burke responded, chuckling to herself. "'Taint polite to look surprised when a woman says she's a-goin' to get married. Every woman under ninety-eight has expectations. While there's life there's hope that some man will make a fool of himself. But unless I miss my guess, you don't catch me surrenderin' ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Spartan, the Roman of "the brave days of old" was often stern, and even brutal, towards his enemies. But he was a devoted patriot, he was true to his plighted faith, and above all he was free from all taint of pecuniary corruption. The earlier history of both nations is full of legends illustrating these points, which, whether individually true or not, bear abundant testimony to the national ideal. But with irresponsible power, Roman and Spartan alike, while remaining as brutally indifferent ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... the midst of his task, the bear stopped and lifted his muzzle to the wind. What was that new taint upon the air? It was one almost unknown to him,—but one which he instinctively dreaded, though without any reason based directly upon experience of his own. At almost any other time, indeed, he would have taken the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Ignorance, Vice or Virtue; but a kind of Olio of them all. Even the highest Characters have their weak-sides, and the most refin'd, their Defects and their Failures, with all the Infirmities which Flesh is heir to, and this World where we dwell is apt to taint Men with. Nay I must tell you in some Verses of mine, which never fell into ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... had display'd the port Through which his life was martching vp to heauen, Albe the mortall taint all cuers retort, Yet was his Surgion not of hope bereuen, But giues him valiant speech of lifes resort, Saves, longer dayes his longer fame shall euen, And for the meanes of his recouerie, He ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... a school-girl's foolish dream! Instead of combating it, instead of reasoning with her, instead of trying to interest her in other things, he had even helped on her illusions. He had treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh. He had recognized her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance—it might be her very childish vanity. He had brought to a question of tender and pathetic ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... be taught some useful trade. Years passed; the child grew to manhood, and having received a good common-school education, and learned the shoemaker's trade, he married an estimable young white woman, and had a family of five or six children. He had not the slightest knowledge of the taint of African blood in his veins, and no one in the neighborhood knew that he was the son of an octoroon slave woman. He made a comfortable living for his family, was a good citizen, a member of the Methodist Church, and was much respected by all who knew him. In course of time his father, the Virginian ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... and Middleton's knowledge of that incident shall be the means of his salvation. That would be a good idea; in fact, I think it must be done so and no otherwise. It is not to be forgotten that there is a taint of insanity in Eldredge's blood, accounting for much that is wild and absurd, at the same time that it must be subtile, in his conduct; one of those perplexing mad people, whose lunacy you are continually mistaking for wickedness or vice versa. This shall be the priest's explanation and apology ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... publication, or wars undertaken on unjustifiable and really selfish pretexts, calculated to convince one, that even in Europe in the nineteenth century, the transaction of political affairs has been purged of the taint of immorality, however different, and I may even add, comparatively innocent, may be the ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... the association between prostitution and feeble-mindedness is intimate. Everywhere, there can be no doubt, the ranks of prostitution contain a considerable proportion of women who were, at the very outset, in some slight degree feeble-minded, mentally and morally a little blunted through some taint of inheritance.[34] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... disadvantage when its wearer drops wounded and unconscious on the open field. In a poor light the litter bearers might search within a few rods of him and never see him; but where the faulty eyesight fails the nose of the dog sniffs the human taint in the air, and the dog makes the work of rescue thorough and complete. At ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Magnus, and by day she starched and ironed and pressed and washed for the overdressed children and as she said, "tried to keep them somebody." Moreover, she would not let them play with the dirty children of the neighborhood, but such is the fear of social taint among women, that soon the other mothers called their children home when ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Church right here. I know I got for die some day. He keep me distance,[B] but when I look an see my flesh, I tenk de Lord for ebbery year what pass on my head. Taint my goodness, tis His goodness. Nothing but the pureness of heart will ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters always, but ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... country drives. Quite evidently she enjoyed Claire's society, quite evidently also she preferred to enjoy it when other visitors were not present. Claire was not offended, for she knew that there was no taint of snobbishness in this decision; she was just sorry, and, in a curious fashion, remorseful into the bargain. She did not argue out the point, but instinctively she felt that Janet, not herself, was ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... regard to Him as its 'chief end,' loses its noblest consecration, and is degraded from its loftiest beauty. The Altar sanctifies, and not only sanctifies but ennobles, the gift. That which has in it the taint of self-regard so pronouncedly and dominantly as that God is shut out, is like some vegetation down in low levels at the bottom of a vale, which never has the sun to shine upon it. But let it rise as some tree above the brushwood until its topmost ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... knew. They felt rather than understood what was happening. Belle's pleading was beginning to be effectual, and the old man was rising to the same heights of self- sacrifice which Dan had reached, when he slipped away from home with the taint of his friend's disgrace upon him in order ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and rub it all over with hickory ashes, which is an effectual remedy against the fly or skipper. When the weather is unusually warm at the time of salting your pork, more care is requisite to preserve it from taint. When it is cut up, if it seems warm, lay it on boards, or on the bare ground, till it is sufficiently cool for salting; examine the meat tubs or casks frequently, and if there is an appearance of mould, strew salt over; if the weather has been very warm ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... them short and thin; the pasterns long and sloping; her hoofs round, dark, shiny, and well set on. Her mane was a shade darker than her coat, fine and thin, as a thoroughbred's always is whose blood is without taint or cross. Her ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her neck rose from the withers to the head in perfect curvature, hard, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... thou hast taken the common clay, And thy hands be not free From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil The greater shame ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Southampton Green. There is no evidence that Richard had conspired for any purpose; the whole affair was apparently a mere pretext to be rid of him. In character, Richard seems to have been noble and honourable, with a slight taint of his father's indecision: there is no portrait of him known. The traces of Lollardism are very slight, but I think they may be fairly considered "proven;" and if this be the case, it fully accounts ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... And Patrick obeyed the voice of the angel; and early in the morning he found those men, and by his preaching he converted them unto the faith, and being converted, he baptized them in that fountain, and when baptized, he purified them from the leprous taint of either man. And this miracle when published abroad, was accounted a fair presage and a present sanction of the future city. And the angel, at the prayers of Patrick, removed far from thence an exceeding huge stone which lay in the wayside, and which could not be raised ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... dignified than selling goods for what can be got. Both were commercial transactions to be judged by the commercial standard. By setting a price in money on his service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, and renounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The sordid taint which this necessity imparted to the noblest and the highest sorts of service was bitterly resented by generous souls, but there was no evading it. There was no exemption, however transcendent the quality of one's service, from the necessity of haggling for ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... settled and burned unwaveringly. Here in London the nights seemed as stuffy as the days; there was no life or freshness, no movement of the air; it was as if the warm breath of the crowd rose upward and nothing less than a balloon would allow one to escape from its taint. But he noticed that even at this slight elevation he had got free from the noise of the traffic. It would continue—a crashing roar—for hours, and yet it was now scarcely perceptible. Listening ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... up the kitchen steps with baskets of potatoes—such poundings on the door—such golden wealth of melons as it dispenses. Though there may be a kind of gayety in this, yet I'll hazard that in the whole range of quadricycle life no vehicle is more free from any taint of riotous conduct. Mark how it keeps its Sabbath in the shed! Yet here was this sturdy Puritan tied by a rope to a motor-car and fairly bounding down the street. It was a worse breach than when Noah was drunk within his tent. Was it an instance of falling into bad company? It was Nym, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... mile-long man-stye, which seven centuries of fruitless silver-mining, and of the right (now deservedly lost) of 'sending a talker to the national palaver,' have neither cleansed nor civilized. Turn, turn thy head away, dear Claude, lest even at this distance some foul odour taint the summer airs, and complete the misfortune already presaged by that pale, sad face, sickening in the burning calm! For this great sun-roasted fire-brick of the Exmoor range is fairly burning up the breeze, and we have nothing but the tide ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... and set guards and send telegraph descriptions of him in all directions. 'Taint likely he can get clean away. He'll be a marked man wherever ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... I'se comin'," said a voice from behind the golden-rose bushes, and out stepped Aunt Lucy in a new turban, making a curtsey to me. "La, Marse Richard!" said she, "to think you'se growed to be a fine gemman! 'Taint but t'other day you was kissin' ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man and his sister; the former characterized by a diseased imagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous, and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature. The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, with fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... She could not find it in her heart as yet to forgive Diana's selfish conspiracy against her cousin's happiness. If Louise perished in this dreadful storm the proud Diana Von Taer could not escape the taint of murder. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... than I'm like you, and it has allers been a mystery to me why they should stay. But I s'pose they know their own bissiniss best. They're allers givin' to the poor, and they try to make the settlers more decent every way, but 'taint been o' ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... an old key,—"If I rest, I rust,"—would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with the slightest taint of idleness. Even the industrious might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of rust, and, ultimately, cannot do the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Although he was not only a friend to religious liberty, as we shall have occasion afterwards to remark, but always viewed with great sympathy the condition of the Roman Catholic portion of the Irish population, he shrank from the taint of the ultra-montane intrigue. Accompanying Lord Stanley, he became in due time a member of the great Conservative opposition, and, as he never did anything by halves, became one of the most earnest, as he certainly was one ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... might have been during slavery to maintain a strict discipline, they found it exceedingly difficult to do so. It seems impossible to elevate a body of slaves, remaining such, to honesty and purity. The reekings of slavery will almost inevitably taint the institutions of religion, and degrade the standard of piety. Accordingly the ministers of every denomination in Antigua, feel that in the abolition of slavery their greatest enemy has been vanquished, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... '83) "clumsy and shallow snobbery can do no harm." Like other things waxing obsolete it has served, I hasten to confess, a special purpose in the world of letters. It has lived through a generation of thirty years in the glorification of the mediocrities and in pandering to the impish taint of poor human nature, the ungenerous passions of those who abhor the novel, the original, the surprising, the startling, and who are only too glad to witness and to assist in the Procrustes' process of trimming and lengthening ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... on the defensive, 'your mother comes to me at dinner time, an' she says: 'I s'pose 'taint likely you'll see my Dick, Jacker.' I said,' No, Missus Haddon, 'taint, s'elp me.' Then she says, 'Well, if he should come to see you, will you give him this?' So I took it, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... the same pulpit he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the chapel from which to praise the Lord. So you see that there are some sheep who have a taint of goat hair in their wool still left—I won't say with you—out in the world. And speaking of that world, have you come back to say good-bye ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in a state of beastly intoxication, and for this reason, independently of her knowledge of his vile and heartless disposition, and infamous character, she detested him. After entering, he looked about him, and even with the taint light of the rush she could mark that his unnatural and revolting features were lit ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... as a white man who has no taint of Indian blood, I should be ashamed to own; to the judgment of the young Mohican, in matters which I should know better than he, but which I can now hardly believe to be true, though my own eyes ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Frona, you have always made a stand for frankness, and I can now advantage by it. It hurts me because of the honor in which I hold you, because I cannot bear to see taint approach you. Why, when I saw you and that woman together on the trail, I—you cannot understand what ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor. Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed of its rotation—a small sound of protest drowned by ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... stop here no longer, Fanny; 'taint no place for you, nohow. Jest crawl up to the tree, and keep behind it. Keep both eyes wide open tight, but don't let ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... beautiful was the autumn sunrise! After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... agency and the result, I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in many other cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects, by all that I had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial. The dreadful taint of scrofula, according to the belief of all Christendom, fled at the simple touch of a Stuart [11] sovereign: no miracle in the Bible, from Jordan or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or more astoundingly victorious. By my own experience, again, I knew that a ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... very feeling is unfamiliar to them. The gravest and most serious works in Chinese literature abound in lies; their histories lie; and their scientific works lie. Nothing in China seems to have escaped this taint. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cold. Its so cold that the tooth past rolls right offen your brush in the morning. The Captin has a cold in his nose. He says he wont take the men out in such bad wether as today. Taint nothin gainst him Mable but I hope he has a ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... the handiwork of a brilliant metrical artist and poet born.... A beautiful and passionate work; its beauty that of construction, language, imagery,—its passion, characteristic of the artistic nature, and, while intensely human, free from any taint of vulgar coarseness.... The poem is quite original, its manner Elizabethan.... Eric Mackay is a lyrist with a singing faculty and a novel metrical form such as few lyrists have at command. With the very striking poem ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... ceremony was soon over, and as the Separatists denied themselves the privilege of a religious service lest some taint of Papistry might lurk therein, Elder Brewster closed his magisterial office with a prayer in which Isaac and Rebecca were not forgotten, and about which hung a curious flavor of the Church of England service so familiar to the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to escape the taint of degrading Plautus to the status of a petty moralizer[29]. In particular, he lauds the Aul unreservedly as a chef d'oeuvre of character delineation and pronounces it immeasurably superior to MoliA"re's imitation, "L'Avare."[30] This whole critique, while interesting, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... towards those who are unfortunate enough to have the stigma of mental incompetency put upon them. Of course, an insane man is an insane man and while insane should be placed in an institution for treatment, but when that man comes out he should be as free from all taint as the man is who recovers from a contagious disease and again takes his place in society." In conclusion, I said, "From a scientific point of view there is a great field for research.... Cannot some of ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... in her praise that she did not exult in our taint and degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite idea that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness and slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... here! and see, where with her comes My serpent gliding in an angel's form, To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, Nor coy it for their pleasures. [He ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... recenseatur," and other passages); but he has speculations about Adam (for the most part developments of hints given in Irenaeus; see the index in Oehler's edition), and he has a new realistic idea as to a physical taint of sin propagated through procreation. Here we have the first beginning of the doctrine of original sin (de testim. 3: "per diabolum homo a primordio circumventus, ut praeceptum dei excederet, et propterea in mortem datus exinde totum genus de suo semine infectum suae ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... means].... From the act therefore of one defending himself a twofold effect may follow, one the preservation of his own life, the other the killing of the aggressor. Now such an act, in so far as the preservation of the doer's own life is intended, has no taint of evil about it, seeing that it is natural to everything to preserve itself in being as much as it can. Nevertheless, an act coming of a good intention may be rendered unlawful, if it be not in proportion to the end in view. And therefore, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... teleraro, mangxelaro. Tacit neesprimita, silenta. Taciturn silentema. Tack najleto. Tack najleti. Tackle (apparatus) ilaro. Tact delikateco. Tactics taktiko. Tadpole ranido. Taffeta tafto. Tail vosto. Tailor tajloro. Taint difekti. Take preni. Take away forpreni. Take away (by force) rabi. Take care! atentu! Take care of zorgi pri. Take care (of a child) varti. Take from depreni. Take notice of observi. Take off (undress) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... "the facts about this church of Santa Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these frescoes—now, unhappily, ruined by restoration—is untroubled by the snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more pathetic, ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... you happy man, your fields Will still be yours, and ample for your need! Though, with bare stones o'erspread, the pastures all Be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young By no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt Through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock. Happy old man, who 'mid familiar streams And hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade! Here, as of old, your neighbour's bordering hedge, That feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees, Shall ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... so, for as a matter of fact these lighter wines are most unfairly neglected. They simply require to be properly fined and carefully attended to. The casks in which they are shipped should be thoroughly cleansed and treated before being filled, in order to take out any taint of spirits they may contain; or any excess of tannin, which is always present in Dew wood. If these different matters be looked to they will improve to a wonderful extent on the voyage, and after being allowed a week or fortnight's ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Porphyry, in not less than thirty books, with its vast collection of arguments. He would have been among the master-builders of the Church, had not the profane lust of heretical curiosity incited him to strike out something new, to pollute withal his labours throughout with the taint of leprosy, so that his teaching was rather a temptation to the Church than ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... it was with the persuasion, that though outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and uncomfortable. The women seem determined to wear as few garments as possible, and to compensate for lack of number by brightness of coloring. In many a pretty face traces of gypsy blood may be seen. This vagabond taint gives an inexpressible charm to a face for which the Hungarian strain has already done much. The coal-black hair and wild, mutinous eyes set off to perfection the pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the delicate nostrils and beautifully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... our history. The answer is simple. He stands to-day as the preeminent champion and exponent of nationality. He said once, "there are no Alleghanies in my politics," and he spoke the exact truth. Mr. Webster was thoroughly national. There is no taint of sectionalism or narrow local prejudice about him. He towers up as an American, a citizen of the United States in the fullest sense of the word. He did not invent the Union, or discover the doctrine of nationality. But he found the great fact and the great principle ready to ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... revelled in,—dear are outrage and malice, and the excitement of turbulent passions, and the savage voices of frantic men, and the thirst of blood to those everlasting furies of a mob, under whatever name we know them, in whatever time they taint with their presence,—women ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "'Taint my fault," said one of the lads, sullenly. "Jim Jones there said his dog could lick my dog, and I said he couldn't—and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... my fate bravely, and when you find out who I am, "remember" the last word I spoke. My family were scattered and poor. Afterward my eldest son avenged my "murder," as he considered it, but three of my judges escaped, and found shelter in America. There was, however, a taint of falsehood in all of us, and my children's children were at last dispossessed of what had been ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... you or me. She, poor creature, offends herself, and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that make for such degradation. We are conniving with her to barter her birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than that of true love, and when we regard virtue as a ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... called the waiter and gave the order with a slight touch of imperiousness which was one of the few attributes that stamped him as a Spaniard. The feudal taint was still running ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... had appeared upon the scene. At the spot where the game had entered the water stood the black hound, sniffing the air for some taint of the lost scent. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing tale, or why hold you in delay, if ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... made Vesta reject this sympathy, precious to her parched breast despite the quadroon taint as the golden sand in the brooks of Africa, giving at once wealth and cooling. The slave girl's long white arms, scarcely less pale than ivory—for she had slipped in at the sign of sorrow, while making her simple toilet—drew Vesta into her lap and laid her ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... quite enough of judges:—such things are in their line of business. Romescos must needs turn the conversation. "Well, taking it how I can entertain ye to most anything, I'll give ye a story on the secrets of how I used to run off Ingin remnants of the old tribes. 'Taint but a few years ago, ye know, when ther was a lot of Ingin and white, mixed stuff-some called it beautiful-down in Beaufort district. It was temptin' though, I reckon, and made a feller feel just as if he was runnin' it off to sell, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... sailor after the first week," said the captain with a twinkle in his eye. He was very much wrinkled and weather-beaten, but jolly and good-humored. "And now, sissy, I'm glad you're safe with your folks, and I hope you'll grow up into a nice clever woman. 'Taint no use wishin' you good looks, for you're purty as a pink now—one of them rather palish kind. But you'll soon ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... all, nor its ethereal touch Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still. As some bright river, which has rolled along Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold, When poured at length into the dusky deep, Disdains to take at once its briny taint, Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left. But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge, And here the old man ceased—a winged train Of nymphs and genii bore him from our eyes. The fair illusion fled! and, as I waked, 'Twas clear that my rapt soul had roamed, the while, To that bright ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... felt the taint specially on his lips it might not be easy to tell. Perhaps it was because the angelic song was a challenge to join in the praise of God, but he felt that the lips of one like him were not worthy to join in their song. Perhaps—who can tell?—the besetting sin of his previous life may ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... August we cut him up. The night, however, was very foggy with heavy dew, which prevented the meat from drying. The miserably exhausted state of the animal had rendered the meat very flabby and moist, and it not only dried badly, but was liable to taint and to get fly-blown. ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and freckled face, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores, that taint the ambient air!" ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... said, "'Taint youster; 'tis. This here taown is Ridgeboro, Noow York, and so it'll stay, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... seven sacraments were generally recognized. Four of these marked critical stages in human life, from the cradle to the grave. Baptism cleansed the child from the taint of original sin and admitted him into the Christian community. Confirmation gave him full Church fellowship. Matrimony united husband and wife in holy bonds which might never be broken. Extreme Unction, the anointing with oil of one mortally ill, purified the soul and endowed it with strength ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... 'ain't been so long, but it's been awful long to me. 'Taint been more'n a year since they brought him home to me dead, and I been plum' no 'count ever since. This baby," she put the child in her arms on her lap and shook her knees in mechanical effort to still its cries, "this baby was born while its father ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... to the distant mill; the great racks for oat-cake, that swung at the top of the kitchen, had to be filled. And last of all came the pig-killing, when the second frost set in. For up in the north there is an idea that the ice stored in the first frost will melt, and the meat cured then taint; the first frost is good for nothing but to be thrown away, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air." ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... The hereditary taint due to the primeval barbarism of our race, and maintained by later influences, will have to be bred out of it before our descendants can rise to the position of free members of an intelligent society: and ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... thing yet left me. She's engaged to be married to a young man whom she loves—a young man who loves her. Am I bound to tell him she's a madman's child? Is there any chance of its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?" ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... cunning deception, which in the past had saved countless of his species from sudden and violent death. Now with teeth and paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his mate, that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling their nostrils—a wild world, lacking the taint of man-places. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... and time heats only in the heart. The world is a great place, Philippa, and there are corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride nowhere ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The Duke, however, told him at that audience, that the Bohemians entertained great expectations of him; and yet George, who on his mother's side was grand-son to Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, was anxious to have all taint of the hateful Bohemian heresy most carefully avoided. On this point Luther remarked to him that he knew well how to distinguish between the pipe and the piper, and was only sorry to see how accessible princes might be to the influence of foreign agitations. Leipzig altogether must have ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... The rascals that would do wrong to a widder couldn't prosper. 'Taint lucky. But they're foxy. ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,—a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,—that it suffers less than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith; but it is sadly maimed, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... open the breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious, tending to sour the meat and taint it ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... worse for her misadventure. Next day he drove her very carefully over to Pyecrafts, hoping to drug his uneasiness with the pretence of a grand passion and the praises of "The Silent Places," that beautiful work of art that was so free from any taint of application, and alas! he found Mrs. Harrowdean in an evil mood. He had been away from her for ten days—ten whole days. No doubt Edith had manoeuvred to keep him. She hadn't! Hadn't she? How was he, poor simple soul! to tell that she hadn't? That was ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... men. Simply to keep in power, and out of no love of mischief, the government or the party machine will have to insist upon dangers and national differences, to keep the voter to the poll by alarms, seeking ever to taint the possible nucleus of any competing organization with the scandal of external influence. The party press will play the watch-dog and allay all internal dissensions with its warning bay at some adjacent people, and the adjacent peoples, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... exile. Misfortune appeals not to woman's heart unalleviated. He threw himself on my protection; and where the feelings own no taint, their purity is not sullied,—even in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... laws, In doubtful times had fought their country's cause, When now of conquest and dominion sure, They sought alone to hold their fruits secure; When taught by these, Oppression hid the face, To leave Corruption stronger in her place, By silent spells to work the public fate, And taint the vitals of the passive state, Till healing Wisdom should avail no more, And Freedom loathe to tread the poison'd shore: 90 Then, like some guardian god that flies to save The weary pilgrim from an ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and all others who took passage on armed ships intermittently engaged in commerce raiding could not expect to be immune, for such vessels acquired a "hostile taint." This was Germany's contention; but the United States refused to agree to the German idea that, because a few British vessels might be guilty of wrongful use of armament, all British ships must consequently be ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... rose from the piano to a storm of applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her, her own eyes filled with tears. These people—most of them—had known and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all mental insanity, and that physical cause determines its kind of mania or melancholia, its duration, its chances of a perfect cure. But what that cause is in a given case is often very hard if not impossible to determine. Besides natural and inherited predispositions—some taint of derangement in the family, often betrayed by fits of epilepsy, hysterics, etc.—exciting causes are usually traceable. Every form of disease may bring on sympathetic affection of the brain when the circumstances for ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... shall enter the body of my preceptor's lady. I shall stay within her and yet not touch her person, like a drop of water on a lotus-leaf which lies on it and yet does not drench it at all. If I be free from the taint of passion, I cannot incur any fault by doing what I wish to do. As a traveller, in course of his sojourn, takes up his residence (for a while) in any empty mansion he finds, I shall, after the same manner, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and a master of oratory, he gave himself unselfishly to serve his country, sacrificing a legal practice worth L7000 a year, honestly administering the immense sums contributed, and spending his private means for his cause; with an undeniable taint of coarseness, violence, and scurrility in his nature, he was yet a man of independent and liberal mind, an opponent of rebellion, loyal to his sovereign, a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... which had blazed forth with such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful, smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a deadly taint from daily contact with corruption. The spirit of gambling, confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was undermining the foundations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... same age: he is of a handsome and robust form, with high and strong but smooth features, light-brown hair, large blue eyes,—not brilliant, but beaming with a clear and steady light, as if a soul looked through them that knew no taint of vice or meanness,—and a countenance all glorious with a truth and courage, modest gentleness, and manly self-reliance; and as he thus lingers on that lonely mountain-height, glorified as it were with the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... half a dozen whole cloves, a dozen whole alspice, a pod of red pepper, a few whole grains of black pepper, and if you like, a young onion or a stalk of celery. Personally I do not like either onion or celery—moreover they taint the fat one may save from the pot. Let the water boil hard for half a minute, no longer, then slack heat till it barely simmers. Keep it simmering, filling up the pot as the water in it boils away, until the ham is tender throughout. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... church-and-chapel-goers at home. Labour Members are in the pay of Germany and frequent infamous flats in the West-End. Liberal Cabinet Ministers—sometimes, more shame to them, of decent birth—wince consciously when reminded of the taint of their association with plebeian colleagues. These things, and many more of equal moment, I have learnt from Mr. STANLEY PORTAL HYATT, who in The Way of the Cardines (WERNER LAURIE) describes how Sir Gerald, of that famous family, captured, with reckless profusion of local ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... to rattle On them kittle-drums o' yourn,— 'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; Put in stiff, you fifer feller, Let folks see how spry you be,— Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore you ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... detected in him no taint of the patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid his arrears of knowledge with the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... strange voice of gold, roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of men. But above that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a hushed and dreamy flow of water over stones. It was hurrying to get by this horde of wild men, for it must bear the taint of gold and blood. Would it purge itself and clarify in the valleys below, on its way to the sea? There was in its murmur an imperishable and deathless note of nature, of time; and this was only a fleeting ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... trustworthy. We may expect to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to exclude dullness of view. He ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton |
