"Defilement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he pictured them as Christ and Satan; but the first would overthrow all else. "Glory!" he cried mechanically aloud. He put down the hairbrush and inspected the razors on their shelf. The bright morning light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shall then not be ashamed of the flag of our passion, which mother Nature has sent with us as our standard into the battlefield of life. Passion is beautiful and pure—pure as the lily that comes out of the slimy soil. It rises superior to its defilement and needs no Pears' soap ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... when lust, By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose, The divine property of her first being. Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres, Lingering, and sitting by ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... unanimous affirmation of Buddhist authors, if any Buddhist were offered the alternative of an existence as king of a dewa loka, keeping his personality for a hundred million years in the uninterrupted enjoyment of perfect happiness, or of translation into Nirwana, he would spurn the former as defilement, and would with unutterable avidity choose the latter. We must therefore suppose that by Nirwana he understands, not naked destruction, but some mysterious good, too vast for logical comprehension, too obscure ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... eyewitness, that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention—that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building—that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst—that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... firm. My fathers! whom I will rejoin, It may be, purified by death from some Of the gross stains of too material being, I would not leave your ancient first abode To the defilement of usurping bondmen; If I have not kept your inheritance As ye bequeathed it, this bright part of it, Your treasure—your abode—your sacred relics 430 Of arms, and records—monuments, and spoils, In which they would have revelled, I bear with me To you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... But for all that, I'll not have road dirt flung on me by no one. For, roadsters varmint though I be, there be things which I do hold brighter nor silver and cleaner nor new opened leaves, and I'll not have defilement throwed ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience rejected its defilement, struggled fiercely in its shame, rent itself in its repentance and did not for one second permit itself the full enjoyment of vice, was never completely ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... part opens with the impressive prayer, "Father of Heaven, from Thy eternal Throne," sung by the Priest. As the fire ascends from the altar, the sanctuary having been purified of its heathen defilement, the Israelites look upon it as an omen of victory and take courage. A Messenger enters with tidings of Judas's triumph over all their enemies. The Israelitish Maidens and Youths go out to meet him, singing the exultant march chorus, "See the Conquering Hero ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... body to be dragged behind. Twice he dragged him around the tomb of Patroclus, leaving him at length stretched in the dust. But Apollo would not permit the body to be torn or disfigured with all this abuse, but preserved it free from all taint or defilement. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... not sure that I am doing right," resumed the Don, "in accepting such invitations, as it throws me into the society of heretics so often; and you know we cannot touch pitch without defilement." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... twice in the same place, putting spits in rice-fields, flaying an animal alive or against the grain, etc. The crimes against the State were cutting and wounding (whether the living or the dead), defilement on account of leprosy or cognate diseases, unnatural offences, evil acts on the part of children towards parents or of parents towards children, etc. Methods of expiating crime were recognized, but, as was the universal custom in remote times, very cruel ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... give themselves up to the excesses of this debasing indulgence, carry about with them, continually, a consciousness of their defilement, and cherish a secret suspicion that others look upon them as debased beings. They feel none of that manly confidence and gallant spirit, and chaste delight in the presence of virtuous females, which stimulate young men to pursue the course of ennobling refinement, and mature ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul as a newborn babe: to whom almost alone nature has given an impure outlet to the light of day: being kneaded with blood, and full of defilement, and like one killed rather than born: which no one would touch, or lift up, or kiss, or embrace, but from natural affection. And that is why all the animals have their udders under the belly, women alone have their breasts high on their bodies, that they can lift up their ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... that the Targumists intended here a strong allusion to the original meaning of Jezebel's name; viz. that she who was named "the undefiled" should become as "defilement." I am not sure whether a disquisition of this kind may be considered irrelevant to your work; but as the idea seems not an improbable one to some whose judgment I value, I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... practice what they had been preaching—"Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you." If, instead of selling images of Buddha, they had used their influence to preserve his temples from desecration and defilement, or offered sanctuary to his priests, it is certain that they would have more materially furthered the cause ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... [Greek: tauron kai tragon kai spodos damaleos rhantizousa tous kekoinomenous hagiazei pros ten tes sarkos katharoteta. mallon to haima tou Christou ... kathariei ten suneidesin hemon apo nekron ergon eis to latreuein Theo zonti.] The defilement by dead bodies, against which the water of purification was specially used, is the most significant symbol of sinners and sins.—4. "It is, in general, not probable that the Servant of God, who farther down is described as a sacrificial beast (!),—who, by taking upon Himself the sins of His ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... to him, high and noble race, found himself a god-send to the Out-castes, the Untouchables, the Depressed Classes, Mangs, Mahars, and Sudras,—they whose touch, nay the touch of whose very shadow, is defilement! For, at last, they, too, had some one to look down upon, to despise, to insult. After being the recipients-of-contempt as naturally and ordainedly as they were breathers-of-air, they at last could apply a salve, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... The Secret of the Totem, London, 1905.) Thence rose the obligation on virgins to yield to a stranger first. Only then were they permitted to marry a man of their own race. Furthermore, various means were resorted to in order to save the husband from the defilement which might result from that act (see for inst., Reinach, Mythes, cultes, I, p. 118).—The opinion expressed in this note was attacked, almost immediately after its publication, by Frazer (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 50 ff.) who preferred to see in the sacred prostitutions ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... any one's ideal city. Surely Town, in theory at least, is a place one walks about as one walks about a house and garden, dressed with a certain ceremonious elaboration, safe from mud and the hardship and defilement of foul weather, buying, meeting, dining, studying, carousing, seeing the play. It is the growth in size of the city that has necessitated the growth of this coarser traffic that has made "Town" ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... dug, and when the enclosure can conveniently contain no more pits a new one is selected and prepared. None but priests and bearers of the dead may enter, or even look into, these walled cemeteries. The priests, by virtue of their holy office, are preserved from defilement, but the bearers are men set apart for this express purpose, and they are considered so unclean that they may not enter under the roof of any other Parsee or salute him on the street. If in passing a bearer do but touch one's clothes accidentally, he is subject to a heavy fine, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... this gold is impure in the end, it is because it has contracted fresh defilement by coming in contact with other bodies. But this impurity is only superficial, and does not prevent its being used; whereas its former impurity was hidden within it, and, as it were, ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... 202, writing against the Valentinians and certain Gnostics led by Marcus, states explicitly that many of the women who had been led into heresy and impurity, and who afterwards returned to the Church, confessed even publicly, and wept over their defilement. "But others, ashamed to do this, and in some manner secretly despairing within themselves of the ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... the Bible, describes the original state of man, as a state of perfect purity and innocence. He was made in the image of God. He was made upright [Gen. i. 26, 27.; Eccles. vii. 29.]. His understanding, will, his affections and conscience, his body and soul, were free from defilement, guilt, or guile, and while he continued so, he was not liable ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... beautiful woman who loved me and whom I had come to love and desire. But what was the end of it? Owing to the necessities of statecraft and her own nobleness, she had been separated from me and although, as it would seem, she had as yet escaped defilement, was spirited away into the temple of some barbarous worship where I was almost sure ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... of Bizor, behind the lake of Houleh, in the valley of Mageddo, and beyond the mountains, at Bostra and at Damas. Let those who are covered with wine-dregs, those who are covered with dirt, those who are covered with blood, come to me; and I will wash out their defilement with the Holy Spirit, called by the Greeks, Minerva. She is Minerva! She is the Holy Spirit! I am Jupiter Apollo, the Christ, the Paraclete, the great power of God incarnated in the ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... which flows over the slime-smudged roots limpid and refreshing. If you cut into the bark of the tea-tree you will find water in beads and trickles, water which sparkles with purity and has a slightly saline taste. The bare roots alone suffer defilement. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... being an unparalleled instance without any pollution or defilement, and a virgin not knowing any man, shall ring forth a son, and a maid shall bring forth the Lord, who both by his grace and name and works, shall be the ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... issue and nine that enter; two yield the draught and one drinks." Said he to her: "Seven are the days of a woman's defilement, and nine the months of pregnancy; two are the breasts that yield the draught, and one the child that drinks it." Whereupon she said to him: "Thou ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... were combined in one act, for that touch went to the man's heart. I can only hint at them here. Hand to hand is enough for the cure of the bodily disease; but heart to heart will Jesus visit the man who in deepest defilement of evil habits, yet lifts to him a despairing cry. The healthful heart of the Lord will cure the heart spotted with the plague: it will come again as the heart of a child. Only this kind goeth not out save by prayer ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... crier? or they that saw you depart? or they that met you as ye came hither in such unseemly plight? What but this, that ye had done some great wickedness, wherefore ye must be driven away from the gathering of gods and men lest your presence should be a defilement? Is not this a city of enemies, wherein if ye had tarried but one single day ye would all have suffered death? They have declared war against you, and if ye are men they will suffer ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... vulgar argument, child. It should not touch a true woman, Grey. Any young girl can find work and honorable place for herself in the world, without the defilement of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... personate heathen damsels; and we only ask, What must have been the effect of representing far fouler characters than Terence's on the minds of uneducated lads of the lower classes? Prynne and others hint at still darker abominations than the mere defilement of the conscience: we shall say nothing of them, but that, from collateral evidence, we believe every word they say; and that when pretty little Cupid's mother, in Jonson's Christmas masque, tells how ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... not be," he answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers—the defilement of common life." ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... whosoe'er he be. Let no man in this land, whereof I hold The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him; Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes. For this is our defilement, so the god Hath lately shown to me by oracles. Thus as their champion I maintain the cause Both of the god and of the murdered King. And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):— Wretch, may he pine ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... poisoning of the fountain springs of life could mean. By the triumph, she realized what the defeat, the debasement could be. She thought of love as a fountain spring, a spring into which you could not both cast defilement and drink of waters undefiled; as an altar flame fed with incense lighting the darkness; and one could no more offend love with impurity, than cast the dung heap on the altar flame and not expect blastment. She wanted ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... slighted, first of all because we had not fired a salvo in their honor, and secondly because we failed to spread mats from the beach to the house, upon which the bride might place her virgin feet without defilement! These were indispensable formalities among the "upper ten;" and the result was that COOMBA could not land unless the etiquette ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of the eyebrows. A mistress necessarily belongs, though living in the next street, to the Wady Liwa and to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for the lover's blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the "defilement of separation." Youth is upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a branch of the Ban-tree which we should call a willow-wand,[FN307] while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As Baron de ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... for Christian joy. There was music and dancing, as well as feasting, when the prodigal son came home; returned from his sins, washed from his defilement, clothed at last in "the best robe" a sinner can wear.[12] ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... still half asleep on his iron bedstead which was lifted half-way up the wall and clamped to it with iron, four sluices or metal mouths opened above him at the four corners of the chamber and washed it white of any defilement. Turnbull's solitary soul surged up against ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... tradition of the church has always been unanimous in this point; and among the Romans, Greeks Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without defilement, in mind or body. The fathers, from the very disciples of the apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellency of holy virginity, as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... he spoke, and saw in the moonlight a flash from her eye, and an heroic expression on her face, such as he had never remarked before; but she said nothing. The veil had been rudely torn from her eyes; she had seen with horror the defilement and impurity of what she had ignorantly adored in holy places, and the revelation seemed to have wrought a change ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... days! And a little doubt dropped into it, "If former days there ever were." For who can tell? This crumbling, ragged business which to us means that we stand before the Past; this gradual perishing of things in neglect and defilement, may very well have formed a necessary part of our ancestors' present. Our own standard and habit of tidiness, decorum, and uniformity may be quite recent developments; barbarism, in the sense of decay and pollution, may ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Citadel of Piacenza, Cosimo d'Anguissola might stand at his usual post beside the Duke and might fall with him. Surely justice demanded it!" she cried out. "God's justice, as well as man's. His act in marrying me was a defilement of one of the holiest of sacraments, and for that he should surely be punished ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... of them that are without, avoid. But if you have occasion to take part in them, let not your attention be relaxed for a moment, lest you slip after all into evil ways. For you may rest assured that be a man ever so pure himself, he cannot escape defilement ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... outpourings, his unnatural defilement of his own nest, were gravely quoted in every newspaper in the Kingdom, without a hint of recognition of the fact that they were fundamentally criminal and a public offence. The sacrosanct "liberty of the subject" was involved; and though Mr. Blaine would have been forcibly restrained ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... many early Christians scrupled to eat. It has, however, another and special significance due to the regulations imposed by caste. As a rule a Hindu of respectable social status cannot eat with his inferiors without incurring defilement. But in many temples members of all castes can eat the prasad together as a sign that before the deity all his worshippers are equal. From this point of view the prasad is really analogous to the communion inasmuch as it is the sign of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... sanctifying power and Spirit of Christ revealed in the soul; which is commonly called sanctification. But none can come to know Christ to be their sacrifice, that reject him as their sanctifier: the end of his coming being to save his people from the nature and defilement, as well as guilt of sin; and, therefore, those that resist his light and Spirit, make his coming and offering of ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... convenient ammunition, which chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... musical appendage before the gate. The requisite formalities being gone through, the drawbridge was lowered, and this parliamentary representative was speedily admitted through a little wicket into the Babylon which he abhorred. His very feet seemed in danger of defilement. He looked as if breathing the very atmosphere of pollution; but when ordered to kneel down that he might be blindfolded, his spirit rose ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... priest performs the service of the Temple in a state of defilement, his brother priests are not required to lead him before the tribunal, but the juniors of the priestly order are to drag him out into the hall and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... exposed to those sudden changes of feeling which had so often bewildered him. And now that delicate creature was in the hands of Beauchamp—a selfish and vulgar-minded fellow! That he whom he had heard insult a dead woman, and whom he had chastised for it, should dare to touch Kate! His very touch was defilement. But what could he do? Alas! he could only hate. And what was that, if Kate should love! But she could not love him already. He would tell her what kind of a person he was. But she would not believe him, and would set it down to jealousy. And it would be mean to tell her. Was Kate then ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... forth children," the following are added: "and thou shalt be under thy husband's power." But, as Augustine says (Serm. de Assumpt. B. Virg., [*Supposititious]), from this sentence we must exclude the Virgin-Mother of God; who, "because she conceived Christ without the defilement of sin, and without the stain of sexual mingling, therefore did she bring Him forth without pain, without violation of her virginal integrity, without detriment to the purity of her maidenhood." Christ, indeed, suffered death, but through His own spontaneous desire, in order to atone for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... these letters they make use of the Aleph, by which we can tell that they are not of the seed of Israel, although they know the law of Moses with the exception of these three letters. They guard themselves from the defilement of the dead, of the bones of the slain, and of graves; and they remove the garments which they have worn before they go to the place of worship, and they bathe and put on fresh clothes. This is their constant practice. On Mount Gerizim are fountains and gardens and plantations, but Mount ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... that relation. Among the many dissatisfactions and bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is ignoble or base. And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all breath of defilement. It showed clear right through, as some gem of the purest water. To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and ambitions. Hence that its perfection should be now endangered was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... society. Next, we want girls of sense,—girls who have a standard of their own, regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good girls,—girls ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of defilement ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... vessel, which the Hindu religiously guards against defilement, and to which he clings as a cherished possession when he has nothing else belonging ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... city howl at her ugliness! How she did curse! She cursed my father and mother—she cursed their graves—flung dirt upon my brother and sisters, and filth upon the whole generation. She gave me up to Jehanum, and to every species of defilement. It was a dreadful thing to hear that old woman curse. I pulled my turban over my eyes, that she might not recognise me, and lifted up my garment to cover my face, that I might not be defiled with the shower of curses which were thrown at me like mud, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Menel[a]os, when he eloped with his wife, Helen; and Sextus was the guest of Lucretia when he defiled her. (2) The elopement of Helen was the cause of a national war between the Greek cities and the allied cities of Troy; and the defilement of Lucretia was the cause of a national war between Rome and the allied cities under Por'sena. (3) The contest between Greece and Troy terminated in the victory of Greece, the injured party; and the contest between Rome and the supporters of Tarquin terminated in favor of Rome, the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... touch. Ne'er dream of kissing me: alike I shun Your face, your language, and your tigerish fun. How winning are your tones, how fine your air! Your beard how silken and how sweet your hair! Pah! you've a sick man's lips, a blackamoor's hand: Your breath's defilement. Leave me, I command." ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... all for the moment whitened by the new fall of snow. So she thought at first; but Matilda soon found there was no whitening New York. The roadway was cut up and dirty, of course; and the multitudes of feet abroad dragged the dirt upon the sidewalks. However, the sky was blue; and defilement could not reach the sunlight; so she went along happy. But before she got to Fourteenth Street, nine of her eleven pennies were gone. Some timid words had gone with them too, sometimes; and Matilda had seen the look of dull asking change to ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... trouble. It is to be observed, however, that in the wet season these trenches cannot be used, and in sandy soil they do not answer. This system, although it is preferable to what formerly prevailed—viz., the surface defilement of the ground all round villages and of the adjacent water courses—is fraught with danger unless subsequent cultivation of the site be strictly enforced, because it would otherwise retain large and increasing masses of putrefying matter in the soil, in a condition somewhat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... synonymous with knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... insensate wood. Men are those scowling priests and infuriate Pharisees. Men, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who shout and curse without knowing why. No visible glory shines round that head; yet how, spite of every defilement cast upon him by the vulgar rabble, seems that form to be glorified! What light is that in those eyes! What mournful beauty in that face! What solemn, mysterious sacredness investing the whole form, constraining ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and gay with winding walks and banks Of fruits and flowers; for the southern road Skirted its lawns, on this hand leaf and bloom, On that the suburb-huts where base-borns dwelt Outside the gates, a patient folk and poor, Whose touch for Kshatriya and priest of Brahm Were sore defilement. Yet those, too, were quick With expectation, rising ere the dawn To peer along the road, to climb the trees At far-off trumpet of some elephant, Or stir of temple-drum; and when none came, Busied with lowly chores to please the Prince; Sweeping ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... and enter fully into the mental constitution of the Religious. This was a nun, to whom a blur upon the crystal of the soul kept pure, like the virginal body, for the daily reception of the Consecrated Host, meant defilement, outrage, insult, to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... experience proves to be an entire delusion is the idea that a boy's natural refinement is a sufficient protection against defilement. Some of the most refined boys I have had the pleasure of caring for have been pronounced victims of solitary sin. That it is a sin at all, that it has, indeed, any significance, either ethical or ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... renewed his odious addresses. Some of my women hearers will be shocked to hear me tell of declarations of love of this kind, but when a woman takes the step I did, she must accept such; one cannot play with pitch and escape defilement, and though I loathed the messenger and his words it would have been an incongruity to say so; so when he said I had best take the sunny side of life's boulevard with him, with forced calmness I refused and decidedly. On his taking a reluctant leave, I fell ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... ceremony is over her belongings are at once removed from the hut, and even the floor beneath the seat of the bride and bridegroom during the marriage ceremony is dug up and the surface earth thrown away to avoid any risk of defilement. Only when it is remembered that these rules are observed by people who do not wash themselves from one week's end to the other, and wear the same wisp of cloth about their loins until it comes to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... under such circumstances, he could not remain with me any longer. In his view, I was committing a great sin. To kill an ox or a cow, is considered by them as a crime which can never be atoned for, and to eat their flesh is a defilement which can never be washed away. To kill a cow is, by ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... fate of, say, a brig sailing into the China Sea in all the perfection of order of the British Marine: at, perhaps, Hong Kong, sold to a native firm, she would be refitted under an extravagant flag, and slowly the order would depart until, in a slovenly tangle of rigging and defilement, she'd be seen yawing on ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... contract I had ever signed, and I placed my liberty, if not my life, at the mercy of your wonderful police system. But those things count for little. I have been forced, Isobel, to leave you very much to yourself. You come of a race who would regard any association with me as defilement. And there is always the chance that you may be able to take your proper position in the world. That is why it has been my duty to keep away from you, why I have been forced to leave to others what I would gladly have done myself. To-night you will ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their sins but hideous dreams! How many would loathe the sin? How many would remain capable of doing all again? But few, perhaps no burdened souls can have any idea of the power that lies in God's forgiveness to relieve their consciousness of defilement. Those who say, "Even God cannot destroy the fact!" care more about their own cursed shame than their Father's blessed truth! Such will rather excuse than confess. When a man heartily confesses, leaving excuse to God, the truth makes him free, he knows ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... and mounted in silence. Fatally she recognised the old fellow's description; but—was it possible her lover had brought this man to marry them?—this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their hands? If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy, this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous farce. If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to have everything about her pure and holy—and on this day, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... passing umbrellas, whose varied tints of pink, blue, and orange, like the draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate. Then came the rush and splatter of cabriolets, scattering terror and defilement. The well-mounted English dandy shows his sense by hoisting his parapluie; the French dragoon curls his mustachio at such effeminacy, and braves the liquid bullets in the genuine spirit of Marengo; the old French count picks his elastic steps with the placid and dignified philosophy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... of exposing that monstrous Wickedness of the Town, whereby a Multitude of Innocents are sacrificed in a more barbarous Manner than those who were offered to Moloch. The Unchaste are provoked to see their Vice exposed, and the Chaste cannot rake into such Filth without Danger of Defilement; but a meer SPECTATOR may look into the Bottom, and come off without partaking in the Guilt. The doing so will convince us you pursue publick Good, and not meerly your own Advantage: But if your Zeal slackens, how can one help thinking that Mr. Courtly's Letter is but a Feint ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... passions, a confused mind, and attachment to anything but the one Brahma. He also cultivated Yama, that is, inoffensiveness, truth, honesty, the forsaking of all evil in the world, and the refusal of gifts except for sacrifice, and Nihama, i.e., purity relative to the use of water after defilement, pleasure in everything whether in prosperity or adversity, renouncing food when hungry, and keeping down the body. Thus delivered from these four enemies of the flesh, he resembled the unruffled flame of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... of cobbles, plastered. A little gurgling stream runs down the village street, and over the stream each cottage on its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook is much troubled, unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like defilement, and does its best to oversweep them and carry them away, but does not quite succeed. In a few minutes, however, it will be in the Axe, and in half an hour it will be in the pure sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep manure and black puddles ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... youth interested him. There was no denying that Woodville had great cause for anger, when he found his father's house occupied by a regiment of the enemy. He considered it defilement. The right or wrong of the war had nothing to do with it. It was to him ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... [To SIGISMUND. If 'tis me thou'rt seeking, Prince, At thy feet behold me lying. [Kneeling. Let thy carpet be these hairs Which the snows of age have whitened. Tread upon my neck, and trample On my crown; in base defilement Treat me with all disrespect; Let thy deadliest vengeance strike me Through my honour; as thy slave Make me serve thee, and in spite of All precautions let fate be, Let heaven keep the ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... all. She had a disgust for realizations, and at the same time a taste for them. If she had stabbed herself, it would, like Lucretia, not have been until afterwards. She was a virgin stained with every defilement in its visionary stage. She was a possible Astarte in a real Diana. She was, in the insolence of high birth, tempting and inaccessible. Nevertheless, she might find it amusing to plan a fall for herself. She dwelt in a halo of glory, half wishing to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... at their priestlike task Of pale ablution round earth's human shore. But they do not escape without defilement On the surface of the tide, when it ebbs from the mudbanks, there gathers an iridescent slime. Tiny particles of floating sand catch and reflect the light Fragments of dead weed, black or brown, are borne along. The tide has stolen across the beaches below the cottages ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... so or not, if we want an answer to the questions, How can my stained feet be cleansed so as to be fit to tread the crystal pavements? how can my foul garments be so purged as not to be a blot and an eyesore, beside the white, lustrous robes that sweep along them and gather no defilement there? the only answer that I know of is to be found by turning to the final visions of the New Testament, where the spirit of this whole section of our prophet is reproduced. Again, Babylon falls amidst the songs of saints; and then, down upon all the dust and confusion of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a quick retreat! How oft his blushes made my shame the deeper! Why did you turn me from the death I sought? Ah! When his sword was pointed to my bosom, Did he grow pale, or try to snatch it from me? That I had touch'd it was enough for him To render it for ever horrible, Leaving defilement on the hand that ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... hands, she took it off and threw it to a child. I hoped this meant something definite, and tried to lead her to Jesus. But as soon as she understood Who He was, she drew back. "I cannot be a disciple of your Guru, here," she said; "would my relations bear such defilement?" Being a Christian really meant sooner or later leaving her home and all her people for ever. Can you wonder an old lady of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultant darkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... chastity in order to avenge her own; caring nought for the purity of her own blood, so she might stain with incest the man who had cost her her own maidenhood at first! Infamous-hearted woman, who, to punish her defiler, measured out as it were a second defilement to herself, whereas she clearly by the selfsame act rather swelled than lessened the transgression! Surely, by the very act wherewith she thought to reach her revenge, she accumulated guilt; she added a sin in trying to remove a crime: she played the stepdame to her own offspring, not sparing ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... one an outcast" (Vasala-sutta); and not alone in virtue of karma of old, for: "The man who knows in this world the destruction of pain, who lays aside the burden and is liberated, him I call a Brahman; whosoever in this world has overcome good and evil, both ties, who is free from grief and defilement, and is pure,—him I call a Brahman; the ignorant say that one is a Brahman by birth, but one is a Brahman by penance, by religious life, by ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... shot, to know that the earth would really be cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeing thought. Then there would NEVER be another foul humanity created, for a universal defilement.' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... twins. Time and again she had to send the girls to bring babes to the Mission House, and many a stirring night she had, she sleeping with them in her bed, whilst outside stealthy forms watched for a chance to free the town from the defilement of their presence. The first that survived was a boy. The husband, angry and sullen, was for murdering it and putting the mother into a hole in the swamp. She faced him with the old flash in her eye, and made him take oath not to hurt or kill the child. He even promised to permit ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... sin against decency, or an attempt to poison the minds of the people, for a person to be ungrammatical, it might be wise enough to hire men to protect the well of English from defilement. But a stationary language is a dead one—moving water only is pure—and the well that is not fed by springs is sure to be a breeding-place ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... and thought no more of the defilement which might threaten Bent-Anat from the paraschites, but exclusively, on the contrary, of the impending desecration by the princess of the holy feelings ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... some happy place in the other world.[5] At least the word, which means a garden or park and was applied to the abode of our first parents in Eden, could not but call up in the consciousness of the dying man a scene of beauty, innocence and peace, where, washed clean from the defilement of his past errors, he would begin to exist again as a new creature. Even Christians have believed that the utmost that can be expected in the next world by a soul with a history like the robber's is, at least to begin ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... so great, the defilement so thorough, that at first he despaired of the possibility of a complete cleansing. "Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... were still open to Turkish and Mohammedan influence from the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the slave trade from the south, but the face of the finest Negro civilization the modern world had ever produced was veiled from Europe and given to the defilement of wild Moorish soldiers. In 1623 it is written "excesses of every kind are now committed unchecked by the soldiery," and "the country is profoundly convulsed and oppressed."[21] The Tuaregs marched down ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... of the gutter, contemptible old age unashamed, human pitch whose very touch is a loathing, a repulsion, a defilement." It seemed as if Commines was less afraid to speak his mind now that the walls of Valmy were out of hearing, for he went on bitterly: "The King chooses his tools well, a foul tool for a foul use, and neither you nor I can come out of it with ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Dharma-kaya, the same as Nirvana. It is only through ignorance that it appears to be different and particularized. Ignorance, the essence of which consists in believing in the distinction between subject and object, is also called defilement and the highest truth passes through various stages of defilement ending with that where under the influence of egoism and passion the external world of particulars is believed to be everything. But the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... neither their age nor the wounds which they received in past years while fighting for you, and you both refuse to ratify the war in which these very men elected to serve, and show yourselves inferior to them, who are ready to face dangers; for while you praise the soldiers that detected the defilement of Antony and withdrew from him, though he was consul, and attached themselves to Caesar, (that is, to you through him), you shrink from voting for that which you say they were right in doing. Also we are grateful to Brutus that he did not even at the start admit Antony ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... general meeting of the church. From me the accusation will come with ill grace, and yet a public charge must be preferred. You must be the champion of my cause. Your's shall be the task of conferring a lasting obligation on your friend—your's shall be the glory of ridding the sanctuary of defilement." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and by the help of chisels, thin crowbars, and other instruments, it was safely detached. The plaster was then removed from the back down to the priming, and the picture was backed with strong canvas. It was then cleaned from all its defilement, and, on being offered for sale at a good price, was bought by a nobleman, whose name I have not heard, and is now in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various |
