"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding to the number ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... newspapers to Brussels from the outside world, and announcing that any one who brings newspapers here or is found with papers in his possession will be severely punished. Two German papers will be distributed by the authorities, and everything else is taboo. They evidently intend that their own version of passing events shall be the only one ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Seine watermen. I am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," and the glances cast in my direction by the other customers indicate plainly enough that they consider the proceeding ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... unexpected 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 ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... early religion, from the point of view of Anthropology and Folk-lore; and is the first attempt that has been made in any language to weave together the results of recent investigations into such topics as Sympathetic Magic, Taboo, Totemism, Fetishism, etc., so as to present a systematic account of the growth of primitive religion and the development ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... and he left the palm room with head down- bent, as if he were already pondering the problem, the solving of which was to free him from the self-imposed taboo ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... English expressions eschew, And on "gentleman" place an especial taboo; Well, the facts of the case their decision confirm, For they've clearly no more ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... longer two sides to what once was the spring shooting question. Even among savages, the breeding period of the wild creatures is under taboo. Then if ever may the beasts and birds cry "King's excuse!" It has been positively stated in print that high-class fox hounds have been known to refuse to chase a pregnant fox, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... little cheaper, or there were two of us to bear the expense, it ought to pay hand over fist. I've got the influence, you see. I'm a chief now, and sit in the speak-house under my own strip of roof. I'd like to see them taboo me! They daren't try it; I've a strong party, I can tell you. Why I've had upwards of thirty cowtops sitting in my front verandah ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... omens received through the medium of birds, thunder, lightning, or the condition of the gall and liver of a slaughtered pig; [60] and like them they suffer for failure to heed these warnings, or for the infraction of a taboo. ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... said, "May I be buried immediately if what I say is not true." But there was another and more extensive class of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic taboo, or tapui (tapooe), as they call it. Of this there was a great variety, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... with destruction by an evil being, who would one day appear on its shores. To avert the fatality the place had been sanctified and set apart, under the protection of the gods and their priest. Here was the reason for the taboo, and for the extraordinary rigor with which it was enforced. Listening to her with the deepest interest, the Captain took her hand and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Ssassaror 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. ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... 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
... 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
... which put its seniors in a flutter. The seniors, under question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never till now dreamt of the need of any. If they are wise, they will put away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer these things out, and perchance clear their own ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... to save us from war. Rend your hearts and not your armaments. Let us learn to look War in the face, and while the blood is cold, so that we may know what we are meaning to do. Let us put a moral taboo upon it, such as we have put upon parricide, or incest, or cannibalism. For certain, in those matters, the reason has put a sanction on the conscience. So will it in the matter of aggressive war. Side by side with that, as we now see, we must change the governance ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... whose looks of terror, show that something they dread is about to happen. Arrived before the temple, there is a cry from the multitude, who instantly set on them with their clubs. Taro tells us not to grieve; that some are prisoners taken in war, others guilty persons who have broken a taboo, and others the lowest of the people. While we stand shuddering, a concourse of people arrive bearing fruits of all sorts, and hogs, and dogs. The human victims are stripped of all their garments, and placed ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... as suddenly as new 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
... 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 ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... 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 of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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
... one of the members, "I would but the devil take it, how can a man go around asking for a job in a dress suit? And I'm so rotten big that none of my friends can loan me a suit. And my credit is gone with at least twelve different tailors. I'm sort o' taboo as a borrower. Barry, old top, if you will chase the blighter after another highball, I'll drink ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... craving of the girl who knows may ill be balanced by any thought of possible disagreeable consequences. Still more important, however, is a second aspect. The girl to whom the world sex is the great taboo is really held back from lascivious life by an instinctive respect and anxiety. As soon as girl and boy are knowers, all becomes a matter of naked calculation. What they have learned from their instruction ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... influences, been twisted and turned to and fro, weather-cock fashion, thus. It was absurd, of course, to take things too seriously, yet he could not but fear the Archdeacon's well-intentioned bit of worldliness and his own disposition to court whatever family prejudice pronounced taboo, were in process of leading him a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and fro, as though perpetual motion had been discovered. Why must an American woman have a rocking-chair? In no other country in the world, excepting among the creoles of South America, is this awkward piece of furniture so popular. Burn the cradles and taboo the graceless rocking-chair, and our children will have steadier heads and our women learn the attractive grace of ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... 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
... 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
... 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, meeting in ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... then it is advisable to get rid of them. In such extreme cases the surgeon's knife may sometimes save life; it is the only cure; and to use a word in a deforming or deformed sense should be condemned as a solecism. Contributions, stating examples of this with the proposed taboo, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... 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 ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... till morning, when he looked round anxiously. He could see the whole population gathered a quarter of a mile away, pointing toward him and skirmishing for the best positions for viewing his actions. Evidently he was taboo for good and all, and the vision he had had of himself, as the feared and prosperous medicine-man of his tribe had been a very fancy portrait: feared he certainly was, but there it ended. It looked as if he had to ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... 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 in the ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... may say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any more because you ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... done my best, at a time too when the hapless English traveller is expected to write like a young lady for young ladies, and never to notice what underlies the most superficial stratum. And I also maintain that the free treatment of topics usually taboo'd and held to be "alekta"—unknown and unfitted for publicity—will be a national benefit to an "Empire of Opinion," whose very basis and buttresses are a thorough knowledge by the rulers of the ruled. Men have been crowned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... cards, who made Dickens immortal—it was YOU. And our foremost magazines advertise the "un-literary essay." "Literary expression," that Addisonian English stuff, whose elegance pleasantly conceals the lack of ideas beneath, is taboo in these parts. What we want is writers who have something to say, and who say it naturally and without ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... fond of coddling; but as 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
... to 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
... art with ink. Under this method, which did not work altogether smoothly at the beginning, the conversation lasted an hour and a half, which was as long as Clelia dared remain in the aviary. Two or three times, when Fabrice trespassed on forbidden ground and alluded to matters that were taboo, she made no answer and walked away ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and order without the parade of any force or badgering, judging from the assiduity with which they studied our methods. Even the "drunks"—and they were not strangers to Ruhleben, despite the fact that alcoholic liquor was religiously taboo, the liquor being smuggled in and paid heavily for, a bottle of Red Seal costing fifteen shillings—never gave us the slightest cause ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... that we must do what we had promised and cure him—the chief—of the disease which had tormented him for years. In that event everything would be at our disposal and we, with all our belongings, should become taboo, holy, not to be touched. None would attempt to harm us, nothing should be stolen ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... a warning given once: No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly, To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes Into this mounded sward and rumple it; All trees stand back: taboo is on ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... 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; ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... embroidery on a gray suede bag which lay on the table. She had got it the other day to serve as understudy for the gold bag which was "taboo" for public use at present. She was glad that the forest creature did not know, and never would know, that she had secretly bought back his gold bag. If he found out, it might be his ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... novelist Jonas Lie, who, to his great honor, bought for about L35 the right to publish it as a supplement to a newspaper that he was editing. Then the storm broke out; the press was unanimously adverse, and in private circles abuse amounted almost to a social taboo. In 1862 the second theatre became bankrupt, and Ibsen was thrown on the world, the most unpopular man of his day, and crippled with debts. It is true that he was engaged at the Christiania Theatre at a nominal salary of about a pound a week, but he could not live on ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... taboo prevailed. Certain subjects were rarely mentioned in public, and then only in euphemistic terms. The home, the church, the school; and the press joined in the conspiracy. Supposedly, they were keeping the young in a blessed state ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... 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 loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion which would ensue, were the natives—men and women—allowed to come ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... each the other or real children of the said god-parent. The reformed churches have set aside this fiction, but in the Latin and Eastern churches it has created a distinct and very powerful marriage taboo. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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
... barrier probably belongs to the historical acquisitions of humanity and like other moral taboos it must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. (Cf. my work, Totem and Taboo, 1913.) Psychoanalytic studies show, however, how intensively the individual struggles with the incest temptations during his development and how frequently he puts them into phantasies and even ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... should have to go back to the days of the cave-man to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat, and promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise self-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god might come in ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... 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 of the buyer, the precaution is evidently against poison. Many ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... one little thing I am going to talk to you about that really is a bigger thing than it seems—and that is gum—chewing gum. If you had had stage experience you would know that gum is taboo in the theatre, and the reason for this is not only that to chew in sight of an audience would be an insult and result in immediate dismissal, but also for this very important reason, that a cud of gum if dropped on the stage ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... 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 ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... 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 of the rest of Tilling, under promise of secrecy, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... to shout to poor ambulating Olie for half-an-hour before I could persuade him to come in to supper. And even then he came tardily, with countless hesitations and pauses, as though a lady temerarious enough to take a scrub were for all time taboo to the race of man. And when he finally ventured in through the door, round-eyed and blushing a deep russet, he gaped at my white middy and my little white apron with that silent but eloquent admiration which couldn't fail to warm the cockles of the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... are to cast the first stone. And why single out syphilis as the badge of venery? The "itch" is transmitted by sexual relations too. Why not make the itch a sign of shame? The power that has done the damage is not the intrinsic viciousness of syphilis, but the survival of the old idea of sexual taboo, the feeling that sex is a secret, shameful thing, essentially unclean. To this age-old myth some one added the idea of punishment, and brutalized our conception of syphilis for centuries. If there were a semblance of crude, stern ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... 