"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 by my remembrance ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... "'Taint only that, sir; for it's enough to frighten a man to death or send him mad to be all alone here in a ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... your pardon. My conduct was too infamous for that. Will you remember the family taint, developed by a deaf man's isolation among his fellow-creatures? But I had some days when my mother's sweet nature tried to make itself felt in me, and did not wholly fail. I am going to my mother now: her spirit has been with me ever since my hearing was restored; her spirit ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... was the autumn sunrise! After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into the pearly silence ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by danger. But for the present at least he was free. Free! The word had never appealed to him so strongly before. He drew in great draughts of the mountain air. They seemed in a way to cleanse his lungs from the prison taint. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... protection in a quarter from which they would once have had to expect nothing but implacable severity. By this time the philosophy of the eighteenth century had purifed English Whiggism from that deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted during a long and close alliance with the Puritanism of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun to feel that the arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, had vindicated the rights of conscience might be urged ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... universal experience is contemplated as both positive sin and negative falling short of the 'glory' (which here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God). 'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all. 'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common experience ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... leprous taint of bigotry to sully his soul, blur his vision, or cramp his sphere of action, the broad stream of Christian charity flowed from his noble, generous heart, sweeping away obstacles that would have impeded the usefulness of a minister less catholic in sympathy, more hampered by creed ligaments ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... my dear?" said Aunt Keziah, mollified by the praise of her beloved mixture. "Drink first, dear, so that my sick old lips need not taint it. You look pale, Septimius; ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... must be removed by screening or sifting. River sand is frequently used, but is not so good as pit sand on account of the particles being rubbed smooth by attrition. Sea sand is objectionable for two reasons; it cannot be altogether freed from a saline taint, and if it is used the salt attracts moisture and is liable to keep the brickwork permanently damp. The particles, moreover, are generally rounded by attrition, caused by the movement of the sea, which makes it less efficient for mortar than if they retained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and Rodolph slunk away. For the old story is known throughout the shore, and Rodolph proved, in his fight with you, the bad blood in his veins. It never does to cross the white blood with the red, for the treachery of the Indian will taint the race ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... habit, the coarse Hebrew type, One might have elbowed in the public mart Iscariot,—nor suspected one's soul-peril. Christ's blood! it sets my flesh a-creep to think! We may breathe freely now, not fearing taint, Praise be our good Lord Bishop! He keeps count Of every Jew, and prints on cheek or chin The scarlet stamp of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... concerning whose "prudence and gentleness" he could once turn so many fine 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. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their backs. As the season advances and the water becomes chilled, they are flung in myriads on the shores, where the wolves and bears assemble to banquet on them. Often they rot in such quantities along the river banks as to taint the atmosphere. They are commonly from two ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... now got herself quickly out of the room, absolutely kissing the woman whom she had both dreaded and despised. As soon as she was alone in the street she tried to think of it all. How full of beauty was the face of that American female,—how rich and glorious her voice in spite of a slight taint of the well-known nasal twang;—and above all how powerful and at the same time how easy and how gracious was her manner! That she would be an unfit wife for Paul Montague was certain to Hetta, but that he or any man should have loved her and have been loved ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Government. And it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... before they are put in use; and for old Casks, if they stand any time out of use, they are apt to grow musty: unslack'd Lime, about a Gallon to a Hogshead, with about six Gallons of Water put in with it, and the Hogshead presently stopp'd up, will clear it of its Taint, if the same be repeated four or five times; or burning of Linnen dipp'd in Brimstone, to be close stopped in a Cask, three or four times repeated, will do the same: or else put Water in your Vessels, and throw ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... motto, "Roy ne puis—Prince ne veux—Rohan je suis," is one which is theoretically strong among the country squires of England, the possessors of the bluest blood and longest deeds of hereditary lands; but the snobbishness of the nineteenth century is practically apt to taint the younger branches when they read of garden-parties given by the royal princes or balls where duchesses and cabinet ministers are as plentiful as blackberries. Their great-grandmothers, it is true, were sometimes troubled with the same longings, for among the many proclamations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... together prest, And on her silver 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. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... into the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was very sad—very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity cropping up. The young man must simply ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... average "gangster" shows a taint of alcoholism. This is further aggravated by living under immoral surroundings, where petty crimes like stealing and lying are considered "smart." This is the starting point of the New York "gangster." He is handicapped, and under ancestral disabilities and the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... minnit.' And at et he goes accordin'. 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 you wants quiet contrariness, a jackass or a hog'll ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... India preserved their religion, though not without some taint from the circumjacent idolatry. Their celebration of the Moharram, with tasteless and extravagant ceremonies, and their forty days' fast in Ramzan, were alike misplaced in a country where, from the movable nature of their dates, they sometimes fell in seasons when the rigour of the climate ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... them. Certainly it is obvious to you all that a university ball-player making himself famous here, and then playing during the summer months at a resort, is laying himself open to suspicion. I have no doubt that many players are innocent of the taint of professionalism, but unfortunately they have become members of these summer teams after being first requested, then warned, ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the sun, From taint and blemish free— Great William Stow was there for one, And George A. Knight ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... hoein', and ploughin', and drill, And my hosses all knows me and works with a will; I'm fond o' my 'chinin', and thackin' and drainin', For when work's to be done, 'taint ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... up to the hatchway that led down to the forecastle. If disease had smitten the Minnie B they hoped to get some clew from the taint of the sailors' quarters. Greer stuck a nose down the ladder first. Beyond the usual close ship smells there seemed to be nothing ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... persons, and the time; And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labour as a wise man's art: For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... yes, I have just died, as they call it, and 'taint so bad a change after all; only I suppose there'll be dry times here for the want of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... year, he informed me, had now elapsed without effacing from her mind this singular taint of insanity; still her friends hoped it might gradually wear away. They had at one time removed her to a distant part of the country, in hopes that absence from the scenes connected with her story might have ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... ar heap too big a crap to be gethered 'thout whisky. 'Lasses-and-water nuver gethered no crap sence de woil' war' made, ner 'taint gwine to." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... sweet, innocent, ladylike, high-spirited, joyous creature. Those struggles of her father to get rid of the last porcine taint, though not quite successful as to himself, had succeeded thoroughly in regard to her. It comes at last with due care, and the due care had here been taken. She was so nice that middle-aged men wished themselves younger that they might make love to her, or older that they might ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... shall be taken to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one god she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: 'Tis labor lost, to ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... rowels rang, Or on the floor my sabre smote, The sound went through her like a pang. I saw this; and the days to come Forewarned me with an iron clang, That drowned the music of the drum, That made the rousing bugle faint; And yet I sternly left my home,— Haply to fall by noisome taint Of foul disease, without a deed To sound in rhyme or shine in paint; But, oh, at least, to drop a seed, Humble, but faithful to the last, Sown by my Country in her need! O Death, come to me, slow or fast; I'll do my duty while I may! Though sorrow burdens every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest, But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to Heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To goad and sting her. Fare thee well at once The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. Adieu, adieu, adieu! ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... that you have nothing whatever to fear. Clemency is her mother's living and breathing image as far as looks go, and as far as I can judge in the innermost workings of her mind. I have not seen in her the slightest taint from her evil father, though God knows I have watched for it with horror as the years have passed. After she was born I smuggled her away by night, and gave out word that the child had died at the same time with the mother. There was a private funeral, and the casket was ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good riding face, and he can sit a great horse; he will taint a staff well at tile; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that's all I know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... old railroad bond debt, held a conservative position in the Union,—financially, socially, patriotically and commercially. Its credit is the best, its prospects the brightest, and it makes very little difference which political party dominates its future so long as it is free from the taint of anarchy and is guided by the principles of honor and justice. The only thing to be feared is that some political party may gain control of the government of the nation, and either degrade its currency, involve ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Ethel, his jovial ministrations overflowed to Mrs. Scott, until the sedate colonel's wife admitted to herself that no such pleasant voyage had fallen to her lot since the days when she had started for India on her wedding journey. Weldon had the consummate tact to keep the taint of the filial from his chivalry. His attentions to Mrs. Scott and Ethel differed in degree, but not in kind, and Mrs. Scott adored him accordingly. One by one, the languid days dropped into the past. Neptune had duly escorted them over the Line, to the boredom of the first-class passengers and ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious taint. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... of Joseph's innocence, and when he cast him into prison, he said to him, "I know that thou art not guilty of so vile a crime, but I must put thee in durance, lest a taint ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Thackeray says that he was only a great jester. Humor is the laughter of the heart, and Sterne's pathos is closely interwoven with his humor. He was the foremost of English sentimentalists, and he had that taint of insincerity which distinguishes sentimentalism from genuine sentiment, like Goldsmith's, for example. Sterne, in life, was selfish, heartless, and untrue. A clergyman, his worldliness and vanity and the indecency of his writings ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... by one concentrated effort, even as England cleaned her corrupt borough elections of a century and a half ago. Let us fix on one man who will stand for civic purity, virtue and honor, no matter what his party. Let us elect a United States senator who is above reproach, above the taint of gaining a victory by the downfall of his fellow men! In the next ballot, let us each ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... bee-life, I would not introduce the subject of heredity. But you know, Miss Martin, that such racial characteristics are transmitted, or transmissible, I should say, by sex opposites. Thus, an epileptic mother is more likely to give her taint to a son than to a daughter.... Yes, I mean all that, and more," he went on, seeing the look of horror, not unmixed with fear, in Doris's eyes. "There must be no more irritating of Siddle, or playing on his feelings—by you, at any rate. Treat him gently. If he insists ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... her former attitude, looking downward as before. "But that I always was—a slave, and the daughter of a slave. Your child, though unknown and unacknowledged, better that it died than lived my life over again, cursed with the proud Anglo-Saxon blood, debased by the African taint, that, if it exists but in the slightest degree, poisons all ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... candlesticks are dainty, the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge—it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent luxury—absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of the Devil ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 'taint you, is it? And you compared yourself with that little, peaked-faced chap that's around just the same—you with shoulders as broad as them are, and two ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... freedom she endorsed and applauded. The descendants of those black soldiers, who were engaged in the prolonged struggle for freedom, can rejoice in the fact that no single act of those patriots is in keeping with the Englishman's prediction; no taint of brutality is even charged against them by those whom they took prisoners in battle. The confederates themselves testify to the humane treatment they unexpectedly received at the hands of their negro captors. Mr. Pollard, the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of the visionary projects just mentioned the gravest doubts began to agitate the fertile and casuistic mind of the Lady Superior. The holier her ideal St. Ginx of the future, the more to be deplored was any heretical taint in the present. Holy mother! Was it not perhaps eminently perilous to his spiritual purity that an unbeliever like Mrs. Ginx should bring unconsecrated milk into the convent to be administered to this suckling ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... as the following ludicrous sketches of some of the enormities of Charles II. "Towards the close of the Protectorate, many signs indicated that a time of license was at hand. But the restoration of Charles II rendered the change wonderfully rapid and violent. A deep and general taint infected the morals of the most influential classes, and spread itself through every province of letters. Poetry inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an abject reverence for the court, gave additional effect to its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... He has a masculine judgment and no small degree of wit—though 'tis of a hard intellectual kind; but through misprising his fellow creatures he has come to lack flair. His lady, if she scent a taint on the wind wafted through her routs and assemblies, no doubt sets it down to breathings upon her humble origin, or (it may be) even to some leaking gossip of her foregone wrong. (Women, my dear sir, are brutes to rend a wounded one of the herd.) ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... already set in. In phlegmonous and suppurative habitual erysipelas, a cure is generally facilitated, if a dose of Sulphur 30 is interpolated, in the manner which we have explained before, in order to neutralize the psoric taint which ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it—into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence—some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... other translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment were not ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... was in great part due to misunderstanding. The law requires to be systematised and made clear rather than to be substantially altered. It is, on the whole, a 'generous, humane, and high-minded system, eminently favourable to individuals, and free from the taint of that fierce cowardice which demands that, for the protection of society, somebody shall be punished when a crime has been committed.' Though English lawyers are too apt to set off 'an unreasonable hardship against an unreasonable ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Hildreth kept himself alive with nostrums until he was seventy, but he was an invalid all his life. He ought to be cursed for his contemptible selfishness in bringing so much suffering upon the race! There's none of the taint about Evadne, bless her! Russe told me the Hospital examiners said they had never passed such ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... his rightful meed was gone. And I was all distraught and conquered. Of ending his base life I never thought, never at my wildest, though I had thought to end my own; but when Fate struck the blow for me, then I swore that carrion should not taint my whole life through. It should not—should not—for 'twas Fate's self had doomed me to my ruin. And there it lay until the night; for this I planned, that being of such great strength for a woman, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class techmen who ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... from the desire of serious and able men in the American Army to maintain the high ideals for which all of them have fought, to preserve the soldier comradeship and carry it over into civilian life as an element of broad helpfulness while keeping the record of the army free from the taint of selfish aims. It was also wisely intended to forestall by the creation of one big genuinely representative, nonpartisan and democratic body, the formation of numerous smaller organizations in various places by men intent on exploiting the ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk away all alone. I am afraid—sore afraid—that this purpose originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement; but when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt compelled to admit that it might be so, and had an impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pursu'st this Act, Taint not thy Mind; nor let thy Soul contrive Against thy Mother ought; leave her to Heav'n, And to those Thorns that in her Bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... an inquiry as to the cause of the proceedings. He made no friends, and though his surliness repelled us, he made few enemies. Indeed, he was rather a favorite, since he was a genuine character; his gruffness had no taint of selfish greed in it; he minded his own business strictly, and wanted others to do the same. When he first came into the company, it is true, he gained the enmity of nearly everybody in it, but an incident occurred ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... even as they are known? Men, too—alas! how fast their number grows—whom I have known, have loved, and lost too soon; and all gleaming out of the gloom, as every image of the dead should do, in pure white marble, as if purged from earthly taint? To ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... now, an' I reckon dey calls him by he fus' name. An' now, look h'yar, Aun' Patsy, I wants you not to disremember dis h'yar. Don' you go imaginin' ebery time anything happens to folks, that ole miss done been kunjerin' 'em. Dat ain't pious, an' 'taint suitable fur a ole pusson like you, Aun' Patsy, wot's jus' settin' on de poach steps ob heaben, a waitin' till somebody finds out you's dar, ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... been a revolution,[55] properly so called; there never has even been one grand national rebellion. The people, tho often lawless, are never free. Among them we find still preserved that peculiar taint of barbarism which makes men prefer occasional disobedience to systematic liberty. Certain feelings there are of our common nature, which even their slavish loyalty can not eradicate, and which, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... which we have already referred, and which Mr. Britton kindly submitted to us with various other correspondence on the subject), he says, "there can now be no impropriety in mentioning what could not be said when the collected edition of Chatterton's works was published,—that there was a taint of insanity in his family. His sister was once confined; and this is a key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death." Of this unhappy predisposition, indeed, he seems to have been himself conscious, for "in his last will and testament," ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... life, his character, or his works. The three are inseparably connected, and to understand one we must understand all. The reason is that Shelley is one of the most subjective of writers. It would be hard to name a poet who has kept his art more free from all taint of representation of the real, making it nor an instrument for creating something life-like, but a more and more intimate echo or emanation of his own spirit. In studying his writings we shall see how they flow from his dominating emotion of love for his fellow-men; and ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Ring, nor pomander cannot expiate for, dost thou tell me I should? I'le pose thy Worship in thine own Library and Almanack, which thou art daily poring on, to pick out days of iniquity to cozen fools in, and Full Moons to cut Cattle: dost thou taint me, that have run over ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... perhaps then because it's so bad—because your industry as you call it, IS so vulgar—that Mr. Chad won't come back? Does he feel the taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... sweet scent of clover or of new-mown grass, the odour which arises from the cottages is peculiarly offensive. It is not that they are dirty inside—the floor may be scrubbed, the walls brushed, the chairs clean, and the beds tidy; it is from outside that all the noisome exhalations taint the breeze. The refuse vegetables, the washings, the liquid and solid rubbish generally is cast out into the ditch, often open to the highway road, and there festers till the first storm sweeps it away. The cleanest woman indoors thinks nothing disgusting ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... 