"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other silent and sullen with generations of despair. Why should not the Anglo-Saxon triumph—why should it be weighed down with the rich blood typical of the tropics? Must the life-current of one race bind the other race in chains as strong and enduring as if there had been no Anglo-Saxon taint? By the laws of God and nature, as interpreted by man, one-half of my boy was free, and why should not this fair birthright of freedom remove the curse from the other half—raise it into the bright, joyous sunshine of liberty? I could ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... winds in gusts swept over the highlands with a bullying noise, and disappeared, leaving everything still as the grave. I felt once more "at home in the wilderness"—such, indeed, it appeared after Boma, where the cockney-taint yet lingered. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... as a natural consequence of the above, limitations to the contact of persons of differing castes. If a Brahman cannot eat with a Sudra, because it supposedly brings a taint to his pure blood, no more can he, with impunity, come into personal contact with him. The touch of such is pollution to his august and pure person; and the very air the low castes breathe brings to his soul and body taint and poison. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... immunity from any taint of it was so fine a characteristic of public social life at Tilling, the expected passage of this distinguished visitor through the town on Saturday next became very speedily known, and before the wicker-baskets of the ladies in their morning marketings next day were half full, there was no quarter ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... warm enough. But it was dark, and squalid, and it reeked with the taint which only the centuries can impart. These things impressed themselves never so much upon Keeko as now, while she ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... years Ann Edwards regarded her son Jerome with pride and admiration, and yet with a measure of disapproval. In spite of her fierce independence, a lifetime of poverty and struggle against the material odds of life had given a sordid taint to her character. She would give to the utmost out of her penury, though more from pride than benevolence; but when it came to labor without hire, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... although there had been no duplicity on his part, he got plenty of slander. His evil genius had prompted him, not to listen seriously to the temptings of the monk, but to deal with him on his own terms. He was obliged to justify himself against public suspicion with explanations and pamphlets, but some taint of the calumny stuck by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... here the ardent skies of your own sunny South, but you will find as ardent hearts, as warm and generous hands to welcome you to our Commonwealth. We welcome you to the city of Boston, and you have already experienced how open-hearted, how generous, how free from all possible taint of sectional thought are the hospitality and cordiality of the city of Boston. We welcome you to Faneuil Hall. Many an eloquent voice has in all times resounded from the walls of Faneuil Hall. It is ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... God had first made the world, entered into the womb of the Virgin in the form (so to speak) 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 when it passed out under His hand in the beginning of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... suppressions of important passages in despatches for the purposes of publication, or wars undertaken on unjustifiable and really selfish pretexts, calculated to convince one, that even in Europe in the nineteenth century, the transaction of political affairs has been purged of the taint of immorality, however different, and I may even add, comparatively innocent, may be the outward manifestations of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... his task, the bear stopped and lifted his muzzle to the wind. What was that new taint upon the air? It was one almost unknown to him,—but one which he instinctively dreaded, though without any reason based directly upon experience of his own. At almost any other time, indeed, he would have taken the first whiff of that ominous man-smell as a signal to efface himself ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... respectful remonstrances of those who had a right to render their advice. In this case, the affliction of the mind must have been reinforced by some peculiarity in the constitution. He inherited a melancholy taint from his father, and this seems to have been dreaded as a family disease; for the infant don Louis, who likewise resided in the palace of Villa-Viciosa, was fain to amuse himself with hunting and other ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... developments of character, giving us purely objective sketches of them after the manner of a painter—if we compare these descriptions with what we know of Hoffmann's mind and character, his restless, brilliant imagination, and the taint of sensuousness that helped to mar its purity, his keen eye for beauty in form and colour, his strong talent for seeing the things with which he came in contact through an unmistakable veil of either love or hatred, we may perhaps hazard the opinion, without risk of going far wrong, that ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the water used is a matter of almost life and death to every member of the household, the whole repast has to be thrown away as if poisoned. The family is for that day dinnerless. Food thus contaminated would, if eaten, communicate a taint to the souls as well as bodies of the eaters, a taint which could only be removed by long and painful expiation." Thus far Sir Monier Williams (quoted as a greater authority than any mere missionary!). Think of the defilement which would be contracted if a member of the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... thou sought thy heavenly home, Our fond, dear boy— The realms where sorrow dare not come, Where life is joy? Pure at thy death as at thy birth, Thy spirit caught no taint from earth, Even by its bliss we mete ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and I foot the bills." In 1834 the Parliament of the British House of Commons made a report of intemperance in which they stated that the evils of alcoholism "are cumulative in the amount of injury they inflict, as intemperate parents, according to high medical testimony, give a taint to their offspring before birth, and the poisonous stream of spirits is conveyed through the milk of the mother to the infant at the breast; so that the fountain of life, through which nature supplies that pure and ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... I dare 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 ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... words repeated only to expose the vice, taint the reader more than a sermon preached against lewdness should the assembly?—for of necessity it leads the hearer to the thoughts of the fact. But the morality of every action lies in the end; and if the reader by ill-use renders ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people ... do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... were unable to see, and the day of disclosure would be the day of Triumph. In one sense we were truly Arcadians: no suspicion of impropriety, I verily believe, entered any of our minds. In our aspirations after what we called a truer life there was no material taint. We were fools, if you choose, but as far as possible from being sinners. Besides, the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Shelldrake, who naturally became the heads of our proposed community were sufficient to preserve us from slander or suspicion, if even our designs had ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... temperament is impulsive and enthusiastic, and their manners have the grace and spirit which seldom belong to the development of a Northern people; but upon more familiar acquaintance the vices of the social system to which they belong will be found to have infected them with their own peculiar taint; and haughty, over-bearing irritability, effeminate indolence, reckless extravagance, and a union of profligacy and cruelty which is the immediate result of their irresponsible power over their dependents, are some ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... thought of wrong-doing. He was not dissipated. He did not drink to excess, and his part in the gambling operations of his friends had always resulted profitably to himself. He was a regular attendant at church, conducted himself in the face of all men as one incapable of wrong, and against whom no taint of suspicion could possibly attach. A veritable "wolf in sheep's clothing" was this dishonest man, and as such I felt that he richly deserved the fate that was so soon to overtake him. The day of his hypocrisy and dishonesty ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... my babie! thy sire is a "bear,"[1] Thy mother a "booky," both leary and fair, And the spirit of bold Speculation, I see, Heredity's taint hath stirred early in thee. Oh, two to one bar one! Heigh! dance, babie, dance! Oh, tiddley-um, diddley-um, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... cannot be attained, in any high general standard, without worldly means far above the average at the disposal of the existing population; while the most abundant resources are often neutralised by ineradicable hereditary taint. To which it is to be added, that mankind can hardly as yet be said to be in earnest ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... so well done in this direction, to exhibit the Atonement as the supreme vindication of those instincts which are the witness of the Divine in man. There is laid on all who would preach or teach Christianity to-day to show that Calvinism, and all that is touched with the taint of Calvinism, is not the doctrine of the Atonement which is taught in the Bible or held by the Church. But, as nothing can be built on negations, there is an even greater and more imperative need to exhibit ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... then?" said he; "or, after all, am I too bad? Have I too much of the taint of the wicked world to be the friend of so pure a ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... couldn't die!" he said, "Fust I shot him, and then I bayoneted him, and he only snarled like a wild cat. Fancy a chap pulling like that with one hole in his stomach and another in his shoulder! 'Taint reasonable." ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... zealous to perform his will. Now all the Gods had gathered there, Each one for his allotted share: Brahma, the ruler of the sky, Sthanu, Narayan, Lord most high, And holy Indra men might view With Maruts(105) for his retinue; The heavenly chorister, and saint, And spirit pure from earthly taint, With one accord had sought the place The high-souled monarch's rite to grace. Then to the Gods who came to take Their proper share the hermit spake: "For you has Dasaratha slain The votive steed, a son to gain; Stern penance-rites the king has tried, And in firm ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... difficult to conceive a society perpetually and exclusively occupied, so to speak, in 'oughting.' Just imagine the kind of life It would be—without pleasure, without business, without knowledge, without anything at all analogous to what we call good, purged wholly and completely of all that might taint the purity of the moral sense, of philanthropy, of friendship, of love, even, I suppose, of the love of virtue, a life simply of obligation, without anything to be obliged to ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... school in Indianapolis, and had come home as fragilely and nasally American as anybody. She made him a good, sickly, fretful wife; and bore him five children, of whom two survived, with no visible taint of their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Through great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germi- 66:12 nates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each suc- 66:15 cessive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... pleasant it is to see a man of genius and learning thus gathering the bloom of his varied knowledge, to put it into a form equally suited to a child and a SAVANT. Seldom, perhaps, has there been a little book in which so vast a quantity of facts have been told so gracefully, simply, without a taint of pedantry or cumbrousness - an excellence which is the sure and only mark of a perfect mastery of the subject. Mr. G. H. Lewes's "Sea-shore Studies" are also very valuable; hardly perhaps a book for beginners, but from his ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... all that is good; and the theologians have always been obliged, as a matter of consistency, to hold, no matter how noble, how unselfish men might appear to be, that the natural man has inherently, always, necessarily been evil. He carries about with him the taint of original sin; that is, sin of constitution, ingrained, inherited, that which is of the very fibre of his being. This is the character of man as required by the old theological systems; and this is how it happened to come about. Evil is not something natural, not imperfection, not something ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... This taint of roseate red, This Cynthia's silver light, This sweet fair Dea spread, These sunbeams in mine eye, These ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... thaumaturgic veil through which was dimly revealed the man. It was as though his personality was merely a nexus to the things he stood for and had done, so that he appeared to Evelyn less a human entity than a symbol. But at least Bessie Dane was interested and the fine atmosphere of the table was without a taint. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was the space where our sires would lay a saint, A benefactor,—a bishop, suppose; A baron with armor-adornments quaint; A dame with chased ring and jewelled rose, Things sanctity saves from taint: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... careful to estimate at their full value, to say the least. He was very well liked by women, and in turn considered himself irresistible. He was very impressionable to feminine charms, was at heart a libertine, and, as he grew older, became a debauchee whose memory will taint France ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... shall find the scene fair, Then here let me cease my complaint; Still shall Health be inhal'd with the Air, Which at Honington cannot be taint: And tho' Age may still talk of the Green, Of the Heath, and free Commons of yore, Youth shall joy in the new-fangled scene, And boast of that ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... produced some flasks of amber-coloured wine from his stores in the grotto. These we drank, lying full-length upon the tufa in the morning sunlight. The panorama of sea, sky, and long-drawn lines of coast, breathless, without a ripple or a taint of cloud, spread far and wide around us. Our horses and donkey cropped what little grass, blent with bitter herbage, grew on that barren summit. Their grooms helped us out with the hermit's wine, and turned to sleep face downward. The whole scene was very quiet, islanded in immeasurable air. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... would give him (if he would accept of it) the profits of the same works, published separately—but I would not mix myself up in this way with others. I would not become a partner in this sort of miscellaneous 'pot au feu,' where the bad flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be, if I were you, alone, single-handed, and, as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... could unravel the mystery. Sir Henry had one consolation; how great, let those judge who have had aught dear placed in circumstances at all similar. He had a confidence in George's character, which entirely relieved him from any fear that the slightest taint could have infected it. But an act of imprudence might have destroyed his peace of mind—sickness have wasted his body. Nor was his uncertainty regarding George, Delme's only cause of disquiet. When he thought of Julia Vernon, there was a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... "Whutever 'tis 'taint got nothin' to do wid lurin' no money out of yore possession," said Jeff. His voice changed to one of deep gravity. "Brother Lovin', look yere ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... to comprehend the two Quangs. Practically, then, it is a fantastic impossibility that any reversionary service to our British expedition, which is held out in prophetic vision as consecrating our French and American friends from all taint of mercenary selfishness, ever can be realised. I am not going to pursue this subject. But a brief application of it to a question at this moment (June 16) urgently appealing to public favour is natural and fair. Canvassers ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... enough to show his contempt for them. He felt degraded by the mere thought of their degradation. With his mother and sister, he took refuge in the heartfelt prayers which they used to say every evening after the day of deceptions and private humiliations, which to their innocence seemed to be a taint, of which they dared not tell each other. But, in contact with the latent spirit of atheism which is in the air of Paris, Olivier's faith was beginning to crumble away, without his knowledge, like whitewash trickling down a wall under the beating of the rain. He went on believing: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... during slavery to maintain a strict discipline, they found it exceedingly difficult to do so. It seems impossible to elevate a body of slaves, remaining such, to honesty and purity. The reekings of slavery will almost inevitably taint the institutions of religion, and degrade the standard of piety. Accordingly the ministers of every denomination in Antigua, feel that in the abolition of slavery their greatest enemy has been vanquished, and they now evince a determination ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to find the stake, but the offering. Yet, even in Spain, thus gleaned of all heresy, the inquisition could still swell its list of murders to thirty-two thousand! The numbers burned in effigy, or condemned to penance, punishments generally equivalent to exile, confiscation, and taint of blood, to all ruin but the mere loss of worthless life amounted to three hundred and nine thousand. But the crowds who perished in dungeons, of the torture, of confinement, and of broken hearts, the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fortifications. It was open to approach on all sides. And its immediate neighborhood reeked with the native odors of the Indian encampment. It suggested, for all its aloofness, intimate relations with the aboriginal life about it. It suggested the impossibility of escape for its owner from the taint of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... at the news. Late in the evening of election day (November 8, 1864) he said, in response to public congratulations: "I am thankful to God for this approval of the people. But while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my own heart my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. It is not in my nature to triumph over anyone; but I give thanks to Almighty God for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... but the fish so cooked,—or even thoroughly dried in the blaze and smoke,—would be likely to keep better. In fact, fish thus preserved,—as is often done with herrings, ling, codfish, mackerel, and haddock,—will remain good for months without suffering the slightest taint of decomposition. It was an excellent idea; and, Ben having communicated it to the others, it was at once determined that it should be ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... mistakes men make. They are leading respectable lives, and they think that all is well. They do not recognize the taint of corruption upon many of the most cherished objects of their hearts. Christian professors, most of all, need to beware ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... the dead carcase might not taint the valley, I had it buried deep in the ground, about a score of yards from the encampment. From such a slight cause ensued a tremendous uproar from Kingaru—chief of the village—who, with his brother-chiefs of neighbouring villages, numbering in the aggregate two dozen wattled huts, had ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... from day to day from the words that come from the same pulpit he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the chapel from which to praise the Lord. So you see that there are some sheep who have a taint of goat hair in their wool still left—I won't say with you—out in the world. And speaking of that world, have you come back ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... following ludicrous sketches of some of the enormities of Charles II. "Towards the close of the Protectorate, many signs indicated that a time of license was at hand. But the restoration of Charles II rendered the change wonderfully rapid and violent. A deep and general taint infected the morals of the most influential classes, and spread itself through every province of letters. Poetry inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an abject reverence for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... never seen in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,—not to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him as a good hand in ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... really nothing else to do. But his laughter was charged with more anger even than contempt. He had been deluding himself that he had done with piracy. The conviction that this French service was free of any taint of that was the only consideration that had induced him to accept it. Yet here was this haughty, supercilious gentleman, who dubbed himself General of the Armies of France, proposing a plundering, thieving ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... lawless contact warm? At once love's most endearing thought resign, To press the hand so press'd by none but thine; To gaze upon that eye which never met Another's ardent look without regret; Approach the lip which all, without restraint, Come near enough—if not to touch—to taint; If such thou lovest—love her then no more, Or give—like her—caresses to a score; Her mind with these is gone, and with it go The little ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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. And this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... colonel's wife admitted to herself that no such pleasant voyage had fallen to her lot since the days when she had started for India on her wedding journey. Weldon had the consummate tact to keep the taint of the filial from his chivalry. His attentions to Mrs. Scott and Ethel differed in degree, but not in kind, and Mrs. Scott adored him accordingly. One by one, the languid days dropped into the past. Neptune had duly escorted ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... carry a suggestion of large ownership, and this fact is doubtless accountable for a share of the prestige that attaches to the business. The profession of the law does not imply large ownership; but since no taint of usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to the lawyer's trade, it grades high in the conventional scheme. The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory fraud, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... calling attention to the fact that either from ignorance or the casuistical sophistries of mal-interested teachers who have distorted the divine pristine truths for their own base ends, emanated superstition, the taint of all it looked upon; and with no unsparing hand he flagellated the professors of the numerous false faiths, bastardized from their original purity, which have in their decay, darkened the earth, and with all the force of his powerful pen, mightier than any sword, he ridiculed these gross ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... to-day is much concerned over the question of prostitution and its effect upon the coming race, through the transmission of syphilitic taint to an innocent wife, who is thereafter barren, or who bears syphilitic children. The folly of the double standard, purity insisted on for the wife, unchasity condoned in the husband; all these subjects ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was very sad—very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity cropping up. The young man must simply ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... an' things wot ain't," he began. "We ain't none o' us ever got nowheres bein' crooked. I been figurin' that I still got about twenty thousan' o' that bunch o' green I pulled out o' that express car, planted in places where 'taint doin' nobody no good. I guess ef I do ut careful I kin send ut back to the company, a little at a time, an' they'd never know ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... bee-life, I would not introduce the subject of heredity. But you know, Miss Martin, that such racial characteristics are transmitted, or transmissible, I should say, by sex opposites. Thus, an epileptic mother is more likely to give her taint to a son than to a daughter.... Yes, I mean all that, and more," he went on, seeing the look of horror, not unmixed with fear, in Doris's eyes. "There must be no more irritating of Siddle, or playing on his feelings—by you, at any rate. Treat him gently. If he insists on making love to ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... go or not as you like. 'Taint half the fun here that it used to be. I didn't think I cared so ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... on the second floor of a house in Quartier Latin. The occupant 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 ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Italian 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 and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... du Maurier from a charge of being malignant, brought against him for his ugly representation of queer people, failures, and grotesques, refused to allow that the taint of "French ferocity" of which the artist was accused, existed. But Mr. Henry James sees in du Maurier's ugly people a real specification of type, where we confess that we have felt that his "ferocity" missed the point of resemblance to type through clumsy exaggeration. One noticeable instance, however, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... overlies the crimson of the autumnal oak. She showed her age earlier than most fair people, but since her marriage at eighteen she had lived long in the deaths of the children she had lost. They were born with the taint of their father's family, and they withered from their cradles. The youngest boy alone; of all her brood, seemed to have inherited her health and strength. The rest as they grew up began to cough, as she had heard her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to think, lad. Wen yuh kim acrost another time p'raps I'll have some plan made up. I'd do nigh anything to save pore Nancy bein' put outen our leetle home. 'Taint much to look at, but she sets a heap by it, I reckon. And as soon as I git a chanct I mean to drop outen this business an' try to make a livin' another way, so I kin be home more. Fishin' it might be, er somethin' ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch grass. But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... goin' back, an' feelin' like a whipped houn' dog, sir, 'taint in Jim Hasty tuh do thet aways. Fact is," the guide went on, with a stubborn ring in his voice, "meetin' up with Ole Cale jest kinder makes me more sot in my mind than ever. I stays with yuh right through, yuh ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... good bourgeois. At the same time certain circumstances being given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface, he had all the requisites for a blackguard. He was a shopkeeper in whom there was some taint of the monster. Satan must have occasionally crouched down in some corner of the hovel in which Thenardier dwelt, and have fallen a-dreaming in the presence of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... being a good democrat and holding office under a democratic administration, had deemed it wise to abbreviate his first name, thereby removing all taint of republicanism. He reduced Abraham to an initial, but, despite his supreme struggle for dignity, was forced by public indolence to submit to a sharp curtailment of his middle name. He was ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from sea to sea, Bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow that needs must be, Needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in his wrath hath scatter'd them; our wealth Is marketed, and Phrygia hath a part Purchased, and part Maeonia's lovely land. But since the son of wily Saturn old 360 Hath given me glory now, and to inclose The Grecians in their fleet hemm'd by the sea, Fool! taint not with such talk the public mind. For not a Trojan here will thy advice Follow, or shall; it hath not my consent. 365 But thus I counsel. Let us, band by band, Throughout the host take supper, and let each, Guarded against nocturnal danger, watch. And if a Trojan here ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... trembling, 'you are my wife. As such, your reputation is as dear to me as the apple of my eye. Suspicion has been cast upon Mrs. Corbin, and that suspicion I have good reason for believing well founded. If you associate with her—if you are seen upon the street with her, your fair fame will receive a taint. This I cannot permit.' ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... earthly spectacles few are more beautiful, and in some respects more touching, than a friendship between two boys, unalloyed by any taint of selfishness, indiscriminating in its genuine enthusiasm, delicate in its natural reserve. It is not always because the hearts of men are wiser, purer, or better than the hearts of boys, that "summae puerorum amicitia: saepe cum ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Places himself in the critic's chair, And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise, Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays— A judge of genius, though, confest, With not one spark of genius blest: Among the first of critics placed, Though free from every taint of taste. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... transformation in the life of the nation which has resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in the heroic age of the Reformation in England—the Puritan wars—to ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the young bud of early feeling in such a precious hot-bed as this? Can a finer finger on the piano,—a finer taste in painting, or any possible improvement in foreign arts and foreign graces, compensate for one taint on that moral purity, which has ever been (and may it ever be!) the boast, the charm of Englishwomen? But what have I to do with all this?—I came here to be amused and to forget;—not to moralize ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Take from me all taint of sadness; Fill my soul with trust unshaken In that Being who has taken Care for every living thing, In Summer, Winter, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... alike with his early career and with his later opportunities for development. In trying to explain this, it is easier to say what was not the underlying quality than what it was. Certainly there was no taint whatsoever of that vulgar self-confidence which is so apt to lead the "free and equal" citizens of the great republic into grotesque positions. Perhaps it was a grand simplicity of faith; a profound instinctive confidence that by ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... always was the man on the job. It was his name that appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... 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: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... nature, courage and might are quite separable. There may be a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness that is against ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bred in the country, of parents that gave me a sound constitution and a noble example. I never can pay back what I got from my parents. Next I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances where I never became acquainted with wickedness." How delightful it is to think of a man who, without a taint of conscious insincerity, but simply out of the fulness of his heart, can get up before four thousand people, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... in vain. The dread salt is forced down his throat and he dies. The very fortunate have only an acrid taste which defies analysis left them. Of these more fortunate there are, however, many classes. Some, because they are neurotic or have some hereditary taint, the existence of which they have never suspected, in the end succumb; others do not entirely succumb, but carry traces to their graves; yet others do not appear to mind at all. It is a very subtle poison, which may lie hidden in the blood for many months and many ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... sunrise for the first time in their life. To them, it was neither beautiful nor familiar; it was sinister and strange. A chill, that was not of the dawn but of death itself, lay over everything. The morning wind was the breath of the tomb, the smells that came to them from the island bore the taint of mortality, the very sunshine seemed icy. They suffered—the five survivors of the night's tragedy—with a scarifying sense of disillusion with Nature. It was as though a beautiful, tender, and fondly loved mother had turned murderously on her children, had wounded them ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... "ita omnis anima eo usque in Adam censetur donec in Christo recenseatur," and other passages); but he has speculations about Adam (for the most part developments of hints given in Irenaeus; see the index in Oehler's edition), and he has a new realistic idea as to a physical taint of sin propagated through procreation. Here we have the first beginning of the doctrine of original sin (de testim. 3: "per diabolum homo a primordio circumventus, ut praeceptum dei excederet, et propterea in mortem datus exinde totum genus de suo semine infectum suae etiam damnationis traducem ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... From the taint of this evil, and all its sorrowful consequences I am tempted to exempt Guy Elersley, so handsome, so young, so winning; but I cannot give the lie to obstinate reality. Of course, Guy Elersley was not a bad man, he ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... only on the saint, Oh! struggle with the hard of heart, With wilful sin and inborn taint, Till lust, and wrath, and ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury[113] and damned incest. But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught: leave her to Heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire:[114] Adieu, adieu, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... The harmony of things—this hard decree, This ineradicable taint of sin, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree Whose root is ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... leprous taint of bigotry to sully his soul, blur his vision, or cramp his sphere of action, the broad stream of Christian charity flowed from his noble, generous heart, sweeping away obstacles that would have impeded the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... short way southwardly. A small portion of the top of the arch, between it and the steps, is left open, but for what reason I never could make out. The further end of this vault opens into another great vault, which I shall presently describe. The passage is very dry, but the air has a cold "gravey" taint, very unpleasant to inhale. At the second landing there is a sort of recess, into which rubbish from the garden above is shot down through a spout or funnel. At the top of the passage is a doorway opening upon ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... "'Taint exactly what I ought to have," Banule responded cheerfully. "I forgot to specify when I ordered, but I guess I can make ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... hands in knickerbocker pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder. "What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley. 'Taint much outer my way, I'll take you there." And meekly they followed ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... from taint of crime as—you are. She is a noble girl, and worthy of you, worthy of any man, whatever her ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... but you must; I will take no 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 ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... finds himself, with no taint of personal concern in the African trade, in a Christian community of white Anglo-Americans, holding control over his black fellow-man, who is so unlike himself in complexion, in form, in other peculiarities, and so unequal to himself in attributes of ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... ladies—no blasted rolling eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't be happy. Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it bad. And in all those places we shall gather. Our district will be London. And we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the open when the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... pay to show yo' hand even after you've won—the other feller might remember it nex' time. 'Taint good business sense. But I pumped it into Bonaparte at the right time when he was goin' round an' round an' undecided whether he'd take holt or git. This settled him—he got. The Lord was on the monkey's side, of course, but He needed Gypsy ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... unusually efficient in developing a collection agency, and gradually represented the Bad Accounts Department of more and more important concerns. At thirty- five he was out of debt. They were living well—too well it proved, for his nervous health. There must have been a neurotic taint, as expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food. Athletic he ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... me no more reports; let them fly all: Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm? Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know All mortal consequences have pronounc'd me thus,— "Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman Shall e'er have power upon thee."—Then fly, false thanes, And mingle with the English epicures: The mind ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... a solemn thing to me To look upon a babe that sleeps, Wearing in its spirit-deeps The unrevealed mystery Of its Adam's taint ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... The friendship of years causes Yalois to make him the adviser of his wife in property matters. He makes him his own representative. "Thank Heaven!" cries Valois, "my wife's property is safe. No taint from me can attach to her birthright. It is ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Say, I worked two years and had a wife and two children to take care of and I never cleared forty dollars a month. I've been a lifetime working myself up to what I am and you jump into the game, inexperienced, green as a cucumber, and want to hog the persimmons at the start. 'Taint fair, 'taint right; I'm an honest man; I want to treat everybody right. You're taking advantage of me. It's the principle of the thing ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... mentioned in the hymns in praise of fire. And the fire Nischyavana praises the earth only; he never suffers in reputation, splendour and prosperity. The sinless fire Satya blazing with pure flame is his son. He is free from all taint and is not defiled by sin, and is the regulator of time. That fire has another name Nishkriti, because he accomplished the Nishkriti (relief) of all blatant creatures here. When properly worshipped he vouchsafes good fortune. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... doubt that acts like these are base and futile too, Which have to him and him such dire disgrace and trouble bred?' And as a neighbour's death appals the sick, and, by the dread Of dying, forces them to put upon their lusts restraint, So tender minds are oft deterred from vices by the taint They see them bring on others' names; 'tis thus that I from those Am all exempt, which bring with them a train of shames ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... band was to take refuge in flight whenever, in the daytime, a man was descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo's habit of permitting the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed, was in numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to detect the taint of human hands or the poison itself, ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... nothing of this. He has a masculine judgment and no small degree of wit—though 'tis of a hard intellectual kind; but through misprising his fellow creatures he has come to lack flair. His lady, if she scent a taint on the wind wafted through her routs and assemblies, no doubt sets it down to breathings upon her humble origin, or (it may be) even to some leaking gossip of her foregone wrong. (Women, my dear sir, are brutes to rend a wounded one of the herd.) She ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... no taint of gas or poison fumes. The air tasted fresh except for the faint smoke, and the birds were all in full song. Yet we all had to dismount, and to let the prisoners walk, too, because the horses were too drowsy to be trusted. The ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... as it notoriously is, of a Calvinistic taint, broken up by absolute license of dissent, maintaining a mere outward conformity to an extremely lax discipline—affronted Isaac Hecker's ideal of the communion of man and God; man seeking and God giving the one only revelation ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... by torments sad, But by dun shades alone; where mourning's voice Sounds not of anguish sharp, but breathes in sighs. There I with little innocents abide, Who by death's fangs were bitten, ere exempt From human taint. There I with those abide, Who the three holy virtues put not on, But understood the rest, and without blame Follow'd them all. But if thou know'st and canst, Direct us, how we soonest may arrive, Where Purgatory its true beginning takes." He answer'd thus: "We have no certain place Assign'd us: ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the other, on the defensive, 'your mother comes to me at dinner time, an' she says: 'I s'pose 'taint likely you'll see my Dick, Jacker.' I said,' No, Missus Haddon, 'taint, s'elp me.' Then she says, 'Well, if he should come to see you, will you give him this?' So I took it, an' there ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... soothingly. "If, for example, I were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be the wiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint." ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... went away, it was with the persuasion, that though outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends to touch ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... masquerade of the elements,—the novel disguises our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... and cousins, got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now, and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of life in an ordinary, satisfactory way, and with little effort on his part I know of another man who externally presents nearly the same aspect to society, who is quiet and unobtrusive in his daily life, and yet he is fighting hereditary taint and habit with a daily heroism, such as no soldier in the war can surpass. He is not conventional, although he appears to be so. He is a knight who is not afraid to face demons. Genuine strength and originality of character do not consist in saying or doing things in an unusual way. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... penned by the hand of her own mother; that she was that little baby who had been born in Rome—that child of shame whose father had so heartlessly deserted it; whose mother, her brain turned by her suffering and wrongs, had planned to take her own life, rather than live to taint her little one's future with the shadow of ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... cherished 70 One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! To scatter rage and traitorous guilt Where Peace her jealous home had built; A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Woman, I do not think that Mrs. Morley would ever have conceived the possibility of consenting that the richest and prettiest and cleverest girl in the States could become the wife of a son of hers if the girl had the taint of negro blood, even though shown nowhere save the slight distinguishing hue of her finger-nails. So had Isaura's merits been threefold what they were and she had been the wealthy heiress of a retail grocer, this fair Republican would have opposed (more strongly than many an English ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reposed sorrowful examples of Doulton ware and a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. It was a room divorced from all sense of youth and live beings, sunless, grave, unlovely; an arid room that bore to the nostrils the taint and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... not have loved Nicolete with a purer love, a love freer from taint of any earthly thought, than I, a man of thirty, blase, and fed from my youth upon ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... of 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 which some men, especially artists—but ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... labour-saving appliances, put the means of education easily within the reach of every workman, make promotion from the ranks, in the Army, in the Navy, in all business concerns, practicable and natural, and the lingering discolouration of the serf taint will vanish from the workman's mind. The days of mystic individualism have passed, few people nowadays will agree to that strange creed that we must deal with economic conditions as though they were inflexible laws. Economic conditions are made and compact of the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. 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. I'll see what he ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... little older and you will find that you do care, care very, very much. The understanding and sympathy of other women will become very sweet to you. It is so pure and ennobling, so free from all material taint." ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... disgrace On the plain steeples of our English Church, Whose worship, 'mid remotest village trees, 420 Suffers for this. Even Science, too, at hand In daily sight of this irreverence, Is smitten thence with an unnatural taint, Loses her just authority, falls beneath Collateral suspicion, else unknown. 425 This truth escaped me not, and I confess, That having 'mid my native hills given loose To a schoolboy's vision, I had raised a pile Upon the basis of the coming ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... made her shrink from aught that was unworthy, petty or mean. To her the lightest breath of dishonour was to be avoided at any cost of pain, and she wrought into me, her only daughter, that same proud and passionate horror at any taint of shame or merited disgrace. To the world always a brave front was to be kept, and a stainless reputation, for suffering might be borne but dishonour never. A gentlewoman might starve, but she must not run in debt; she might break her heart, but it must be with a smile on ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... soup to Paaes eggs, schnaaps, and pipes, every thing passed off with unwonted hilarity and spirit. May we live to see fifty kindred gatherings of the votaries of our patron saint! . . . 'YOU don't like smokin', 'taint likely?' asked a lank free-and-easy Yankee, as he entered a room where four or five young ladies were sewing, puffing a dank 'long-nine.' 'Well, we do not,' was the immediate reply. 'Umph!' replied the smoker, removing ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertain'dst it royally, Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... their extraordinary biting power, I knew the fate that must necessarily befall a couple of ordinary hounds when overtaken by half a dozen full-grown wolves. On such occasions we do not spend much time in grief over a loss of any kind, "it taint according to mountain law," Pete ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... Men and women wear showy costumes, quite barbaric and uncomfortable. The women seem determined to wear as few garments as possible, and to compensate for lack of number by brightness of coloring. In many a pretty face traces of gypsy blood may be seen. This vagabond taint gives an inexpressible charm to a face for which the Hungarian strain has already done much. The coal-black hair and wild, mutinous eyes set off to perfection the pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the delicate nostrils ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one god she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: 'Tis labor lost, to ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... demands to advantage before the public. Humanitarians, like Horace Mann, took up independently the fight for free public education and carried it to success. In Pennsylvania, public schools, free from the taint of charity, date since 1836. In New York City the public school system was established in 1832. The same is true of the demand for a mechanics' lien law, of the abolition of imprisonment for ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... of the average "gangster" shows a taint of alcoholism. This is further aggravated by living under immoral surroundings, where petty crimes like stealing and lying are considered "smart." This is the starting point of the New York "gangster." He is handicapped, and under ancestral disabilities and the disadvantages ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood- lust, thick and hot. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate climes where the warm sun steals away the energies of men. But in the Northland ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... indignant that Lois should find anything in her meeting with Rosie that lent itself to humor. He knew that humor. The superior were fond of indulging in it at the expense of the less fortunate. Even Lois Willoughby had not escaped that taint of class. Fearing to wound her by some impatient word, he made zeal in his round of duties the excuse for ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the great door softly shut behind him, and found himself in a chamber of vast proportions, built of what had at one time been purest white marble, discolored entirely now by the red taint of the bloody ore. The ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... anywhere, too much diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To all this dismal prospect there was slight hope ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Adam in me, I suppose—the taint of that first father who was the first rebel against God's commandments. Most strange is man, ever insatiable, ever unsatisfied, never at peace with God or himself, his days filled with restlessness and useless endeavour, his nights ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... false and dangerous taste predominates: Scandal and the card-table are preferred to the pleasures of a rural walk: Virtue and Modesty are seen with only half their energies, being overpowered by the noxiousness of novel-reading principles, and by the moral taint which infects those who engage in the varied rounds of a fashionable life. Hence a want of knowledge, a love of trifles, and a dissipated turn of mind, generally characterize those who are considered as having had the education of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... seed of Christ into the body of this death;—I offer this, my bounden nightly sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in humble trust that the fragrance of my Saviour's righteousness may remove from it the taint of my mortal corruption. Thy mercies have followed me through all the hours and moments of my life; and now I lift up my heart in awe and thankfulness for the preservation of my life through the past day, for the ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of Bohemia out ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... but I and a few of my followers need be exposed to danger. Let a bell be rung before us, to warn all in the streets to stand away; and we will carry a vessel of strong incense before the bier. Those who go out with me, I pledge you my word, shall not return for some days till they are free of all taint themselves." ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... half-insane notions of rulership and superiority have been so often recorded for our amazement, Lady Duff Gordon kept the simple frankness of heart and desire to be of service to her fellow-creatures without a thought of self or a taint of vanity in her intercourse with them. Not for lack of flattery or of real enthusiastic gratitude on their part. It is known that when at Thebes, on more than one of her journeys, the women raised ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... concentrated effort, even as England cleaned her corrupt borough elections of a century and a half ago. Let us fix on one man who will stand for civic purity, virtue and honor, no matter what his party. Let us elect a United States senator who is above reproach, above the taint of gaining a victory by the downfall of his fellow men! In the next ballot, let us each vote as ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... this day consists in the proclamation that all lawful government is founded on the inalienable rights of man, and, with the next breath, that you must not whisper this truth to the winds, lest they should taint the atmosphere with freedom, and kindle the flame of insurrection? Are you to bless the earth beneath your feet because she spurns the footsteps of a slave, and then to choke the utterance of your voice lest the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... breathing hard, the obnoxious odor of sweat and fish-oil in his nose. He turned on the lights and without waiting to investigate, went into the shower-room and stood under the tepid deluge. Even after a thorough rub-down the taint was in the air. The bird was ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... narration I gathered that the finback had himself to thank for his immunity from pursuit. "'Sides," persisted Goliath, "wa' yew gwine do wiv' him? Ain't six inch uv blubber anywhere 'bout his long ugly carkiss; en dat, dirty lill' rag 'er whalebone he got in his mouf, 'taint worf fifty cents. En mor'n dat, we pick up, a dead one when I uz in de ole RAINBOW—done choke hisself, I spec, en we cut him in. He stink fit ter pison de debbil, en, after all, we get eighteen bar'l ob dirty oil out ob him. Wa'nt worf ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar-house, and show us what philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens to the Word of Life;—come, Penn, from thy sweet counsel and weaponless victory,—and show us what Christian ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... reputation amongst men; seeing thus a man who was never in a brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the peace of the tropics dulls memory, and time heats only in the heart. The world is a great place, Philippa, and there are corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride nowhere upon the ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all—the determination to conquer. The contagious influence of illusion, scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds; the people were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which they were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, nervous excitability in the air, a feverish condition in which men's hopes and fears alike became distorted and exaggerated, arousing the worst passions of humanity at the slightest breath ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola |