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, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... arrived here in the year 1846, one would suppose that it existed most strongly at Oxford. And so it did, no doubt, particularly among theologians. With them German meant much the same as unorthodox, and unorthodox was enough at that time to taboo a man at Oxford. In one of the sermons preached in these early days at St. Mary's, German theologians such as Strauss and Neander (sic) were spoken of as fit only to be drowned in the German Ocean, before they reached the shores of ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... at him. Her eyes suggested another topic—themselves. "Is that taboo as well!" she said, as Michael's eyes dropped ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... 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" having been broken. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... he seemed to have wiped from the slate of his recollection, nor did he again allude to the mutiny. Once, when I touched upon it, he had cut me short, and I could see from his manner that all reference to it must henceforth be taboo. But I could not help sometimes recalling the picture of the boat with the solitary man on board of her, drifting upon the grey waste of sea, and I often wondered if Dirk Hartog had been able to obliterate that picture ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... modal gymnastics. They were all of a piece with the "atmospheres" evoked in the various rooms of the flat. To Barbara and myself, comfortable Philistines, all this appeared exceeding lunatic. But every married couple has a right to lay out its plan of happiness in its own way. If we had made taboo of irrelevant gossip between the acts of a serious play our evening would have been a failure. Theirs would have been, and, in fact, was a success. Connubial felicity they certainly achieved: and what else but an impertinence is a ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... a footing upon ground properly taboo even to angels caused the man to flush brick-red. His eyes sought Sally's in ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... fail to do, having called on him already as a bachelor the year before. Nor were the Uniackes and the Invernesses the bell-wethers of the flock. Those august families had returned to London for the season; but the taboo half-suggested by Mrs. Venables had begun and ended in her own mind. Indeed, that potent and diplomatic dame, who was the undoubted leader of society within a four-mile radius of Northborough town hall, was the first to recognize the mistake ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... a trifle. "Forgetting exact principles for a moment, ud Klavan, you realize that the actuality will sometimes stray from the ideal. Our citizens, for example, do not habitually carry weapons except under extraordinary conditions. But that is a civil taboo, rather than a fixed amendation of our constitution. I have no doubt that some future generation, mores having shifted, will, for example, revive ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... 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. She hid her hands under ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... we had taken leave of each other at Kew, she was very despondent on account of my husband's illness, and expressed a fear that she might die without our being near her. No one could say when the taboo on railway travelling could be withdrawn for him, but I gave our aunt a solemn promise that in such an emergency as she mentioned, I at any rate would go to her when she called me, and Gilbert had ratified the engagement. From her letters it was easy to see that she wished ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... upon the country, against the expressed wish of at least two-thirds of the people, by the political chicanery of the same organization, and yet no one, during the long fight, thought to attack it directly; to have done so would have been to violate the taboo described. So when the returning soldiers began to reveal the astounding chicaneries of the Young Men's Christian Association, it was marvelled at for a few weeks, as Americans always marvel at successful pocket-squeezings, but no one sought the cause in the character ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... 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 Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... 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, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... 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 with our party this ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... lovers for the society of the undisturbing dead. Each of them had a roofed habitation, but neither could employ it for the ends of love. No. 8 was barred to George as much by his own dignity as by the invisible sword of the old man; and of course he could not break the immemorial savage taboo of a club by introducing a girl into it. The Duke of Wellington himself, though Candle Court was his purdah, could never have broken the taboo of even so modest a club as Pickering's. Owing to the absence of Agg, who had ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... circumscribed by new rules, and crystallized in a reaction under the influence of purely social forces; so that this most sensible people made women equal to men in meetings and in religious legislation through a form of sexual taboo. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... 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 ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... to have worked the moral regeneration of the islands, the Martin Luther of the group anticipated them by half a year. Liholiho—that was his name—publicly kicked the idols, burned the temples, ate from the dishes of women, and defied the taboo. So soon as the natives discovered that the sea did not rise nor the sky fall, they rejoiced exceeding, and when one of the priests gathered an army and mutinied against the new order, they vehemently suppressed him. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... from the competition. There it was, up on the games notice-board—a girl's name with a black pencil mark drawn through it. All who ran might read, and a good many did run to read. Clearly the April Fool had become the object of the most unanimous taboo ever set in motion on a ship. Her name was mud. Even the men did not rally to her aid, though she had been popular enough with them before. There are few men who will not crumple up before a phalanx of women with daggers in their ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... 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
... 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
... 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
... business that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here. The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt 'taboo') has to be declared, and who was to declare it? Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horse-back? He might plant palm branches: it ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any way on earth you want it, only in my room. That is taboo, as I told you. What am I going to ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... 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 ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... use of "sick" for "ill" is taboo in England, except among the very youngest Realists. And, by the way, Mr. Hugh Walpole in "The Young Enchanted" goes so far in one of the speeches of the atrocious Mrs. Tennsen, that the shocking word "bloody" used by Mr. Bernard Shaw on one famous occasion sinks into a pastel ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... antipathy to Rouge extremism among them—kept Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp—by this time the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, successfully shepherded and ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... over the earth; e.g. in New Ireland a carved chalk figure of the deceased, indicating the sex, is procured, and entrusted to the chief of a village, who sets it up in a funeral hut in the middle of a large taboo house adorned with plants. The survivors believe that the ghostly ogre, being so well provided for, will abstain ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The word "dance" is taboo among these Calvinists of the hills. They "run sets" and "play plays"—and these are against the sterner morals that prevail—but they do not dance. The Mission teacher smiled. This was a side-light on the complex character of Pleasant Trouble ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... 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 ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... be a subject taboo in polite conversation, but Joe De Barr was not excessively polite, and he had, moreover, a very likely hope that Marie would yet choose to regard him with more favor than she had shown in the past. He did not ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... thought). Yes, some patients play and sing. (With a smile.) If you'd call the noise they make by those terms. They'd dance, too, if we permitted it. There's only one big taboo—Home, Sweet Home. ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... not imagine you would reach me so swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous tribes; they stick ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the origin 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 totemistic, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... stories of this class, the hero forgets his companion on reaching home, either by a charm or by breaking a taboo.] ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... 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
... (for 'reject' or '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; war (for ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... taboo is quite over; no soul attempts to support the C. J. or the President, they are past hope; the whites have just refused their taxes—I mean the council has refused to call for them, and if the council consented, nobody would pay; 'tis a farce, and the curtain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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
... find no one willing to listen to him—not even his children. In the midst of a vast city he was sadly solitary. None of his children appeared interested in his allusions to Hammurabi or Charlemagne, on the contrary, monologues of any kind were taboo in the artistic circles where Lorado reigned. We was too busy, we were all too busy with our small plans and daily struggles, to take any interest in Locke or Gibbon or Hume, therefore the ageing philosopher sat forlornly among his faded, musty books, dreaming his days away ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... 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 seems ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... 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 ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... usually cathartic, that is, intended to purge away evil influences (kathairein, to make katharos, pure). But, as Robertson Smith observes, "holiness is contagious, just as uncleanness is''; and common things and persons may become taboo, that is, so holy as to be dangerous and useless for daily life through the mere infection of holiness. Thus in Syria one who touched a dove became taboo for one whole day, and if a drop of blood of the Hebrew sin-offering fell on a garment it had to be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... led the Banjaras to dig shallow wells by the sides of the streams for their drinking-water, so that the supply thus obtained might be in some degree filtered by percolation through the intervening soil and freed from its vegetable germs. And the custom may have grown into a taboo, its underlying reason being unknown to the bulk of them, and be still practised, though no longer necessary when they do not travel. If this explanation be correct it would be an interesting conclusion that the Banjaras anticipated so far as they were able the sanitary precaution ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... 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 ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... not the weaker. But the subject is what you English call 'taboo.' It is treading on delicate ground to talk politics in the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... said slowly, "the thing that keeps a woman straight and a man faithful is not a matter of bricks and mortar nor ways of thinking nor habits of living. It's something finer and stronger than these. It's the magic taboo of her love for him and his for her that makes them—sacred. With that to ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... not indulged in by these people as extensively as it is done in Mekeo and on the coast; but they like it well enough, and for a month or so before a big feast, during which period they are under a strict taboo restriction as to food, they indulge in it largely. The betel used by them is not the cultivated form used in Mekeo and on the coast, but a wild species, only about half the size of the other; and the lime used is not, as in Mekeo and on the coast, made by ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... 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
... 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, easy-going, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... "taboo," Barrie's mother had become her ideal. The girl felt that whatever Grandma disapproved must be beautiful and lovable; and there had been enough said, as well as enough left unsaid whenever dumbness could mean condemnation, to prove that the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thousands of times before, and because we know they will work a thousand times in the future. What was good enough for the generations before us is good enough for us and our children. A tradition, or taboo, is not formed by the decision of some contemporary council as a means to control others via social restrictions, for if it was it would never have lasted, instead it is formed because of experience, because when something goes beyond it the result is temporary ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... These became fixed and sacred to him and any departure from them filled him 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 and not an abhorrence ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... 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
... on certain occasions forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, 4-6; sacred persons apparently thought to be charged with a mysterious virtue which will run to waste or explode by contact with the ground, 6 sq.; things as well as persons charged with the mysterious virtue of holiness or taboo and therefore kept from contact with the ground, 7; festival of the wild mango, which is not allowed to touch the earth, 7-11; other sacred objects kept from contact with the ground, 11 sq.; sacred food not allowed to touch the earth, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 some ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so well in the old slaving days among the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... And thenceforward the subject had been taboo. Even after seven years of intimate relations, Bat was still mystified on the subject, he was ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... States had got 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 where her ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson |
