"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neighbourhood." Mrs. Coates's maid had, in repeating the news, "turned the sore throat into a spotted fever, or a scarlet fever, she did not rightly know which, but both were said by the apothecary to be generally fatal, where there was any Jewish taint in the blood." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ghostly descent. Again, similar gods, as we show, exist where ghosts of chiefs are not worshipped, and as far as evidence goes never were worshipped, because there is no evidence of the existence at any time of such chiefs. The American highest gods may then be equally free from the taint ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... unscrupulous means by which Boris raised himself to the throne, after he had destroyed the last representatives of the direct line of Rurik, which, in all the vicissitudes of Russian fortune, had hitherto held the chief place in the nation—the taint of guilt which poisoned and polluted a mind otherwise powerful, and not without some virtues, and made him at length a suspicious and cruel tyrant, who, having alienated the good-will of the nation, was unable to oppose the pretensions of an impostor, and swallowed poison to escape the tortures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Bow-legs, squat, huge in the shoulder, long-armed, flat-skulled, of a yellowish clay color, with protruding jaws, and gaping, pit-like, upturned nostrils to their wide, bridgeless noses. Grom's own nose wrinkled in disgust as the sour taint of them breathed up ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... killed and et one of his sheep, then he paid me up and took his ram back. If I had a thousand boys I wouldn't name narry dang one of them Elhannon. I got another little case what comes up next fall in the Bell Circit Court, 'taint much. I low ter pay a good young lawyer about twenty five bucks to git me off. 'Bout a month ago I shot Caleb Spencer as dead as a kit mackrel. I was going over Salt Trace to the mill on the river. When I got on top of the divide he raised up from behind a log about a hundred ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that God had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even promulgated in person severe ordinances to ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... done in Nicholson's estimation when he took over the leadership of the Movable Column was to purge it thoroughly of any taint of disaffection. Two native regiments were suspected, and he resolved on disarming these at once. On the morning of the 25th of June, while the column was halting on the high road leading to Delhi, the British regiments, with the guns, were manoeuvred ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... recalled to mind, And, for the stripling taken to her bed, To deem the dame less culpable inclined: Less of herself than sex the fault he read, Which to one man could never be confined: And thought, if in one taint all women shared, At least his had not with ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... a point upon it, they're nasty. We are greater at raising cabbages than we are at sprouting cigar tobacco. Under these circumstances the free trader (he's a smoker, or if he isn't, his aunt or sister is) says we want Havana cigars to enter our lips without the taint of revenue. That's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... likely. I had a young man's differences with my cousin, as lads will fall out, but there was the making of a fine fellow in him. But it was the wife, bringing in that Greek taint, worse even than the Italian, so that there's no believing a word out of any ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the fashion to call them here, and even among the banking community, but never among women of condition, whose deportment in France, whatever may be their morals, is usually marked by gentility of air, and a perfectly good tone of manner, always excepting that small taint of roueism to which I have already alluded, and which certainly must have come ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in which they are grown: "layers from the same clean flower would come part of them clean and part foul, even when subjected to precisely the same treatment; and frequently one flower alone appears influenced by the taint, the remainder coming perfectly clean."[863] This running of the parti-coloured flowers apparently is a case of reversion by buds to the original uniform ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... area was not more than twelve square feet; where the air was foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench; where the purser's store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter and poisonous cheese; where the musty taint of old ropes came to them, there was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. Did women really respect virtue for its own ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... and the gadding Vine o'regrown, And all their echoes mourn. The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green, Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes. As killing as the Canker to the Rose, Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze, Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear, When first the White thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear. Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep Clos'd o're the head of your ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating dens; or that the most generous contributor at his last charity sermon was ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the King of the celestials he stood alone, holding the duty of protection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven. And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification, and that the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh, but men say, Shri Krishna counselled the telling of a lie! My brothers, can you not see beneath the illusion? What is there in this world that the Supreme does not do? There is no life but His, no Self but His, nothing save His life through all His universe; and every act is His ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... Unlike Lady Hester Stanhope, whose fantastic and 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 the "cry of joy" as she passed along, and the people flung branches ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... 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 ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... our means of cure, we must recognize the necessity of studying the aetiology of insanity, including that damnosa haereditas, which is the cause of causes in so large a number of the cases coming under our treatment. But what induced the ancestral taint? It behoves us to pay more and more attention to those laws of inheritance in general to which Mr. Hutchinson has recently directed attention in his suggestive lectures ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... contend with. The Iron Brigade had a different head-gear from the rest of the army and were recognized at once by their old antagonists. Some of the latter were heard to exclaim: "There are those d——d black-hatted fellows again! 'Taint no militia. It's the Army ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... nor foul dishonour could their truthful utterance taint, And they cursed Duhsasan's action, when they heard ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... chief quality of this remarkable speaker was his persuasiveness, and he had the air of being too prudent to offend even an opponent unnecessarily. His language, though natural and easy, was choice and refined. He was evidently a man who had read, and not a little; and there was no taint of vulgarity, scarcely a provincialism, in ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she had done anything ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... and saint! Red rose and white in the garden; There is on you no earthly taint: And the bird sings over ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leave to avoid the general MELEE, and to breathe the night air, which we find grateful and reviving. Phew! but it was hot and thick, we don't want to breathe it again. It is astonishing that people get used to it, and like it too! But it leaves its taint upon them, for it permeates their clothing; they carry it about with them, and any one who gets a whiff of it gets some idea of the breath of a common lodging-house. And its moral breath has its effect, ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... his high image stamp'd on my poor worth Towards one so low and lost thy pity move: Medusa spells have made me as a rock Distilling a vain flood; Virgin! my harass'd heart With pure and pious tears do thou fulfil, That its last sigh at least may be devout, And free from earthly taint, As was my earliest vow ere ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... imaginings of a romantic girl, all that he had taken seriously only a school-girl's foolish dream! Instead of combating it, instead of reasoning with her, instead of trying to interest her in other things, he had even helped on her illusions. He had treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh. He had recognized her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance—it might be ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... would have been out of drawing from standpoints of ancient art. One must rescue Richard's head; it was not that nubbin of a head which goes with the Farnese one. Moreover, it showed wisest balance from base to brow; with the face free of beard and mustache, while the yellow hair owned no taint of curl—altogether an American head on Farnese ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her offence Must be of such unnatural degree, That monsters it; or you for vouch'd affection Fall into taint. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... morning the summons came to go forth to further adventures. Accompanied by three deputies, but free of the Henkel handcuffs, we passed the gates and trod the sunny pavements. Not a cloud in the blue sky, nor a taint upon the pure wings of the free air. None that saw us pass suspected our invisible fetters. Yet to me at least the thought that had ministered to me in the actual courtroom and prison, that the fetters were a dream and freedom ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... were so far decomposed as not to be capable of removal. The aspect of the river was as much changed as that of the city. Numbers of bodies were thrown into it, and, floating up with the tide, were left to taint the air on its banks, while strange, ill-omened fowl, attracted thither by their instinct, preyed upon them. Below the bridge, all captains of ships moored in the Pool, or off Wapping, held as little communication ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... brightest ornaments of the court of Louis XIV. His chosen friends, in his declining years, were Madame de Sevigne, one of the most accomplished women of the age, and Madame de Lafayette, who said of him, "He gave me intellect, and I reformed his heart." But if the taint was removed from his heart, it continued in the understanding. His famous "Maxims," published in 1665, gained for the author a lasting reputation, not less for the perfection of his style, than for the boldness of his paradoxes. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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 ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... would have been entirely different. But for any one to seek to persuade us that these Twelve Verses, which exactly constitute one of the Church's most famous Lections, are every one of them spurious:—that the fatal taint begins with the first verse, and only ends with the last:—this is a demand on our simplicity which, in a less solemn subject, would only provoke a smile. We are constrained to testify astonishment ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... development to be able to find support in religious hypocrisy. So that while in former days a man who professed the religion of the Church could take part in all the crimes of the state, and profit by them, and still regard himself as free from any taint of sin, so long as he fulfilled the external observances of his creed, nowadays all who do not believe in the Christianity of the Church, find similar well-founded irrefutable reasons in science for regarding themselves as blameless and even highly moral in spite of their participation in the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... earnestly. "Do not look so grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... over the prairie. At the words of his master he growled and contracted the muscles of his lips, as if half disposed to threaten with the remnants of his teeth. The younger dog, who was resting after the chase of the morning, also made some signs that his nose detected a taint in the air, and then the two resumed their slumbers, as if ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of some, and of his sister among them, marred the grace and beauty of his features. Yet, as he was wont himself to say, when one thinks that each poor mortal is heir to a legacy of every evil trait or bodily taint of so vast a line of ancestors, lucky indeed is the man who does not find that Nature has scored up some long-owing ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was at the prospect of deliverance from all his misery through the kindly agency of death, it was characteristic of him that, even now, at the supreme moment of his impending deliverance, his self-respect imperiously demanded of him that at all costs must he eschew even the faintest taint of so cowardly an act as that of suicide; if death were really close at hand—as it certainly appeared to be—well and good; it was what he was hoping for, and would be thrice welcome. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent upon himself that he should take ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very towns they went through, as well as the families ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... had been removing the high pews from a church in Brighton, and putting in open benches in their place. Everyone knew what that meant; everyone knew that a high pew was one of the bulwarks of Protestantism, and that an open bench had upon it the taint of Rome. But Manning hastened to explain: 'My dear friend,' he wrote, 'I did not exchange pews for open benches, but got the pews (the same in number) moved from the nave of the church to the walls of the side aisles, so that the whole church has a regular arrangement of open benches, which (irregularly) ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... what was meant by "fah tee, fah tee;" to which his lordship replied—"Hout, he canna speak; he means fau too, fau too." Thus one Scotticism was held in terror by those who used a different Scotticism: as at Inverary, the wife of the chief writer of the place, seeking to secure her guest from the taint of inferior society, intimated to him, but somewhat confidentially, that Mrs. W. (the rival writer's wife) was quite a vulgar body, so much so as to ask any one leaving the room to "snib the door," ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the more extravagant and offensive parallel which may serve as a set-off against that which was drawn by English Royalists between the death of Charles I. and the Crucifixion. Among other fables, it was believed that the President's family had fled from Kentucky to Indiana to escape the taint of Slavery. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the course of his migrations was not determined by high moral motives, and we may safely affirm that had he ever found himself among the fleshpots of Egypt, he would have stayed there, however deep the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... patient toil on his part did at first engender in my mind suspicion that some doubting thoughts urged him to assume his independence against any accident that might befall the estate; but now I believe 'twas nothing but a love of work and of his art, and that his mind was free from any taint of misgiving, as regards his wife's honesty. 'Tis likely enough, that spite her caution, many a word and sign escaped Moll, which an enemy would have quickly seized on to prove her culpable; but we do never ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... far better affirm his state of mind by his dress, than by any written words. Lying on the bed, cleanly shaved, wearing evening clothes, silk socks, patent leather shoes and white gloves? No, that would be vulgar, and all taint of vulgarity must be avoided. He must represent, even in a state of symbol, the young man, who having drunk of life to repletion, and finding that he can but repeat the same love draughts, says: "It is far too great a ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... husbands might love them better; indicating that indulgence is not man's sole concern, even though he be a barbarian; that one reason he seeks the opposite sex is his desire for fair daughters and brave sons—a love in which there is no taint of lust. Hugo, to whom the human heart was as a printed page, has given us an admirable portrait of "the way of a man with a maid" in the courtship of Marius and Cosette. Youth and ardor and opportunity, yet no ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone's firmness, which wouldn't ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... with the weight of my approaching feet. I'll make the inspired threshold of his court Sweat with the weather of my horrid steps, Before I enter; yet, I will appear Like calm securitie, befor a ruin. A politician must, like lightning, melt The very marrow, and not taint the skin; His wayes must not be seen through, the superficies Of the green centre must not taste his feet, When hell is plowed up with the wounding tracts, And all his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... periods. He even expressed some anxiety lest doubts should begin to be entertained as to the perfect clemency of the King's character. "Here is so much confiscation and bloodshed going on," said he, "that some taint of cruelty or avarice may chance to bespatter the robe of his Majesty." He also confessed that he had occasionally read in history of greater benignity than was now exercised against the poor Netherlanders. Had the learned Frisian arrived at these humane conclusions at a somewhat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven: Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Lord, our souls would be Still more and more conformed to thee! Would lose the pride, the taint of sin, That burns these fevered veins within? And learn of thee, the lowly One, And, like thee, all our journey run, Above the world, and all its mirth, Yet weeping ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... wretches to my care; First let them each be broken on the rack, Then, with what life remains, impaled, and left To writhe at leisure round the bloody stake; There let them hang, and taint the southern wind. The partners of their crime ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... Con., that's of no use, I should know myself for a liar all the time. I shall never quit liquor; I can't and I tell you," he whispered this fiercely, "they know that I can't, and they know why I can't. Oh! you need not recoil; we are not the first family that has inherited a taint; and I am the one unfortunate in whom that taint has broken forth. Let me tell you a secret; since my first potation, my mother has never once remonstrated with me; never once upbraided; my proud, high ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... all the way to the Lakeville lake. I never knew my beast's pace on the Kingston road what it was through that track, all the rustling and scuttling of the beasts and birds sounding round us, the glare gaining on us, and the scent of smoke beginning to taint the wind. There was Randolf's clearing at last, lonesome and still as ever, and a light in the window. Never was it so hard to pull in a horse; however, I did so. He was still up, reading by a pine torch, and in five minutes more the woman and her children were upon the horse, making for the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise the kernels ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... indicating that some convulsion had disturbed the general order of nature at this place. We had passed a portage above it, and after two long portages below it we encamped. Near the last was a small stream so strongly impregnated with sulphur, as to taint the air to a great distance around it. We saw two brown bears on the hills in the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... 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
... twice to die! others shall die once; but thou, besides that death that remains for thee, common to all men, hast in thy lifetime visited the shades of death. Thee Scylla, thee Charybdis, expect. Thee the deathful Sirens lie in wait for, that taint the minds of whoever listen to them with their sweet singing. Whosoever shall but hear the call of any Siren, he will so despise both wife and children through their sorceries that the stream of his affection never again shall set homewards, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... better and more Catholic education; that, in fine, he, Dr. Dilman, if Paul consented, would take the younger, Eugene, with him into the city, where his education could be attended to, and where he, at least, might be saved from the influence of the barbarous mannerism and irreligious taint of these country "common schools." His reverence the doctor furthermore added, that Mr. Prying had no objection to the arrangement he proposed, and that he had conquered the repugnance that Mrs. Prying had to the separation of the brothers by the very flattering ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... all white meat, is quick to taint, and never should be kept long before cooking. If you have the slightest doubt about pork, it is best to reject it, for unlike other meat which may be quite wholesome and usable, though not of precisely ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... sprung from due degrees Of sense and spirit sweetly mix'd. Her modesty, her chiefest grace, The cestus clasping Venus' side, How potent to deject the face Of him who would affront its pride! Wrong dares not in her presence speak, Nor spotted thought its taint disclose Under the protest of a cheek Outbragging Nature's boast the rose. In mind and manners how discreet; How artless in her very art; How candid in discourse; how sweet The concord of her lips and heart; How simple and how ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... an open good-humoured face, and 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 one ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... a big, broad-chested, muscular man, whose neck rose like a mortised beam out of his shoulders, straight with the back of his head. His face was handsome in a bold, shrewd mold, but dark as if his blood carried the taint of a baser race. He went about always dressed in a long frock coat, with no vest to obscure the spread of his white shirt front; low collar, with narrow black tie done in exact bow; broad-brimmed white sombrero tilted back from his forehead, a cigar that always seemed ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Russell the fall of Sumter, he stated that civil war had at last begun. The North he believed to be very much more powerful than the South, the South more "eager" and united as yet, but, he added, "the taint of slavery will render the cause of the South loathsome to the civilized world." It was true that "commercial intercourse with the cotton States is of vital importance to manufacturing nations[124]...." but Lyons was now facing an actual situation rather than a possible one, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... "'Taint to be done, miss. There's a drop at our side which makes the fence ever so much higher, and how you didn't hurt yourself is little less than a miracle to me. I'll have the horse put to the cart and drive you round to the front entrance in a jiffy. Dan and Beersheba ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... are few and far between. In the trial for the rehabilitation of the Maid of Orleans, the story of her deeds in the field was not of much importance to the commissioners. What they principally desired to ascertain was the fact that no taint of heresy could attach to the life of the heroine. It was for this reason that all those persons who could throw any light upon Joan's early days and the actions of her childhood had been collected to give ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... men and women and useful citizens, it is not their education which is to blame, but the inborn sinfulness of their corrupt and fallen natures. Such an education is regarded by those who advocate it as pre-eminently useful. There is no nonsense about it, no cant of idealism, no taint of socialism. It keeps the "lower orders" in their places, and forbids them to dream of rising above "that state of life unto which it" has pleased "God to call them." As it is a reductio ad absurdum of the conventional type of education, my objection to it is that it makes the best possible ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... organizations, the Unionist Free Food League and the Unionist Free Trade Club. In the subsequent developments the duke played a dignified but somewhat silent part, and the Unionist rout in 1906 was not unaffected by his open hostility to any taint of compromise with the tariff reform movement. But in the autumn of 1907 his health gave way, and grave symptoms of cardiac weakness necessitated his abstaining from public effort and spending ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... (a.u. 933)] [Sidenote:—1—] This [Commodus] was not naturally wicked, but was originally as free from taint as any man ever was. His great simplicity, however, and likewise his cowardice made him a slave of his companions and it was through them that he first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was attracted into licentiousness ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... action it induces is "the letter." These constitute two different and often antagonistic movements. The letter kills the spirit. But when this occurs we are apt to mistake the slayer for the slain and impute to the ardent spirit all the cold vices of its murderer. Hence, the taint of insincerity that seems to hang about enthusiasm is, after all, nothing but illusion. To be just we should discount this illusion in advance as the wise man discounts discouragement. And the epithet for the man whose lungs are large with the breath of ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... find her locked, this moment, in your son's Incestuous embrace. Believe your king. Now go; you stand amazed; you stare at me With searching eye, because of my gray hairs. Unhappy man, reflect. Queens never taint Their virtue thus: doubt it, and you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... strange as the fact may appear, is still more completely spoiled for the purpose which it seemed expressly made for, than the word Thing. Being is, by custom, exactly synonymous with substance; except that it is free from a slight taint of a second ambiguity; being implied impartially to matter and to mind, while substance, though originally and in strictness applicable to both, is apt to suggest in preference the idea of matter. Attributes are never called ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Ef he seed the Scarlet Woman about in his part o' the country, he'd lay by an' h'ist her, an' you'd say, 'Well done!' an' I don't say you'd be wrong. But jest you stop an' ax hes motives, an' you'll find 'taint religion. Lor' bless 'ee, sir, a bull's got no more use for religion than a toad for side-pockets. 'Tes obstinacy—that's what 'tes. You tells me a jackass es obstinate. Well, an' that's true in a way; and so's a hog. Ef ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her of it to escape me with impunity. I knew that the motive of securing the just recognition of my wife in the birthplace from which she had been driven out as an impostor, and of publicly erasing the lie that still profaned her mother's tombstone, was far purer, in its freedom from all taint of evil passion, than the vindictive motive which had mingled itself with my purpose from the first. And yet I cannot honestly say that my own moral convictions were strong enough to decide the struggle in me by themselves. They were helped ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... well of him," replied his firm-minded niece; "and even I admit that I love him, as far as a girl of such a cold constitution as mine may; but I tell you, uncle, that if I discovered a taint of vice or want of principle in his character, I could ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... crowning virtue that Shakespeare demands in rulers. But the Shakespearean code is innocent of any taint of sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... says Brother Beans, "but I think I'll let you in on it. The name of our noble organization is 'Grue's Overseas Grouches,' and our humble object is to rebuke the only taint of Prussianism which we have personally encountered in an otherwise perfectly good man's army. When we've done ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... from her lowly seat by her precious book-case and came round and looked at Rae Malgregor rather oddly. "Yes," faltered Helene Churchill. "What did you go into nursing for?" The faintest possible taint of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... said the doctor emphatically. "Her father and mother were both sound and well-balanced. I know the history of the family through three generations, and there's no hint of any taint. Twenty-five years ago Holladay, who was then just working to the top in Wall Street, drove himself too hard—it was when the market went all to pieces over that Central Pacific deal—and had a touch of apoplexia. It was just a touch, but I made him take a long vacation, which he spent ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... circumstance at once and for ever becomes a hero, a martyr, a man to be excused, to be prayed for, to be worshipped. No matter how black his offence, the touch of the constabulary washes him whiter than snow, purifies him from every earthly taint, surrounds him with a halo of sanctity. Those whom he has injured will not bear witness against him, because their temerity might cost them their lives, the loss of their property, the esteem of their fellow-men. What this means we shall shortly ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... had ever dared. His women are never young, foolish, timid girls—they are Amazons; and his men are the kind that lead nations out of captivity. The soft, the pretty, the yielding, were far from him. There is never a suggestion of taint or double meaning; all is frank, open, generous, honest and fearless. His figures ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... 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
... do, my son. But I must not let thee linger longer here; for although I myself hold that the whole and sound are not affected by the taint, there be leeches of repute who swear 'tis death to abide ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... showed that for each one five families in that house had applied for charity within a given time. There were those that had as many as fifteen of the ominous marks, showing that seventy-five families had asked aid from the one house. To find a tenement free from the taint one had to search long and with care. Upon the disease maps the scourge of tuberculosis lay like a black pall over the double-decker districts. A year later the State Commission, that continued the work then ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... country, to find such men among her avowed defenders. Oaths and obscenity made even more hateful the rough narratives in which each strove to prove himself more hardened and abandoned than the last speaker. Blair's soul recoiled with horror from the taint of such companionship; yet for him there was no escape. Among these coarse rovers he was forced to eat and sleep, to live and labor, while many weeks ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... reflections were of a different character: "The very air breathes sin to-day," he cried; "oh that I did not find the taint of the city in these works of God! Alas! sweet Nature, the child of the Almighty, is made to do the fiend's work, and does it better than the town. O ye beautiful trees and fair flowers, O bright sun and balmy air, what ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... York. It is needless to say that this conviction is the completest triumph which Freedom has yet gained in our country against her adversary. It indicates more clearly even than any event of the war, that Southern social influences are yielding, and that ere long we shall be free from all their taint. Like the defeat of Fernando Wood, like the breaking up of the Peace Party, like the rapidly progressing crusade against old political corruption, it shows that there is a reformation afoot which will work wonders, and prove to the world that the mass of corruption in this country, so ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shook his head deprecatingly. "Don't seem lak I evah able to rickermembah dat boy's name, nohow. His grampa' 'uz a Hynds, likewise his ma, but she 'sisted on marryin' er furriner, an' de boy takes atter de furriners 'stead er we-all. 'Taint de po' boy's fault, but ol' Mis' Scarlett hated 'im wuss 'n pizen. De only notice she take er de boy is ter warrant 'im fo' trispassin'. Dat 's how come folkses ter say—" ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... heart within. Whenever, from sickness or misfortune, a comrade stood in need of sympathy, Jackson was the first to offer it, and he would devote himself to his help with a tenderness so womanly that it sometimes excited ridicule. Sensitive he was not, for of vanity he had not the slightest taint; but of tact and sensibility he possessed more than his share. If he was careless of what others thought of him, he thought much of them. Though no one made more light of pain on his own account, no one could have more carefully avoided giving pain to others, except when duty ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... this argument. Humor was one of her saving qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness. Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I have only a local ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying of every power from the taint of sin He ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... its beauty is being recognized by all who have read it. It contains the race memory of Ireland, its imaginations and thoughts for two thousand years. Must that be obliterated? Must national character be sterilized of all taint of its peculiar beauty? Must Ireland have no character of its own but be servilely imitative of its neighbor in all things and be nothing of itself? It is objected that the study of Irish history, Irish literature and the national culture generates hostility to the Empire. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... his horse to a dead stop, and speaking in an excited manner; 'I doan't b'lieve it, 'taint 't all like ye; yer a d—d seceshener—thet comes uv yer bringin'-up; but ye've a soul bigger'n a meetin'-house, and ye cudn't hev put thet slim, weakly gal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the afternoon some sick Inniskilling Fusiliers were admitted, and for some time seemed dazed at the kind treatment they were receiving, and appeared half under the impression they were in Heaven. "What's this chummy?" queried one. "Imperial Yeomanry Hospital" was the reply. "Thank Gawd 'taint the R.A.M.C." grunted the Tommy, turning over on his side with a sigh of relief. At about ten that night we had to make room in our tent for a dozen wounded men from Thursday's fight. Ninety were being brought into Rietfontein and the I.Y. people ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Saxons. "The slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes—war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... of our adventures thus far, I find it impossible. How, then, make it real to others? To tell of aerial adventure one needs a new language, or, at least, a parcel of new adjectives, sparkling with bright and vivid meaning, as crisp and fresh as just-minted bank-notes. They should have no taint of flatness or insipidity. They should show not the faintest trace of wear. With them, one might hope, now and then, to startle the imagination, to set it running in channels which are strange and delightful to it. For there is something new under the ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Byron! why compel me to deplore Talents designed for choice poetic lore, Deigning to varnish scenes, that shun the day, With guilty lustre, and with amorous lay? Forbear to taint the Virgin's spotless mind, In Power though mighty, be in Mercy kind, Bid the chaste Muse diffuse her hallowed light, So shall thy Page enkindle pure delight, Enhance thy native worth, and proudly twine, With Britain's Honors, those ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the girl who has gone astray is put out of sight, out of mind if possible, at any rate out of speech, as though she had never existed, and that this ferocity comes not only from hatred of the sin, put in part also from a dread of the taint which the sin brings with it. Very low as is the degradation to which a girl is brought when she falls through love or vanity, or perhaps from a longing for luxurious ease, still much lower is that to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... I as free from all other ills that 'flesh is heir to,' as I certainly am of the taint of catalepsy, I might indeed congratulate myself upon an immunity which would obviate the dire necessity of ever meeting ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... as five. I was struck with the quiet and self-possession with which each man delivered his opinion, as well as with the language used. The accent was uniformly provincial, that of Hubbard included, having a strong and unpleasant taint of the dialect of New England in it; and some of the expressions savoured a little of the stilts of the newspapers; but, on the whole, the language was sufficiently accurate and surprisingly good, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... in here!" she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with the usual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. There was a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when driven forth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection,—the family room of an old Dutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were cheap,—thick walls; deep, low window-seats; beams showing on the ceiling; a modern cooking-stove, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... 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 where ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... be unfair not to take note of the malarious atmosphere in which he grew up. The constitution of his mind was thus early infected with a feverish taint that made him shiveringly sensitive to a temperature which hardier natures found bracing. To him this rough world was but too literally a rack. Good-humored Mother Nature commonly imbeds the nerves of her children in a padding of self-conceit that serves as a buffer against the ordinary ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Thornton had been so well off that "widow's thirds" would have placed her in comfortable circumstances. As it was, the whole of his property went to her only surviving son, a youth who had inherited, with some of his father's good looks, all his bad principles; and in addition a taint—we may suppose—of the penal atmosphere in which he was born. But there was not a shadow of doubt about his being the person named in the will. Perhaps, if it had been worded "my lawful ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... coming to himself, he prostrated himself at my feet in acceptance of the relationship and did me reverence. When he rose his eyes were full of tears ... O little brother mine! I am fast going to my death—let me take all your sin away with me. May no taint from me ever ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... terrified, flash of fancy, knew to be lying, an almost insupportable blot upon all that was fair and seemly, in the stained and mouldered coffin. Yet there was a place for that difficult horror too in the scheme of things, though the thought seemed almost to taint the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save, And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled; yet to my ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... surpasses all the other boys in everything, and but repeats his triumphs later when he goes to Amherst College. His mother lives upon the victories which he despises; but at last she yields to the taint which was in her own blood as well as her husband's, and destroys herself. The son, who was aware of her suicidal tendency, and had once overheard her combating it in prayer, curses the God who would not listen to her and help her, and rejects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... towards my kind friends the savages. I have wished to illustrate the customs and character of a people very much calumniated, amongst whom I have found strong and devoted friendship free from every taint of jealousy ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... authority of religion. Neither the throne nor the senate-house, the secret conclave nor the popular assembly, can shield one from the force of that primary law of human action—thou shalt not sin against thine own soul. Purity of purpose and sincerity of conduct must preserve the citizen from the taint of evil, or he will become corrupt, and if he do not disgust, will ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... 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
... we had under our care a patient in the last stages of locomotor ataxy, who for years had been suffering the tortures of the damned. There had never been a taint of specific disease in her system, but four different times in her life she had been salivated by calomel (a common laxative containing mercury). This dreadful poison was given to her in large doses for the cure of liver ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... dim silver thou dost look, I do behold thy face, though blurred and faint. Oh joy! no flaw in me thy grace will brook, But still refine: slow shall the silver pass From bright to brighter, till, sans spot or taint, Love, well content, shall see no speck of brass, And I his perfect face shall ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... "Well 'taint me," said Rose shrinking. "Look here — I've got a delicious plan in my head — I'm going to make them take us in the boat round ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those odious tunes, which ram themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the gate for them, raising his hat and smiling as they came. His face witnessed to the wonder worked on him. The colour showed clean, purged of his taint. His eyes were candid and pure under brows smoothed ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... ice wrench free, crash on with a hollow din; Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the taint of sin. The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us swift along; The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song. We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again; We guessed ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... is a taint of blood—of treachery—about this whole affair that sickens me. It terrifies me when I think of what lies ahead. I—I think I have already tasted death, and the taste is still bitter in the mouth. I must get ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... me innocent in the presence of Nebertcher,[1] because I have done that which is right in Tamera (Egypt), neither blaspheming God, nor imputing evil (?) to the king in his day. Homage to you, O ye gods, who live in your Hall of Maati, who have no taint of sin in you, who live upon truth, who feed upon truth before Horus, the dweller in his disk. Deliver me from Baba, who liveth upon the entrails of the mighty ones, on the day of the Great Judgment. Let me come to you, for I have not committed offences ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... 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. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... make the work most needed and fraught with the greatest usefulness to the community as a whole. There should be no extravagance, and the believers in the need of irrigation will most benefit their cause by seeing to it that it is free from the least taint of excessive or reckless ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... flattery. Why should this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas Finn and Lady Laura Kennedy had not seen each other for two years, and when they had parted, though they ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... heard by the ears of educated people nor uttered by their lips: it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman's eyes: it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England or America, could profess honest and absolute ignorance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... assertion of the Rights of 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 ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the No'th to run this property for money—that's square and fair business; THAT any fool here can understand—it's No'th'n style; it don't interfere with these fools' family affairs; it don't bring into their blood any No'th'n taint; it don't divide their clannishness; it don't separate father and son, sister and brother; and even if yo' got a foothold here and settled down, they know they can always outvote yo' five to one! But let these same fools know that yo' 're courtin' a So'th'n girl known to ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... no taint of Muscovite intrigue about my attitude!" exclaimed Stampoff with a vehemence that showed how deeply he was moved. "I have given the best years of my life to my country, and I am too old now to be forced to act against ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... so," said Max deliberately. "She was responsible from first to last. She knew of the taint in her veins. He did ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell |
