"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it must be remembered that it is an ascertained fact that the aborigines taboo a word on the death of any one bearing that word as a proper name. (See quotation under Nobbler, 1880.) If, therefore, after Cook's visit, some man called Kangaroo died, the whole tribe would expunge Kangaroo from its vocabulary. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... appeal to these non-studious ones was attributable to the fact that he was, in many ways, very eccentric both in manner and dress. Now, everyone who knows the average English boy at all, knows that if there is one thing he cannot stand it is eccentricity. To be eccentric is to be taboo. As regards the "correct" thing to wear, and the "correct" thing to do and how to do it, he is generally quite as particular as the average young woman over fashion. And anyone who offends in these respects has his name written upon the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... her to be transiently flustered by a lovely buck, would yield to that madness for an instant, or confess it to her dearest friend. Women know how little such purely superficial values are worth. The voice of their order, the first taboo of their freemasonry, is firmly against making a sentimental debauch of ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Shepherd,' and I want a landscape and sky, and how ugly lead lines look in a pale-blue sky! I get them like shapes of cloud, and still it cuts the sky up till it looks like 'random-rubble' masonry." Therefore large spaces of pale sky are "taboo," they will not do for glass, and you must modify your whole outlook, your whole composition, to suit what will do. If you must have sky, it must be like a Titian sky—deep blue, with well-defined masses of cloud—and you must throw to the winds resolutely all ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... little doubt that if the people had sufficient intelligence and moral strength to taboo tobacco, this comparatively senseless outgo would be largely devoted to supplying these and other necessities ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... of the members, "I would but the devil take it, how can a man go around asking for a job in a dress suit? And I'm so rotten big that none of my friends can loan me a suit. And my credit is gone with at least twelve different tailors. I'm sort o' taboo as a borrower. Barry, old top, if you will chase the blighter after another highball, I'll ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... me so swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous tribes; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding to the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... good; but all wives promise that kind of thing before marriage. And there is apt to come a day when the familiar bachelor friend falls under the domestic taboo, together with smoking in the drawing-room, brandy-and-soda, and other luxuries of the old, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... habit with all her badges of office. They were attended by the other Vestals, who went through traditional pacings, haltings and prayers. The Temple of Vesta was an enclosure from which all men were rigidly excluded. The only exceptions to this immemorial taboo were a few of the more important Pontiffs, and they might only enter on specified festal days, and then must be in their full regalia. Also, in general, the temple was closed against all women except the Vestals and their assistants. It was open, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... up while she was speaking, and the child ran away; for the little ones aped their elders in making Laura taboo. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... held it discourteous to mention money at table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a number of firms the executives have lunch together, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... heeded not these sounds; her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice, which was taboo. And she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek. Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings at life's candle; while the moths brushed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mate for relief, as in nagging, whining, crying, or grumbling, is taboo. If you are tired or irritable, you can rest or exercise for restoration, as in the days before marriage. To pour out troubles or act out annoyance without restraint before the mate is to wear out his or her spontaneity and dry up the source of refreshment you are trying ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Paddy gave his pig the best corner in his cabin—because "shure, he paid the rint"—I feel bound to take care of myself as a household animal of value, to say nothing of any other grounds. So, much as I should like to be with you all on the 3rd, I must defer to the taboo. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... urchins as they play marbles. And for the real noble a whole private dialect is set apart. The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo, a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of English ladies. Special words are set apart for his leg, his face, his hair, his belly, his eyelids, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... offenders of the most dangerous class are confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as a prison for dangerous Confederates; and here later ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... put its seniors in a flutter. The seniors, under question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never till now dreamt of the need of any. If they are wise, they will put away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer these things out, and perchance clear their own minds in ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... he said, looking him fairly in the eye, "belongs to the past, and is taboo. I won't hear a word about it. This is to-day. Get up, and we'll set about putting wrong right. You're a man again. Don't forget that. And I'm your friend. Don't forget ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... purpose. Flint is invariably selected, and for months the children keep bringing "lovely sharp flints," but there is much careful observation, observation which has a motive. "I would put a stone in a stick and chuck it at them" is followed by much experiment at fixing. String is of course taboo, but bass is allowed because it grows, also strips of skin. We very often get the suggestion "they might find a stone with a hole in it," which leads to renewed searching and to the endeavour to make holes. To make a hole in flint ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... quite right. It must cast out whoever menaces the unity of the group. For in this unity is its security, it is sacred, holy, 'taboo,' as the Polynesians say. And it cannot possibly investigate each particular case, whether the seceder is perhaps a faithful follower of Christ, a truly original spirit or simply an eccentric fool or weakling. That the seceder must himself prove ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... hosts. En route to the interior. Native flora and fauna. We arrive at the capital. A lecture on Filbertine architecture. A strange taboo. The serenade. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... sustained character, and the negroes have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... him. Her eyes suggested another topic—themselves. "Is that taboo as well!" she said, as Michael's ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... formula: for human nature overleaps all formulas. Whenever men have tried to rule regions of human activity and aspiration out of the common life of mankind, and to hedge them round as private or separate or sacred or by any other kind of taboo, human nature has always ended by breaking through the hedges and invading the retreat. Man is a social animal. If he retires to a monastery he finds he has carried problems of organization with him, as the promoters of this gathering would confess you have brought with you here. If he shuts himself ...
— Progress and History • Various
... degree. Mary Grant Carmichael met with some success through her operetta, "The Snow Queen," but like Miss Smyth gave the world a more important work in the shape of a mass. Ethel Harraden, sister of the novelist, had her opera, "The Taboo," brought out at the Trafalgar Square Theatre, London, with excellent results. She has composed an operetta, "His Last Chance," besides vocal, choral, and violin pieces. Harriet Maitland Young has completed several operettas, of which "An Artist's Proof" and the "Queen ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... and 268). Mr. Hartland gives there an ecumenical collection of parallels to the several incidents that go to make up our story—(1) The bride-capture of the Swan-Maiden, (2) the recognition of the bride, (3) the taboo against causeless blows, (4) doomed to be broken, and (5) disappearance of the Swan-Maiden, with (6) her return as Guardian Spirit to her descendants. In each case Mr. Hartland gives what he considers to be the most primitive form of the incident. With reference ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... guide-book. I read it. It was full of lies, so gross and palpable that I told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that the people were superstitious—it is false. They have no taboo about days; they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned psychical rubbish, no damned "folk-lore," ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... world?—It surely is. And if you understand your biz You'll taboo the worry worm, ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... repugnance for the modern woman, against whom he warns the prospective tutor in language which is as unmistakable as the Benham Wall. It pleased me to find at least one wise man who agreed with me in this particular. Until the age of twenty-one, woman was to be taboo for Jerry Benham, not only her substance, but her essence. Like the mention of hell to ears polite, she was forbidden at Horsham Manor. No woman was to be permitted to come upon the estate in any capacity. The gardeners, grooms, gamekeepers, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... N. prohibition, inhibition; veto, disallowance; interdict, interdiction; injunction, estoppel [Law]; embargo, ban, taboo, proscription; index expurgatorius [Lat.]; restriction &c (restraint) 751; hindrance &c 706; forbidden fruit; Maine law [U.S.]. V. prohibit, inhibit; forbid, put one's veto upon, disallow, enjoin, ban, outlaw, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in the first place. How else are we to explain that the Nipe, for all his tremendous technical knowledge, is nonetheless a member of a society that is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage of development?" ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... who could be lionized in drawing-rooms at home if he would "stand for it"! Anthony who, would he but accept the repentant overtures of that tyrannical old prince, his maternal grandfather, might inherit a fortune and a palace at Constantinople! Yet as Ahmed Antoun in his green turban, he was "taboo" at our ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... engine ready with steam up. Headquarters suddenly rolls off; and, after two or three days, it returns noiselessly, with its archives, its general staff, its restaurant, and its electric plant. The Grand Duke rules with an iron fist. Champagne and liquor is taboo throughout the war zone, and even the officers of the general staff get nothing except a little red wine. Woe to anyone who sins against this order, here or anywhere else at the front. The iron fist of the Grand Duke hits, if necessary, even the greatest, the most famous. At a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... arts of cunning or duplicity, what then? Then there were the high walls of custom and prejudice to surmount. Philip remembered the garden-party, and saw that they could never be surmounted. The Deemster who slapped the conventions in the face would suffer for it. He would be taboo to half the life of the island—in public an official, in private a recluse. An icy picture rose before his mind's eye of the woman who would be his wife in her relations with the ladies he had just left. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... seclusion from my kind that was so helpful to work during the day. I contrived to play with him and afterwards to talk with him. I found the one subject to avoid was Fairyland. On everything else he was open and amiable in a commonplace sort of way, but on that he had been worried—it was a manifest taboo. Only once in the room did I hear the slightest allusion to his experience in his presence, and that was by a cross-grained farm hand who was losing to him. Skelmersdale had run a break into double figures, which, by the Bignor standards, was uncommonly ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... country. But the emperor had a quarrel with his arrogant brother at St. Petersburgh, and he availed himself of the opportunity afforded by that brother's obstinacy to teach him a lesson from which he did not live to profit. Nicholas had cut the new emperor, and had caused him to be taboo'd by most of the sovereigns of Europe; and the Frenchman determined to cut his way to consideration. This he was enabled to do, with the aid of the English; and ever since the war's close he has held the place which became vacant on the death of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... more at sea. "And are there any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?" he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah or so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "is there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up my residence in ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... said quietly; "your congratulations are premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo for three years—at Mr. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... market, and Emile found life without being able to move out of the house almost more than a man born to the sea and the trail could bear. Small dogs in civilization are wont to fill this gap. But alas, "down North" small dogs are taboo—their imperious Eskimo congeners ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Daramulun only as Papang (Father). {85c} The uninitiated among the Kurnai do not know the sacred name, Mungan-ngaur. {85d} The Australian did not borrow this secrecy from Egypt. Everywhere a mystery is kept up about proper names. M. Foucart seems to think that what is practically universal, a taboo on names, can only have reached Greece by transplantation from Egypt. {86a} To the anthropologist it seems that scholars, in ignoring the universal ideas of the lower races, run the risk of venturing on theories at once ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... be. She had no anxiety about anybody asking direct questions of the duellists, for if duelling, for years past, had been a subject which no delicately-minded person alluded to purposely in Major Benjy's presence, how much more now after this critical morning would that subject be taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if closely questioned might have a different explanation, and it would be highly inconvenient to have two contradictory stories going about. But, as it was, nothing could be nicer: the whole ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... 'disown'); retire (as an active verb); Rev. (for 'the Rev.'); rôle (for 'part'); roughs; rowdies; secesh; sensation (for 'noteworthy event'); standpoint (for 'point of view'); start, in the sense of setting out; state (for 'say'); taboo; talent (for 'talents' or 'ability'); talented; tapis; the deceased; ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... a universal taboo in India against killing a snake. When a cobra is slain it is supposed that its mate always avenges its death (Crooke, "Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night studying how little I ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast. And to breakfast with whom but his near neighbours, the Lammles of Sackville Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman, Mr Fledgely. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgely, but the peaceable Twemlow reasons, If he IS my kinsman I didn't make him so, and to meet a man is not ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the mood of gloom is off him, he experiments at will, and often with consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even when his ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety; For your brain is on fire - the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... am a Pariah, I am unfit to live! In a savage country, to which my thoughts often wander, I would stumble over every taboo, and soon find myself in the oven. As it is, I stumble over everything, stools and lady's trains, and upset porcelain, and break all the odds and ends with which I fidget, and spill the salt, and then pour claret over it, and call on the right people at the wrong houses, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... attack. An Apache does not attack at night. Travis was not sure that any of them could break that old taboo and creep down upon the camp before ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... and the guest of today, who thinks to make a "hit" by pulling a live rabbit or a potted plant from the back of the mystified hostess or one of the butlers, is in reality only making a "fool" of himself if he only knew it. The same "taboo" also holds good as concerns feats of juggling and no hostess of today will, I am sure, ever issue a second invitation to a young man who has attempted to enliven her evening by balancing, on his nose, a knife, a radish, a plate of soup and a lighted candle. "Cleverness" is ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... who had followed us up from the beach were not permitted to enter the palisaded enclosure, which was strictly taboo to the common herd; our party therefore now consisted solely of those who had brought me up the river, four individuals who had joined us outside the gate—and whom I took to be officials of some sort—and my unworthy self; and, for my own part, I would very willingly have ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... look for a new fall of Jerusalem when one of their sex smokes a cigarette after dinner. Now, I do not smoke cigarettes after dinner, so I can speak freely. But, at the same time, I do not smuggle, and I do bathe on the beach without a machine—when I am in a land where there are no sharks and no taboo. If morally consumptive people were given a few years in the South Seas, where they could not get away from nature, there would be more strength and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... muttered McGuffey, who always drew the colour line, "I'm glad to hear that. But you ain't the only thing that's taboo around this packet. You can jest check that war club with the first mate, pendin' our better acquaintance. Hand it over, you black beggar, or I'll hit you a swat in the ear that'll hurt all your relations. And hereafter, Scraggsy, just keep your nigger friends to yourself. I ain't waxin' effusive ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Book and similar strange exotics of the first period withered and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the word Sex was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly the sex note—(as I will call it for want of a better word)—disappeared from the press. Psychology was pronounced 'off,' and plots were the order of the day. Many names well-known ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... taboo are that even very little children are often made unhappy and anxious, sometimes for days, if they know there is sickness at home, while in the second place boxes are so often delayed that they become ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... professional rivals, Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo between ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... sue for a reestablishment of the old relations. On all other topics than his scientific work their interests were as mutual as formerly, but by what seemed a manner of tacit agreement this subject was taboo. And so it was that they came to Singapore without the girl having the slightest conception of ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the older men, it was formerly necessary, following the death of an adult, for the men to put on white head-bands and go out on a head-hunt. Until their return it was impossible to hold the ceremony which released the relatives from the taboo. [97] During the first two days that the body is in the house, the friends and relatives gather to do honor to the dead and to partake of the food and drink, which are always freely given at such a time; but there is neither ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... condition was reversed. It seemed as if everything his father had desired him to do was interdicted in Malcolm Lightener's vast organization; everything that had been taboo before was required of him now. He was asked to think; he was taught to make his individuality felt; he was encouraged to suggest and to exercise his intelligence independently. There were actually suggestion boxes in ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... pint of champagne and a quart of mineral water (both taboo) at his elbow. In a tall glass the rind of a Syrian orange was arranged in spiral form. The wine bubbled and seethed; and the exquisite bouquet ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore be taboo on Rodney's account, was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... house opposite the national emblem of the American Republic is hanging like an apron. Next door to it a man is decorating his windowsills with fairy lamps, and from his demeanour he might be devising a taboo against evil. I see no other sign that the new and better place of our planet was being acknowledged. The street is as the milkman and the postman have always known it on ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... for a book like this to command the attention of medical men, since now an awakened public demands from them, as the conservers of life and the directors of physiological living, explicit directions in everything pertaining to the physician's calling, not omitting the intimate, intricate, long taboo and disdained details of sex ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... But the pinchbeck sobriety of later times was unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the recoil ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Heaven" once in ten years. That implied a right to trade, so that the Russians, like other envoys, in Chinese phrase "came lean and went away fat." But they were not allowed to leave the beaten track: they were merchants, not travellers. Not till the removal of the taboo within the last half-century have these outlying dependencies been explored by men like Richthofen and Sven Hedin. Formerly the makers of maps garnished those ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... fairly striking out from time to time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I'll do ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... to its people, than in wild open countries, in which the popular mind and affections are left free to embrace the soil, but whose institutions are partial and defective. Were our beloved Monarch to regard such of the gentlemen of her court as taboo their Glen Tilts, and shut up the passes of the Grampians, as a sort of disloyal Destructives of a peculiar type, who make it their vocation to divest her people of their patriotism, and who virtually teach them that a country no longer theirs is not worth the fighting for, it might be ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... to regard the 'taboo,'" said Browne, "as an arbitrary and oppressive heathen custom. But how ignorant and prejudiced we sometimes are in regard to foreign institutions! We must be very careful when we get there about introducing rash innovations upon the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... back just after her lover's wedding. He returns to her. Now, as a rule, in popular tales, the lover's fickleness is explained by a spell or by a breach of a taboo. The old true love has great difficulty in getting access to him, and in waking him from a ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the pronoun I should not be used, nor such circumlocutions as the writer, the reporter, or the correspondent. In a signed story, however, the pronoun I is used somewhat freely, while such stilted phrases as the scribe, your humble servant, etc., are absolutely taboo. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... its notes, or saw one appearing as the soul of the dead like the lover in the ballad of "The Bloody Gardener". They refrained also from killing the pigeon except sacrificially, and suffered agonies on a deathbed which contained pigeon feathers, the "taboo" ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the man, The child of evolution, flings aside His swaddling-bands, the morals of the tribe, He, following his own instincts as his God, Will enter on the larger golden age; No pleasure then taboo'd: for when the tide Of full democracy has overwhelm'd This Old world, from that flood will rise the New, Like the Love-goddess, with no bridal veil, Ring, trinket of the Church, but naked ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of information, as far as she could, on the crops and animals. The big things, the size of rhinoceroses, are draft animals and nothing else; they're not eaten," Dorver said. "I don't know whether the meat isn't good, or is taboo, or they are too valuable to eat. They eat all the other three species, and milk two of them. I have an idea they grind their grain in big stone mortars ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... is finished, and the seed sown, it is tabooed, that, is rendered sacred, by men appointed for that service, and it is death to trample over or disturb any part of this consecrated ground. The wisdom and utility of this regulation must be obvious to every one. But, however useful this taboo system is to the natives, it is a great inconvenience to a stranger who is rambling over the country, for if he does not use the greatest caution, and procure a guide, he may get himself into a serious dilemma before his rambles be over, which had nearly been the case ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... has often occupied his thoughts, and that his speculations have led him to conclusions which are, on the whole, true, although perhaps incorrect in matters of detail. Most children, unable to ask their mother or father direct questions upon matters which they feel instinctively are taboo, have pieced together, from their reading and observation, a faulty theory of sexual life. The pursuit of such knowledge, in secret, is not a healthy occupation for the child. His parents' silence has given him the feeling that the unexplored ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... convention, of observance, of taboo, of folkways, ends. And into the brain of all living beings will be born the perfect comprehension of their own ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... thing I am going to talk to you about that really is a bigger thing than it seems—and that is gum—chewing gum. If you had had stage experience you would know that gum is taboo in the theatre, and the reason for this is not only that to chew in sight of an audience would be an insult and result in immediate dismissal, but also for this very important reason, that a cud of gum if dropped on the stage would ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... islands in 1821, and are reported to have met with considerable success. The leading island is that which is called Tongataboo, or the 'consecrated island.' The name is properly two words 'Tonga Taboo,' signifying 'Sacred Island,' the reason of which appellative will appear, when I tell you that the priest of this island, whose name was Diatonga, was reverenced and resorted to by all the surrounding islands. Earthquakes are very frequent here; but the islands ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... in the art of disputation, or hoopapa, lives in Waiakea, Hilo, Hawaii. In the days of Pueonuiokona, king of Kauai, his father, Halepaki, has been killed in a riddling contest with Kalanialiiloa, the taboo chief of Kauai, whose house is almost surrounded by a fence of human bones from the victims he has defeated in this art. Kaipalaoa's mother teaches him all she knows, then his aunt, Kalenaihaleauau, wife of Kukuipahu, trains him until he is an expert. He meets Kalanialiiloa, riddles ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... this preliminary business is nauseating, and in real sporting circles it is taboo as a topic of conversation. No wonder The Times devoted a leading article to the matter the other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... ending of the period of taboo the workers go to the fields and, in the center of each, place a tambara[21] fitted with a white dish containing betel nut. This is an offering to Eugpamolak Manobo, who is besought to drive from the field any tigbanawa or tagamaling[22] who may live there, ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... made the fool a duke, in hope With Heaven's taboo to palter; Then told a priest, who told the Pope, Who damned ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the subject had been taboo. Even after seven years of intimate relations, Bat was still mystified on the subject, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the still-room—drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... world Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse. Effeminising of the male. We were Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain. All we have done, or wise, or otherwise, Traced to the root, was done for love of you. Let us taboo all vain comparisons, And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand, Companions, mates, and comrades evermore; Two parts of one divinely ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Missouri. The Federal Children's Bureau, Publications 42 and 77. Report of the Committee on Status and Protection of Illegitimate Children of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1921. Normal Life, Chapter V, The Home, by Edward T. Devine. Taboo and Genetics, by Knight, Peters, and Blanchard. A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part IV, Chapter, The Family, by ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... to a sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... despicable bulletin of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent TIMES article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still TABOO; the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article. 'Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day, with a bad headache, and the mail going out. However, it must have ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interest and variety, what could destroy and taboo both more effectually than the rigid and rigorous demands of a formal set of examinations prepared, as a rule, by pedantic specialists who know practically nothing of the fundamental problems and needs of ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... had discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins of the Humans. These, ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... quotation from a book he had read once. A member of some tribal-taboo culture—African or South Pacific, he forgot which—had been treated at a missionary hospital for something or other ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... him out of the corner of my eye. I wondered what was passing through his mind. The subject of my relations with papa was one which, without saying anything at all about it, we had consented to taboo. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin. But we see no race on its way to becoming ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... found no old-time acquaintances among those who were bound for the suburbs. The first person to recognize him was the station agent at Bransford and his greeting was casual as he trundled the truck of empty milk cans to the far end of the platform. "Maybe these London tweeds are taboo in this central zone," he grumbled as he made his way up the shaded street to the ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... of misery and ignorance covered over and clamped down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible superstition of sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor's office trembling with excitement over this situation. Oh, why had not some one warned him in time? Why didn't the doctors and the teachers lift up their voices and tell young men about these ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... he finally said. "But don't snap my neck for it. I'm gambling that your civilized mind can control your reflexes. Because I have to talk about things that are strictly taboo on Pyrrus. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... with some fervour. "Oh, does that shock you? I forgot you were a parson's daughter. Well, it may be your father is right after all. Anyway, I shan't quarrel with him so long as he doesn't taboo me too." ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the taboo touched David that Dick was resentful, and then he was inclined to question the wisdom of his return. It hurt him, for instance, to see David give up his church, and reading morning prayer alone at home on Sunday mornings, and to see his grim silence when ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... remembering Anscombe's story I reflected to myself that our venerable host was an excellent liar. Or more probably he meant to convey that he wished the subject of his youthful reminiscences to be taboo. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the city; she knew that the sound of a voice speaking English at a neighboring table was enough to cause her father to finish his meal in a hurry and leave the restaurant. They never went to the British Church, and even such cosmopolitan spots as the aquarium or the museum were equally taboo. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... go cooking too extravagantly," said Mr Meldrum. "If I see you wasting anything, I'll taboo ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... and wonderful thing. The further down we go in the scale of life, whether animal or vegetable, the more do we perceive the importance of the evolution of sex. The correctly formed adjective from this word is sexual, but the term is practically taboo with Mrs. Grundy. Only with caution and anxiety, indeed, may one venture before a lay audience to use Darwin's phrase, "sexual selection." The fact is utterly absurd, but there it is. One of the devices for avoiding its consequences is the use of sex itself as ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... indeed known moments of perplexity, moments during which she had racked her brain for a suitable remark, a new idea to interest him; for talk is difficult between new acquaintances when such matters as politics, literature and current events are taboo, and personalities are to be avoided; but since her mental attitude towards him had changed and love had taken possession of her, this ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... with dread. Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews—no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... monopolizes the bay, we less gifted mortals must even twine myrtle leaves, or else humbly bow, bare of chaplets. But may I ask why you so sternly taboo that social world which you are so pre-eminently fitted to grace and adorn? When your worshippers are wellnigh frenzied with delight, watching you beyond the footlights, you cruelly withdraw behind the impenetrable curtain of seclusion; and only at ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any more ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... his face.' He 'remains with his wife only till daybreak'—like Cupid—and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a} ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... said Aurelle, "that his taboo is still effective. On the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the interpreter on duty? Well, there's a seedy-looking chap over there, who ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... hour of the meal, the conversation was of the most trivial nature, and was to Barry supremely uninteresting. "Shop talk" was strictly taboo, and also all reference to the war. The thin stream of conversation that trickled from lip to lip ran the gamut of sport, spiced somewhat highly with society scandal which, even in that little city, appeared ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the Chink himself realizes the commercial value of the taboo, the bizarre and the unclean. Nightly the rubber-neck car swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and faro game, with a farewell ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... But there was another and more extensive class of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic taboo, or tapui (tapooe), as they call it. Of this there was a great variety, and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... her in the office when he appeared the next morning, with her harness over her head. It was the sign in a way that she was strictly business and all personal confidences were taboo, but Rimrock did not take the hint. It annoyed him, some way, that drum over her ear and the transmitter hung on her breast, for when he had seen her the evening before all these things had been ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... owing to the rigorous climate, and they make it harder by their superstitions, for diseases are supposed to be cured by charms and incantations of the shaman or priest; and everything in the way of hunting, fishing, cooking, or of clothing themselves must be done in a prescribed way or it is "taboo" or "hoodoo" as the negroes say. When you read "The Baby Eskimo" you will see just a tiny bit of the hardships, but I should not like to tell you how much more terrible a time he might have had, if he had happened to ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... You have heard always how he was the lover of the Princess Naomi. He was a true lover. He loved but the once. After her death they said he was eccentric. He was. He was the one lover, once and always. Remember that taboo inner room of his at Kilohana that we entered only after his death and found it his shrine to her. 'Dear Bella,' it was all he ever said to me, but I ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... to run risks in the defence of London, he, K., was not, and as he had already explained, big demands would make his position difficult with France; difficult everywhere; and might end by putting him (K.) in the cart. Besika Bay and Alexandretta were, therefore, taboo—not to be touched! Even after we force the Narrows no troops are to be landed along the Asian coastline. Nor are we to garrison any part of the Gallipoli Peninsula excepting only the Bulair Lines which had best be permanently held, K. thinks, by ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... creeds come in. He knew soldiers who held a lighted stub in one hand while they rolled a cigarette with the other. He knew Red Cross saints who could puff a forbidden cigarette like a prayer. He wondered how he or any one had ever made such a fierce taboo of a wisp of aromatic leaves kindled in a tiny parcel. Such strange things people choose for their tests of virtue—tests that have nothing whatever to do with the case, whether savage or ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... say, "he is a man like us, yet in his nature and appearance godlike. And he was the first-born of us; he was greatly beloved by our parents; to him was given superhuman power—ka mana—which we have not.... Only his taboo rank remains, Therefore fear not; when he comes you will see that he is only a man like us." It is such a character, born of godlike ancestors and inheriting through the favor of this god, or some member of his family group, godlike power or mana, generally in some particular ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... TABOO or TABU, a solemn prohibition or interdict among the Polynesians under which a particular person or thing is pronounced inviolable, and so sacred, the violation of which entails malediction at the hands ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 12th, the ships were put under a taboo, by the chiefs: a solemnity, it seems, that was requisite to be observed, before Kariopoo, the king, paid his first visit to Captain Cook, after his return. He waited upon him the same day, on board the Resolution, attended by a large train, some of which bore the presents designed ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his wife. That was the turning point. He had got so far that his own fast set had thrown him over. There is a world of difference, you know, between a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but they taboo a drunkard. He had become a slave to it—hopeless and helpless. Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him though she might have had the pick of a dozen, and, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... respect to the doctrinal differences within the Lutheran Church, the Visitor, March 15, 1917, remarked: "Still, husband and wife may live together in peace and happiness although they do not agree on every point. It may even be understood that some subjects are altogether taboo." This, evidently, is the spirit of indifferentism, inherited from the General Synod, with whom, in accordance with the law of spiritual affinity, the United Synod exchanged fraternal delegates, and is now organically united in the United Lutheran ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... neglect of those social "taboos" or laws of behaviour which we call modesty, decency, and propriety. They either cause indignation and resentment in the onlooker at the neglect of respect for the taboo, or, on the contrary, the natural man, long oppressed by pomposity or by the fetters of propriety imposed by society, suddenly feels a joyous sense of escape from his bonds, and bursts into laughter—the laughter of a return to vitality and nature—which is enormously encouraged and developed into ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... transcontinental powers of Central America, offering liberal compensation for the control of all possible canal routes. These negotiations have been long drawn out and are only lately coming to fruition. They have served, however, to taboo all projects by other nations, and one of these treaties negotiated with Colombia, but not yet ratified, holds out the prospect of winning back her friendship which was so seriously alienated by the recognition of the republic of Panama by the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... years no friendly foot had come to this threshold, no one had directed a friendly thought to the woman who lived here, nor to the child; yet woman and child had lived on happily in spite of this, and now to Pearl, on whom the taboo of the neighborhood had also fallen, there came the peace of mind which could set quietly at defiance the opinion of the little world which ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... disgusting antiquarian of a past generation, with his matted locks and stained clothing, could but be ill at ease in such surroundings, and could claim no brotherhood with the majority of the present-day archaeologists. Cobwebs are now taboo; and the misguided old man who dwelt amongst them is seldom to be found outside of caricature, save in the more remote corners ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Anna and myself had a mighty good time in Vienna (I forgot to say that Emperor Francis Joseph agreed with me that Danilo and Alexander were quite impossible and that henceforth Balkan marriages should be taboo). ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... native songs that had been forbidden in the school, and, taking their shawls and Sunday dresses from their trunks, they arrayed themselves in all their finery and began dancing an old heathen dance which is taboo among the better class of natives and only practised in secret by the more degraded class of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... to cultivate taste in words, than by constantly reading the best English. None of the words and expressions which are taboo in good society will be found in books of proved literary standing. But it must not be forgotten that there can be a vast difference between literary standing and popularity, and that many of the "best sellers" have ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... here observed the taboo system. If applied to places, they may not be entered or approached; if to persons, they may not be touched, or may not feed themselves; if to things, they may not be touched. The system, however, did not appear to be so rigidly ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... which is not the weaker. But the subject is what you English call 'taboo.' It is treading on delicate ground to talk politics in ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... bit," she answered lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour the sea by such a discussion in its ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... toward the distant flame, and waved his hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava. He has ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Nue-chens, and henceforth known in history as the "Golden Dynasty," in 1035 changed the word chen for chih, and were called Nue-chih Tartars. They did this because at that date the word chen was part of the personal name of the reigning Kitan Emperor, and therefore taboo. The necessity for such change would of course cease with their emancipation from Kitan rule, and the old name would be revived; it will accordingly be continued ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... Church and society view Culhane, so they view all life outside their own immediate circles. Culhane is in fact a conspicuous figure among the semi-taboo. He has been referred to in many an argument and platform and pulpit and in the press as a type of man whose influence is supposed to be vitiating. Now a minister enters the sanitarium, broken down by his habits of life, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... rarely employed the human body as a motif. Tiahuanaco is pre-Inca, yet even here the images are clothed. They were not represented as clothed in order to make easier the work of the sculptor. His carving shows he had great skill, was observant, and had true artistic feeling. Apparently the taboo against "nakedness" was too ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of delights ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... once to shake his head and mutter under his breath, "By George, I wish I had Fenchurch or von Gottschalk here. They're a shade better than I am on intercultural contracts, especially taboo-breakings ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... he was at heart democratic, and heard little of Aladdin that was not to Aladdin's credit, derigorized the taboo which he had once placed on Aladdin's and Margaret's friendship, and allowed the young man to come occasionally to the house, and occasionally loaned him books. Margaret was really at the bottom of this, but she stayed comfortably at the bottom, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... practice. But in theory it is admitted that an adult person in pursuit of knowledge must not be refused it on the ground that he would be better or happier without it. Parents and priests may forbid knowledge to those who accept their authority; and social taboo may be made effective by acts of legal persecution under cover of repressing blasphemy, obscenity, and sedition; but no government now openly forbids its subjects to pursue knowledge on the ground that knowledge is in itself a bad thing, or that it is possible ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... upon them that there are courts of justice for the settlement of controversies. Law and order have become stock phrases, dinned into their ears at every turn. The man who would settle his difficulty by trying the physical metal of his adversary is of the past. By the new order he is taboo as a savage. Individual self-restraint rings out in our vocabulary as nationally descriptive. The babe at the mother's knee learns first the virtue of it; the child at school is tutored to it soundly; the man in life is lectured with it ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... into the war. Although the Osage chieftain was an American (who could claim such proud estate if Totantora could not?), the show by which he was employed had gone direct to Germany from England, and anything English had, from the first, been taboo in Germany. Now, of course, the Indian girl had no idea as to ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... least, not for some time. The beard would be gone, to be sure; but there'd be all the rest to tattle—eyes, voice, size, manner, walk—everything; and smoked glasses couldn't cover all that, you know. Besides, glasses would be taboo, anyway. They'd only result in making me look more like John Smith than ever. John Smith, you remember, wore smoked glasses for some time to hide Mr. Stanley G. Fulton from the ubiquitous reporter. No, Mr. Stanley G. Fulton can't come to Hillerton. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... life" in the desert. "The saguaro is a monstrosity in fact as well as in appearance,—a product of miscegenation between plant and animal, probably depending for its form of life history, if not for its very existence, on its commensals."[31] The Seri protect pelicans from themselves by a partial taboo, which is not understood. It seems that they could not respect a breeding time, or establish a closed season, yet they have such an appetite for the birds and their eggs that they would speedily exterminate them if there ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... worlds" is not l'homme de revolution, and he suffices for the small "spiritual wants" of his flock. He has charge of the "Kizila," the "Chigella" of Merolla and the "Quistilla" of James Barbot—Anglice putting things in fetish, which corresponds with the Tahitian tapu or taboo. The African idea is, that he who touches the article, for instance, gold on the eastern coast of Guinea, will inevitably come to grief. When "fetish is taken off," as by the seller of palm wine who tastes it in presence ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... The necessity of inculcating Communism produces a hot-house condition, where every breath of fresh air must be excluded: people are to be taught to think in a certain way, and all free intelligence becomes taboo. The country comes to resemble an immensely magnified Jesuit College. Every kind of liberty is banned as being "bourgeois"; but it remains a fact that intelligence languishes where ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... was well managed; we were wholesomely fed; but there had grown up a strange kind of taboo about many of the things we were supposed to eat. I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed. The theory was that one must just eat enough to sustain life. There ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... enable him to superintend and protect the waterers and other working parties that were to be on shore. The spot chosen was immediately marked off with wands by the friendly native priests, who thus consecrated the ground, or placed it under "taboo"—a sort of religious interdiction, which effectually protected it from the intrusion of the natives—for none ever ventured, during their stay, to enter within the tabooed space ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... root and branch, the evil growth of man's supremacy. I saw that the honorableness of marriage, the disgrace of free union, were just so many ignoble masculine devices to keep up man's lordship; vile results of his determination to taboo to himself beforehand and monopolize for life some particular woman. I know all that; I acknowledge all that. I see as plainly as you do that sooner or later there must come a revolution. But, Herminia, the women who devote themselves to carrying out that revolution, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... another omit his lunch because water had been spilled upon the cloth, and still another leave the dining-car, with the announcement that he would forego his meal because informed by the conductor that men's shirt waists without coats were taboo. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... me he most deplored in the social system of his country was the power of the police and of the statistician by whom the policeman was guided. This he ascribed to the growth of great towns, to civic cowardice, and to a new taboo laid upon uniformed and labelled public authorities, who are now regarded as sacred, ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... always finish with the phrase, "And the Lord will repay you many fold." In other words, sacrifice part of your worldly goods to the idol, and he will repay with high interest. He will give in return long life and much riches. The savage was afraid to utter the real name of his god, it was taboo. The modern says, "Take not the name of the Lord in vain." Even today, the followers of Moses consider it taboo to utter the name ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... from its inflamed pocket of flesh. I felt as relieved and triumphant as an obstetrician after a hard case, and meekly handed over to Dinkie anything his Royal Highness desired, even to his fifth cookie and the entire contents of my sewing-basket, which under ordinary circumstances is strictly taboo. But once the ear-passage was clear the pain went away, and Dinkie, at the end of a couple of hours, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... appearance of composure but in truth she was badly shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's solvency, was terrifying. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The "taboo," or "tapu," prevails also in many of the South Sea Islands, where it may be considered as the substitute for law; although its authority, in reality, rests on what we should rather call religious considerations, inasmuch as it appears to be obeyed entirely ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... island, they steered for Amsterdam or Tonga Taboo. The natives welcomed them with white flags. When Cook landed, their chief Attago conducted him over part of the country; and so fair was its aspect, that he could fancy himself transported into the most fertile plains of Europe; not a spot of waste ground was to be seen. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the patent ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things—more or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function—as the things which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all there is to say concerning this topic, apart from furnishing ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... restless and rather disturbing evening. It would start from the reading desk at which he stood and fall to the points of that vast waistcoat which inspired the description of him as "a fellow of infinite vest." It would wander aimlessly a moment about his—stomach is a word that is taboo among the polite English—equator, and then shift swiftly to the rear until the thumb found the hip pocket. There the hand would rest a moment, to return again to the reading desk and to describe once more the quarter circle. Once in a while it would twist a ring upon the left hand, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to get together and gossip. It is maintained, and with reason, that they are fonder of their own society than women are. Men delight to breakfast together, to take luncheon together, to dine together, to sup together. They rejoice in clubs devoted exclusively to their service, as much taboo to women as a trappist monastery. Women are not quite so clannish. There are not very many women's clubs in the world; it is not certain that those which do exist are very brilliant or very entertaining. Women seldom give supper parties, "all by themselves ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... conscious of any special hate toward that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved her. It is only ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... precious bottle of brandy. "Drink it all, cobber. So one of your Security badges had the wrong man attached to it, and word got back. Couldn't be helped. You just ran into the sacred law of Marsport—the one they teach kids. Be bad, and the dome'll collapse. The dome made Marsport, and it's taboo!" ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey |
