"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fright, nothing but rapture. She was in the broad light of the present, under the direct rays of a firmament of life and love. Another girl, Addie Hemingway, who was no older than Evelyn, but shrewd beyond her years, with a taint of coarseness, noticed her, and nudged the girl at her right. "Just look at ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... taint of "Jim Crow"-ism, must be obliterated; wiped out—will be. Railroads will be compelled to extend the same accommodations to white and colored passengers. The traveller; whatever his color, who pays the price for a ticket, must and shall ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... meant to be true, they were full of flattery. Why should this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas Finn and Lady Laura Kennedy had not seen each other for two years, and when they had ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... is trying to revive the impression of a scent he sniffed the air gently with his eyes shut, only to open them with an expression of surprise. Surely it was no imagination but the odour of Rose Jacque Minot, taint and exquisite, seemed to hang in the air. Thin waves of it growing and diminishing in intensity were wafted across his head almost as though directed from ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... to her beauty was added an adorable friendliness and confidence, free from the slightest taint of self-consciousness or the least blemish of coquetry. Intelligent, yet modest to the verge of shyness, eager yet reserved, warm hearted yet charmingly impersonal with him, he realized that she was finding, with him, only the happiness of speech ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... made in the Protestant-Papist way. Finding Anton Ulrich still continue Protestant, she wrote to him out of Spain:—"Why, O honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you promised? Ah, there must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!" Upon which the absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his religion; and is marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and Histories;—truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, restored ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... during all this period was so frail, and his mind, especially at certain times, was so feeble, that he was almost as helpless as a child. There was an hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which made his ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fish and reptiles, haunt the seas. It is held unwise to exterminate them, since they do their part in keeping down an immense variety of smaller creatures, noxious for one reason or another, and also in clearing the water from carrion and masses of seaweed which might otherwise taint the air of the sea-coasts, especially near the mouths of large tropical rivers. But these sea-monsters devour enormous quantities of fish, and the hunters appointed to deal with them are instructed to limit their numbers to the minimum required. Their average increase is to be destroyed each ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... say you's had more spurrience in dese hyer t'ings 'n I is, but dat ston certain'y did strike ma heart. But ef yo' say 'taint right why, pleas ma'am git a pair o' scissors an' prize it out, tho' I done brought de belt fer de sake ob dat buckle. Well, nemmine. I reckons I kin keep it, an' if I ever marhrys agin it sho will come ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... go 'long!" she protested. "'Taint no sech thing. I ain't got sich a long appetite as date. Fifteen miles! Lan'a massa! whot you take ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... mock sympathy, were as far from her as was the least taint of indelicacy; every word she uttered rang true, and her very phrases had that musical fall which only associates itself with beautiful and honest thought. She never exhibited gaiety, or a spirit of fun, but could raise a smile by an exquisite ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... "'Taint laik as if you wus goin' to be alone out theah," comforted Mansy Storm, who was busy putting away a little cake she had made with her own hands for Celia's lunch basket. "Youah husband ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... fine a point upon it, they're nasty. We are greater at raising cabbages than we are at sprouting cigar tobacco. Under these circumstances the free trader (he's a smoker, or if he isn't, his aunt or sister is) says we want Havana cigars to enter our lips without the taint ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... that those who wait upon the Great Kaan with his dishes and his drink are some of the great Barons. They have the mouth and nose muffled with fine napkins of silk and gold, so that no breath nor odour from their persons should taint the dish or the goblet presented to the Lord. And when the Emperor is going to drink, all the musical instruments, of which he has vast store of every kind, begin to play. And when he takes the cup all the Barons and the rest ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... tastes, may innocently direct reading and study to a certain extent. Even in these cases, however, we are bound to improve ourselves morally as well as intellectually, by seeking truth and rejecting falsehood, and by watching against the taint which inheres in almost all human productions. What avails intellectual without moral power? How little does it avail us to study the outward world, if its greatness inspire no reverence of its Author, if its beneficence awaken no kindred love ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... done When from Thee, centre-form, the veil did fall, And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal, The highest Life with noblest Form made one, To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun; The living germ in this strange planet-ball, Even as thy form in mind of striving saint. So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint, Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield, In every splendour shadowy revealed: But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint, Power falls ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... three under the shadow of some house, two or three more inside the house—all stricken down with fever. The air of some villages is said to have been loaded with the effluvia to such an extent that one riding along the street perceptibly discerned the taint in the atmosphere. The fever was deadly too, but evidently not so deadly in proportion as the autumn dysentery. Frequently, when talking to a boy, we would hear he was an orphan, and, on inquiry, he told that his father had died in autumn; frequently, in talking to a woman, we would hear that she ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... earthy kind, and, besides being frequently impregnated with strong whiffs of the second-hand wearing apparel exposed for sale in Duke's Place and Houndsditch, had a decided flavour of rats and mice, and a taint of mouldiness. Perhaps some doubts of its pure delight presented themselves to Mr Swiveller, as he gave vent to one or two short abrupt sniffs, and looked incredulously ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... properly speaking, has no more character than axes of stone, bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves any mark on it. The Solomon Islanders are expert merchants and "are fully the equal of white men in cheating."[365] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... lacked wholly the judicial quality, who were vainglorious and extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget their intellectual defects in the presence of their abounding physical and moral energy, their freedom from any taint of personal corruption, their whole-souled desire and effort for the public good. Were not such heroes, impossible as they would have been in any other civilized country, perfectly illuminative of your national ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... it might have been easier to part with it now, though, as she had proved, Jennie's affections were not based in any way upon material considerations. Her love of life and of personality were free from the taint of selfishness. She went about among these various rooms selecting this rug, that set of furniture, this and that ornament, wishing all the time with all her heart and soul that it need not be. Just to think, in a little while Lester would not come any more of an evening! She would not ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... indeed even things which have been stolen or violently possessed can be acquired by usucapion, as for instance after they have again come under the power of their real owner: for by this they are relieved from the taint which had attached to them, and so become ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... probably have contributed not in a trivial degree to the determination of burning their dead. The requisite materials for the purpose were at hand: neither calculation nor labor were required for putting the plan in execution; no instrument was necessary; and it prevented taint and the consequent infection. But a few remains of bones would be here after the operation, to cover which the ashes of the fire would be sufficient. The whole ceremony required only a few hours; and prejudices tended to render it reputable and sacred. Thus ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... jestingly, half earnestly. "Do not look so grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated so long with ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... of the room below, Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of Mulatto blood in ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... with those she bought for herself. She sedulously sent up remainders till they were expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of an ethical battleground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at his provisions was too sacrilegious to be entertained. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... couple of weeks later, and that in a "school" of pink rock bream numbering many hundreds some may have their poison highly developed, others in but a minor degree, whilst many may be absolutely free from the taint. In the year 1889 the crew of a large German ship anchored in one of the Marshall Islands caught some very large and handsome fish of the bream kind, and the resident natives pronounced them "good." Three or four days later some more were taken, and the ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... sudden, almost terrified, flash of fancy, knew to be lying, an almost insupportable blot upon all that was fair and seemly, in the stained and mouldered coffin. Yet there was a place for that difficult horror too in the scheme of things, though the thought seemed almost to taint the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stretched himself out in his chair, when he heard the waggon drive away a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of a somewhat grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the surface, a taint of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had first come out the change in her had been a shock to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting. Augustus could have Horace and Ovid; he could never have had ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... away. For the old story is known throughout the shore, and Rodolph proved, in his fight with you, the bad blood in his veins. It never does to cross the white blood with the red, for the treachery of the Indian will taint the ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... qualities, I need not decipher; only it rests for me to conclude in one word, that she is innocent. If then, fortune, who triumphs in a variety of miseries, hath presented some envious person (as minister of her intended stratagem) to taint Rosalynde with any surmise of treason, let him be brought to her face, and confirm his accusation by witnesses; which proved, let her die, and Alinda will execute the massacre. If none can avouch any confirmed ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... important, the commission found that in their daily operations, military installations were "generally free from the taint of racial discrimination."[20-79] It confirmed the general assessments of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Veterans Committee among others, pointing out that black and white servicemen not only worked side by side, but also ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the world, entered into the womb of the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of a new organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creative energy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when it passed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thus wonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost power of mankind. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... thought about it the more alarmed she became. For many months she had put the subject away, but it was too big to be slighted now. There was almost a taint of madness. Were all Helen's actions to be governed by a tiny mishap, such as may happen to any young man or woman? Can human nature be constructed on lines so insignificant? The blundering little encounter at Howards End was vital. It ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... once Military Governor of Algiers—and given him their confidence. And yet I could see why they should do so, for just the very reason that he took their confidence as a matter of course, knowing that his loyalty would always be above suspicion. He had a great capacity for loyalty. There was no taint in it of self-interest, nor of snobbishness. He believed, for instance, in the divine right of kings; and from what he let fall we could see that he had given the most remarkable devotion not only to every cause for which he had fought, but to the individual who ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... of a hospital are wanting; there is not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness; the stench is appalling; the fetid air can barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, save through the chinks in the walls and roofs; and, for all I can observe, these men die without the least effort being made to save them. There they lie, just as they were let gently down on the ground by the poor fellows, their comrades, who brought them ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... crime, the hereditary taint being transmuted in him into an instinctive appetite for blood, the young and fresh blood from the gashed throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in the street: a horrible malady against which he struggled, but which took possession ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... American Army to maintain the high ideals for which all of them have fought, to preserve the soldier comradeship and carry it over into civilian life as an element of broad helpfulness while keeping the record of the army free from the taint of selfish aims. It was also wisely intended to forestall by the creation of one big genuinely representative, nonpartisan and democratic body, the formation of numerous smaller organizations in various places by men intent on exploiting the soldier sentiment and the soldier vote for other ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes—war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even the suspicion of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for a season, the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... arises Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and back, Countenance ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... on the subject) by observing whether he most affects to pay his devoirs to you in public or in private. If the latter be the case, it is the most dangerous; because a man even of the most contracted understanding has always sense or instinct enough to feel that the slightest taint in the reputation of the woman who is, or who is to be, his wife, would affect his own private peace, or his honour in the eyes of the world. A husband who has in a first marriage been, as it is said, in constant fear both of matrimonial ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... breast, Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest. Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth, Gray-beard corruptor of our listening youth, To purge and skim away the filth of vice, That so refined it might the more entice, Then pour it on the morals of thy son To taint his heart, was worthy of ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... mind, 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
... trumpet blew; Thro' the long tormented air Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there What long-enduring hearts could do In that world-earthquake, Waterloo! Mighty seaman, tender and true, And pure as he from taint of craven guile, O savior of the silver-coasted isle, O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine, If love of country move thee there at all, Be glad because ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... a sleek-looking individual who might have been mistaken for a western "parson" had it not been for a certain sophisticated cynicism that was prominent about him, and which imparted a distasteful taint of his profession. "Give me a year of this and I'll open a joint in Frisco! I cleaned out a brace of bull-whackers in the Plaza last night—their first pay. Afterward I stung a couple of cattlemen for a hundred each. Look at ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... died!—and, trusting to your commendations, and his apparent honesty, I raised him to my favor, and gave him a post, which he has but now most basely betrayed. Fool, that I was, to think he could have served with such a master, and not bring with him the taint of treachery!" ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... him to submit to a heavy loss. He bore his misfortune with fortitude, and still had a competency ample for him, when there came a torrent of ill-fortune—the loss of his beloved wife, and the failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the blood which had been so prolific of genius. He suffered where he was strongest and weakest—in his love and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... surprising to find an accurate scholar like Tennyson guilty of the absurdity of representing Cleopatra as of gipsy complexion. The daughter of Ptolemy Aulates and a lady of Pontus, she was of Greek descent, and had no taint at all of African intermixtures. See Peacock's remarks in 'Gryll Grange', ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... used indiscriminately for haven't and hasn't. Taint is used for tisn't. Their use is indicative of an entire lack ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... one parent is consumptive and the other vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in most ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... in old age, 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 oft with gentle murmur ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... "'Taint," said Jack Penny slowly. "I don't believe in bunyips. If it was a bunyip beating his gin, she'd holloa out like hooray, and squeak the ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... was out in the kitchen. "Now you all go your ways," she began. "'Taint nothing to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... went to the equator, saw the impending change. He was weary of a Paris where everything had been painted, described, modelled, so he sailed for Tahiti, landing at Papeete. Even there he found the taint of European ideas, and after the funeral of King Pomare and an interlude of flirtation with an absinthe-drinking native princess, niece of the departed royalty (he made a masterly portrait of her), he fled to the interior and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... But if the taint of vice or guile arise Within the consecrated shrine, He flies With speed from out the sin-defiled cell; For, driven forth by guilt's black, surging tide, The offended Godhead may not there abide Where conscious sin ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the scenes of her life in which the wounded man had played his part. She remembered every look of the now closed eyes, and every expression of his well-loved features. She called to mind his words of hope, and the carefully-laid plans for his advancement. Nor was there any taint of his selfishness in her recollection of these things. Everything about him, to her, was good and true. She loved him with all the passionate intensity of one who had only just attained to perfect womanhood. He had ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... said that the German witnesses are imaginative and enthusiastic, and their confidence ought to be distrusted. That kind of enthusiasm is at least of a quiet sort, evidently the result of profound conviction and certainly free from any taint of worldly interest, and is by no means incompatible with the most perfect conscientiousness. If they are mistaken as to the identity of the plaintiff; if there be in truth two persons about the same age bearing a strong resemblance to the family ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... at the wedding. It was probable, and he did not want to see her. In spite of ten years' effort, he did not think he could yet look upon Tom St. Clair's wife with the proper calm indifference. At the best, it would taint his own memory of her; he would never again be able to think of her as Esme Graham but only ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... next the wood, the badger is quite harmless, and most useful to the fox hunter, for he cleans out the earths. Mr. E. Dunn, late master of the Old Berkshire, tells me that they are of great service in this way, as they dig and enlarge the earths, and so prevent the taint of mange clinging to the sides if a mangy fox has lain ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... arms to help the gods: And, ignorant of the fortunes of the sky, Taught by the thunderbolts alone, would know That Jupiter supreme still held the throne. Add that unnumbered nations join the fray: Nor shrinks the world so much from taint of crime That civil wars reluctant swords require. But grant that strangers shun thy destinies And only Romans fight — shall not the son Shrink ere he strike his father? on both sides Brothers forbid the weapon to be hurled? The world's end comes when other hands are armed ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of the road were rows and rows of tiny, peaked houses or coops. The coachman told them that here was where they breed the pheasants which are hunted. When the birds have reached a certain age, they are set free, and a gun is fired in their midst to give them a taint of the wild. John was much interested, in spite of the fact that he considered it "a mean trick." It really does not seem quite fair to take excellent, kindly care of any animal or bird, allow it to believe you are its friend, and then to ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... visit to Rome I had reminded myself of the Reverend Mother's invitation to call on her, and a sense of moral taint had prevented me, but now I determined to see her at least by going to Benediction at her Convent church the very ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... reserving any proper poles, or motion from the epicycle of my own brain. By this means I have no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors, of which at pre- sent, I hope I shall not injure truth to say, I have no taint or tincture. I must confess my greener studies have been polluted with two or three; not any begotten in the latter centuries, but old and obsolete, such as could never have been revived but by such extravagant and irregular heads ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... 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 ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... present year would prove the last, kept up the spirits of the merchants connected with these countries; but the inhabitants were driven to despair, or to a resignation which, arising from fanaticism, assumed the same dark hue. America had also received the taint; and, were it yellow fever or plague, the epidemic was gifted with a virulence before unfelt. The devastation was not confined to the towns, but spread throughout the country; the hunter died in the woods, the peasant in the corn-fields, and the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... ossified heart of the selfish man is closed against divine compassion. Since Jesus Christ forgot Himself in pitying men, and Himself 'took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses,' He must have been what none of us are—free from all taint of selfishness, and from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their leaders! Review them all, from FERNANDO WOOD down to the wretched SAULSBURY, including W. B. REED, in whose veins hereditary traitorous blood seems, with every descent, to have acquired a fresh taint—consider the character which has for years attached to most of them—and then reflect on what a party must be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that all my past life flashed before me, from the least forgotten venial fault of infancy to the worst passion of youth,— only they came to me clear and vivid, in retrograde order. The lies I told when I was a little boy, the wicked words I spoke, the cruel things I did, the first taint that polluted my mind, the faces of school-fellows whom I had irreparably injured, the stolen waters of manhood—all were dashed into my remorseful recollection; they started up like buried, menacing ghosts, without, or even against my will. I felt ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the whole edict or epistle of Majorian to the senate, (Novell. tit. iv. p. 34.) Yet the expression, regnum nostrum, bears some taint of the age, and does not mix kindly with the word respublica, which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... this degenerate Shirley "a low wretch, a mad assassin, and a wild beast." He was, as my story will show, all this. He was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle, whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... it down as low as five. I was struck with the quiet and self-possession with which each man delivered his opinion, as well as with the language used. The accent was uniformly provincial, that of Hubbard included, having a strong and unpleasant taint of the dialect of New England in it; and some of the expressions savoured a little of the stilts of the newspapers; but, on the whole, the language was sufficiently accurate and surprisingly good, considering the class ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... bloodless, as blameless thy cheek divine; But a stain on it stands of the life-blood offered for thine. What thanks shall we give that are mixed not and marred with dread For the price that has ransomed thine own with thine own child's head? For a taint there cleaves to the people redeemed with blood, [Str. 2. And a plague to the blood-red hand. The rain shall not cleanse it, the dew nor the sacred flood That blesses the glad live land. In the ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... died! He was driven to envy such a respectable bereavement, and one so perfectly free from any taint of misfortune that even his best friend or his best enemy would not have felt the slightest thrill of exultation. No one would have cared. He sought comfort in clinging to the contemplation of the only fact of life that the resolute efforts ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... which is promised to the God-fearing! Therein are rivers of water which taint not; and rivers of milk whose taste changeth not; and rivers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... chill wind from the hill Like a sea-breath; I shiver'd and a taint of ill Brought news of death. I blinkt my eyes as who should try To see what is to fear; The sun still shone high in the sky, But ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores that taint ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... you, dear Aged Saint, Whose eyeballs upward roll, I trust you have no worldly taint Upon your ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... things for them, both His own things and their things too, both their justification and their sanctification too. And there are many good but ill-instructed men among ourselves who have just this taint of that old heresy cleaving to them still—this taint, namely, that they are tempted to carry over the suretyship and substitutionary work of Christ into such regions, and to carry it to such lengths in those regions, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Transvaal Mr. Kruger has the reputation of being free from the taint of corruption from which so many of his colleagues suffer. Yet within the Republic and among his own people one of the gravest of the charges levelled against him is that by his example and connivance he has made himself responsible ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... The ministering angels, those who come in contact with the sublunary world,[68] now repair to their chambers to take their purification bath. They dive into a stream of fire and flame seven times, and three hundred and sixty-five times they examine themselves carefully, to make sure that no taint clings to their bodies.[69] Only then they feel privileged to mount the fiery ladder and join the angels of the seventh heaven, and surround the throne of God with Hashmal and all the holy Hayyot. Adorned with millions ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of all persons in whom there is an hereditary taint of feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, and the like ought, therefore, to be forbidden by law. But unless these defective classes were segregated in institutions, the only result of this might be to increase illegitimacy; therefore, any step in eradicating ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning some of the philosophic phases of the age. Had he escaped the upas taint of skepticism? An opportunity soon occurred to favor her wishes, for, chancing to allude to his visit to Rydal Mount, while in the lake region of England, the transition to a discussion of the metaphysical tone of the "Excursion" ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... younger son of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother—a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... man could do precisely as he pleased; where it was not accounted wrong or ill-balanced to claim the whole street for a half moment or so of a cloudless morning, and so to ease one's self of the pressure of the joy of living. To own this little world, to live free of touch or taint of control or guidance, to be brother to the mountains, cousin of the free sky—to live in Heart's Desire and be a man—ah! would that were possible for all of us to-day! Were it so, then assuredly we should exult and take unto ourselves ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days of James, the priests. From the palace which was the chief seat of this pestilence the taint had diffused itself through every office and through every rank in every office, and had every where produced feebleness and disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decay that, within eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire of Europe, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sinner whom she has reformed And the average feminine fortress is stormed. In rescuing men from abysses of sin She loses her head—and herself tumbles in. The mind of a woman was shaped for a saint, But deep in her heart lies the devil's own taint. With plans for salvation her busy brain teems, While her heart longs in secret to know how sin seems. And if with this question unanswered she dies, Temptation came not in the right sort of guise. There's my estimate, Reese, of the ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a stipend from the treasury; are judged only by their chief; and, however debased by fortune or character, still assert the proud preeminence of their birth. A family of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of their native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian race, and the ancient ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... from Brewing their own Drinks, I think, I have in some measure removed, and made it plainly appear how a Quantity of Malt Liquor may be Brewed in a little Room and in the hottest Weather, without the least Damage by Foxing or other Taint. ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... late-espoused Saint Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save; And such, as yet once more, I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... wagon. Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this fresh guy a little good—maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch—not a free street parade. ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... has to perpetuate any constitutional weakness or other hereditary taints; and he attempts to prove this by the argument that "if crosses act by virtue of being a cross, and not by virtue of removing an hereditary taint, then the greater the difference between the two animals crossed the more beneficial will that act be." He then shows that, the wider the difference the less is the benefit, and concludes that a cross, as such, has no ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... newspaper or book. They tell me that in Burmah live a happy people who love beauty, are always smiling and follow the Golden Rule far nearer than those who live by trade and are blest by civilization. Ah, that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day! The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease, death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs in exchange ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... property from such violence,—the commonwealth then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, a pestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off, or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back upon themselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, fester to gangrene, to death,—and instead of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... drinks which taint the breath or cause disagreeable eructations should be avoided by persons going into company. Onions emit so very disagreeable an odor that no truly polite person will eat them when liable to inflict their fumes upon others. Particular ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... "'Taint Hunt—it's Mr. Williston," she announced. "What's he want, I wonder? Look—he's wavin' at us! I guess he forgot some paper he wants you to take—he's bound to have it legal," she added with a sigh. "No, dear, let me be. ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... as a crime. This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe; the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always accepted by the people as the expression of an omnipotence derived directly from ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... penances called prajapatya the twice-born man must perform annually, to purify him from the unknown taint of illicit food; but he must do particular penance for such ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... ears of educated people nor uttered by their lips: it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman's eyes: it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England or America, could profess honest and absolute ignorance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... inclined to think that consumptions, so common in England, are, in part, owing to the great use of animal food. But the disease most common to this country is the scurvy. One finds a dash of it in almost every family, and in some the taint is very deep. A disease so general must have a general cause, and there is none so obvious as the great quantity of animal food which is devoured. As a proof that scurvy arises from this cause, we are in possession of no remedy for that ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a voice of crystalline purity that might have belonged to some little chorister chanting the Ave Maria. He would even try to assume a hoarse roughness of tone, seek to degrade and taint that exquisite freshness of childhood which made him resemble a bambino on the Madonna's knees. The fish-wives laughed at him till they cried; and he, encouraged, could scarcely say a couple of words without rapping out an oath. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of the most skilful of the faculty to pronounce, with any certainty, whether a person who has been under their care, in certain stages of this malady, is so effectually cured, as to leave no possibility of his being still capable of communicating the taint. I think I could mention some instances which justify my presuming to hazard this opinion. It is likewise well known, that amongst a number of men, there are, generally, to be found some so bashful as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... never are expressed or expressible—knew by a thousand little daily acts like these, the depth and tenderness of his friendship, his brotherly love for me. As yet, I had it all. And God, who knows how little else I had, will pardon, if in my unspeakable thankfulness lurked a taint of selfish joy in my sole possession of ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... are harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of chivalry. No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the wave,—the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she feels the taint in her veins,—the slow victory is begun. What mattered all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the serpent,—his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught and wholesome ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mountains, and has no connection with the outside world except through the daily stagecoaches. Its would-be leading men are old miners or refugees from the bushwhacking district whence they were driven by the civil war. The taint of slavery is yet upon them and the methods of border-ruffians are their hearts' delight. It is true that there are many good people among them, but they are often over-awed by the lawless crowd ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... "Yes. 'Taint likely I would, would I? Cap'n Jed was on hand, as usual, and he was full of questions, but he didn't get anything out of me. 'What did Colton say to Ros?' he says. 'How do I know what he said?' ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... denial. I am not prone to feel ashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I am ashamed of my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. To tell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness in my blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myself irresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry, and that of this afternoon ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... clothing belonging to his lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil influences. There we see already spiritual love groping for material objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a Dante, not every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same category belongs the idolatrous cult ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the Reformation. They met with severe critics in the merciless Inquisition, and sad was the fate of a luckless author who found himself opposed to the opinions of that dread tribunal. There was no appeal from its decisions, and if a taint of heresy, or of what it was pleased to call heresy, was detected in any book, the doom of its author was sealed, and the ingenuity of the age was well-nigh exhausted in devising methods for administering the largest amount of torture ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield |