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 so long with zealous ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... routed them, always was the man on the job. It was his name that appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. He made a god of him. This was the attitude of ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... therefore, I shall enter the body of my preceptor's lady. I shall stay within her and yet not touch her person, like a drop of water on a lotus-leaf which lies on it and yet does not drench it at all. If I be free from the taint of passion, I cannot incur any fault by doing what I wish to do. As a traveller, in course of his sojourn, takes up his residence (for a while) in any empty mansion he finds, I shall, after the same manner, reside this day within the body of my ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in incredulous silence a moment longer, and then hurried back to the living room, as though some of his horrible guilt would taint them, too, if they looked too long. Morty stayed behind long enough to give Lou a quizzical, annoyed glance. Then he also went into the living room, leaving only Emerald standing in ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... attention with which it ought to protect property from such violence,—the commonwealth then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, a pestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off, or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back upon themselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, fester to gangrene, to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel-copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love. Othello, Act iv. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... cited by Mr. Ray. Here might come in (or be nam'd at least) wild-cornel, or dog-wood, good to make mill-cogs, pestles, bobins for bone-lace, spokes for wheels, &c. the best skewers for butchers, because it does not taint the flesh, and is of so very hard a substance, as to make wedges to cleave and rive other wood with, instead of iron. (But of this, see chap. II. book II.) And lastly, the viburnum, or way-faring-tree, growing also plentifully in every ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... have not been able to lift a pen. My constitution and frame were, ab origine, blasted with a deep incurable taint of hypochondria, which poisons my existence. Of late a number of domestic vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed times; losses which, though trifling, were yet what I could ill bear, have so irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be envied by a reprobate spirit ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... reformed And the average feminine fortress is stormed. In rescuing men from abysses of sin She loses her head—and herself tumbles in. The mind of a woman was shaped for a saint, But deep in her heart lies the devil's own taint. With plans for salvation her busy brain teems, While her heart longs in secret to know how sin seems. And if with this question unanswered she dies, Temptation came not in the right sort of guise. There's my estimate, Reese, of the beautiful sex; I see by your face that my ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... experiences of her childhood? Had the cruelty which tortured her during the years when the soul is being fashioned left upon her no brand of slavish vice, nor the baseness of those early associations affected her with any irremovable taint? As far as human observation could probe her, Jane Snowdon had no spot of uncleanness in her being; she had been rescued while it was yet time, and the subsequent period of fostering had enabled features of her ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... other corrupt and infectious maladies, broke out with great violence as the army advanced along the northern shores of the AEgean Sea; and as every victim to these dreadful and hopeless disorders helped, by his own dissolution, to taint the air for all the rest, the wretched crowd was, in the end, reduced to the last extreme of misery ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of meat, the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... complexion, with a Tartar physiognomy and fierce little eyes, he walked with his fists clenched, his body bent forward, darting suspicious glances from under an enormous cocked hat. His intelligence was limited, and his sanity itself was doubtful. The hereditary taint expressed itself, in his case, not by mystic leanings as in his two brothers, Alexander and Nicholas (in their various ways, for one was mystically liberal and the other mystically autocratic), but by the fury of an uncontrollable temper which generally broke out in disgusting abuse ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... been violently torn. This incident symbolises very aptly the attitude of America. The country has not yet recovered from the hostility which it once professed to George III. It assumes that a difference of policy always implies a moral taint. The American Colonies broke away from the mother country; therefore George III. was a knave, whose name may not be mentioned without dishonour, and all the brave men who served him in serving the colonies are dishonoured also. It is ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... be always in the power of the most skilful of the faculty to pronounce, with any certainty, whether a person who has been under their care, in certain stages of this malady, is so effectually cured, as to leave no possibility of his being still capable of communicating the taint. I think I could mention some instances which justify my presuming to hazard this opinion. It is likewise well known, that amongst a number of men, there are, generally, to be found some so bashful as to endeavour to conceal their labouring under any symptoms of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the last skimming add half a dozen whole cloves, a dozen whole alspice, a pod of red pepper, a few whole grains of black pepper, and if you like, a young onion or a stalk of celery. Personally I do not like either onion or celery—moreover they taint the fat one may save from the pot. Let the water boil hard for half a minute, no longer, then slack heat till it barely simmers. Keep it simmering, filling up the pot as the water in it boils away, until the ham is tender throughout. The time depends on several things—the ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... pitifully ignorant. I thought that love had come to me. Girls are so eager for love. They snatch at the shadow of it.—That is what I did.—I am not trying to plead for myself.—Some things are not to be forgiven.—Somewhere in my nature there was a taint—a plague-spot.—If life is given me, I shall find it and root it out. I only ask for time to do that. But meanwhile I have done what I could. I have told you the truth. I have set you free. I have given you ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... do? Is murder your intent?—While I have life I fear you not!—And think you that brutality can taint the dead? Nay, think you that, were you endowed with the superior force which the vain name of man supposes, and could accomplish the basest purpose of your heart, I would falsely take guilt to myself; or imagine I had received the smallest ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... surgeon shook his head. "Captain Sharkey," said he, "it would be an ill deed to speak you false. The taint is on you. No man on whom the leper scales have rested ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... vigorous opponents of the Jansenists, who, indeed, soon had cause to look upon Vincent as one of the most powerful of their enemies. But although he hated the heresy with all the strength of his upright soul, Vincent's charitable heart went out in pity to those who were infected with its taint, and it was with compassion rather than indignation that he would speak of St. Cyran and his adherents. Not until they had been definitely condemned by the Church did he cease his efforts to win them from their errors—efforts which were received, for the most part, ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... bear. The grain which becomes our bread grows best when its roots are spread in unseen corruption; and so perfect is the chemistry of nature, that the yellow ears of harvest retain absolutely no taint of the putrescence whence they sprung. Thus easily and perfectly the Lord brings lessons of holiness from examples of sin. He pauses not to apologize or explain: majestically the instruction advances, like the processes of nature, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... alliance between the Tories and malcontent Whigs for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation, moreover, of the Craftsman—the first official journal of a political party in England—showed his appreciation of the technique of political controversy. Most of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... words, to which he had listened intently, re-perused, throughout, this record of the stone; and finding that the general purport consisted of nought else than a treatise on love, and likewise of an accurate transcription of facts, without the least taint of profligacy injurious to the times, he thereupon copied the contents, from beginning to end, to the intent of charging the world to hand them down ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of more than of amusing himself. I say, "at the best," for perhaps he will suffer from exhaustion and a distaste of the subjects which once pleased him; or perhaps he has suffered some real intellectual mischief; perhaps he has contracted some serious disorder, he has admitted some taint of scepticism, which he will never get ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... from my birth. I loathed it and shrank from it. Why? I could not have said. Had I been born in Carolina instead of Massachusetts I should hardly have escaped the taint of "service." Its temptations in wage and comfort would soon have answered my scruples; and yet I am sure I would have fought long even in Carolina, for I knew in my heart ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... broke from Fulvia. She admired and respected Crescenti, yet she had never fully trusted him. The taint of ecclesiasticism was ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious, tending to sour the meat and taint it with ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... flashing screens; central operators of communications dropped under the winking lights of their panels. Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... 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 that we ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... thoughts rose in pictures) possibly condemned the speculator as a description of gambler. An erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the enthusiast for things old English. She was consciously ahead of them in the knowledge that her father had been, without the taint of gambling, a beneficent speculator. The Montgomery colony in South Africa, and his dealings with the natives in India, and his Railways in South America, his establishment of Insurance Offices, which were Savings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of 'oman can fix 'em, so's dey won't be so turrible bad," suggested the negro, "'taint fer, so you jes' run down ter my cabin an' tell Sukey I say fix ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun |
