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Unclean   /ənklˈin/   Listen
Unclean

adjective
1.
Soiled or likely to soil with dirt or grime.  Synonyms: dirty, soiled.  "A child in dirty overalls" , "Dirty slums" , "Piles of dirty dishes" , "Put his dirty feet on the clean sheet" , "Wore an unclean shirt" , "Mining is a dirty job" , "Cinderella did the dirty work while her sisters preened themselves"
2.
Having a physical or moral blemish so as to make impure according to dietary or ceremonial laws.  Synonym: impure.  "And the swine...is unclean to you"



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"Unclean" Quotes from Famous Books



... They fixed all religious ceremonies, required the observance every seventh day of the Sabbath, dealt with marriage and the family, stated the penalties for wrongdoing, gave elaborate rules for sacrifices, and even indicated what foods must be avoided as "unclean." No other ancient people possessed so elaborate a code. The Jews throughout the world obey, to this day, its precepts. And modern Christendom still recites the Ten Commandments, the noblest summary of the rules of right living that ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... a large pine-tree, and before I had recovered from my surprise at his appearance, he fell upon Griffin Leeds, handling him with an ease that astonished me. He flung him on the ground like an unclean bird, and then pointed his ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... uncomfortably easy of identification in ragout and muffins. Her slippers were down at heel; her kitchen was never in order; her tins were black; her pots were greasy; her range was dull; her floors unclean. Like all her compeers, she "found the place harder nor she had been give to onderstand, but was willin' to do her best, seein' ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... knavery and villany are seldom rare, and I have been long accustomed to treat with both; only it's too bad to have more unclean spirits than one's own harpying and haunting a man! God! I can breathe better now that fellow's gone. Ah, Master Walter! there be two sorts of villains in the world: one with a broad, bronzed face, a bold loud voice, a drinking look, and an unsheathed dagger—and him men avoid and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... so much from the Jewish government as themselves for the power of congregations, both in ordination and excommunication, because the people of Israel laid hands on the Levites, and all Israel were to remove the unclean; 2. We answer, the laws of the Jewish church, whether ceremonial or judicial, so far are in force, even at this day, as they were grounded upon common equity, the principles of reason and nature, and were serving to the maintenance of the moral law. 'Tis of especial right, that the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... only partial at this time, never did she live completely. There was the cold, unliving part of her. Yet she was madly sensitive. She could not bear herself. When a dirty, red-eyed old woman came begging of her in the street, she started away as from an unclean thing. And then, when the old woman shouted acrid insults after her, she winced, her limbs palpitated with insane torment, she could not bear herself. Whenever she thought of the red-eyed old woman, a sort of madness ran in inflammation ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... material creation was a thing of evil. Through the whole of the Middle Ages, under the various names of Manicheans, Albigensians, Vaudois, &c., they became exceedingly vigorous, though their importance was only fitful. For them property was essentially unclean, something to be avoided as carrying with it the in-dwelling of the spirit of evil. Etienne de Bourbon, a Dominican preacher of the thirteenth century, who got into communication with one of these strange religionists, has left us a record, exceedingly unprejudiced, of their beliefs. ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... stench. Gradually a tall flame, over twenty feet high, leaked out, consuming the body and showing me, as the atmosphere cleared, the Shokas down by the river washing their hands and faces to cleanse themselves of what they look upon as unclean, the contact with a corpse. Retracing their steps to the village, the women cried and moaned, carrying back to the house the clothes of the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... unclean by Parsee standards, carriers of the dead, as well as those who enter the Towers, are assigned to a class by themselves, and forbidden to mix with others of their strange religion. There is a superstition that ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... so hedged about with perils! While he must stand aside, impotent, a pillar of the social order secure in its shelter, and see her hounded and driven by the forces of the Law, harried and worried like an unclean thing, forced, as it might be, to resort to stratagems and expedients unthinkable, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... merchants and other great people of the town. High Street, and, still more, the Salt-Market, now swarm with the lower orders to a degree which I never witnessed elsewhere; so that it is difficult to make one's way among the sullen and unclean crowd, and not at all pleasant to breathe in the noisomeness of the atmosphere. The children seem to have been unwashed from birth. Some of the gray houses appear to have once been stately and handsome, and have their high gable ends notched at the edges, like a flight of stairs. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... answered Teacher; "it will only clean his teeth and help him to remember not to say nasty words." And, all unaware of the laws of "kosher" and of "traef," the distinctions between clean and unclean, quite as rigorous as, and much more complicated than, her own, Constance Bailey washed out the mouth of her royal charge, and, it being then three o'clock, dismissed her awed subjects and went ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... and I perceive that this piece of salt pork stimulates my intelligence. To-morrow I will vote myself, and make others vote, for the exclusion of hogs, dead or alive; this done, I will build superb stock-yards in the middle of Paris "for the unclean animal forbidden to the Hebrews." I will become swineherd and pork-seller, and we shall see how the good people of Lutetia can help getting their food ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... tremble. He wanted to impose himself on her. And he began to shudder. She wanted to desert him, to leave him a prey to the open, with the unclean dogs of the darkness setting on to devour him. He must beat her, and make her stay with him. Whereas she fought to keep herself free ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... Dillon saw her in another light, as an unclean beast from sin's wilderness, in the light that shone from Honora Ledwith. Messalina cowered under the halo of Beatrice! When that light shone full upon her, Sonia looked to his eye like a painted Phryne surprised by the daylight. Her ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... strange, therefore, that Winter had no sooner opened the door of No. 17 than the novice of the party became aware of a heavy, pungent scent which he associated with some affrighting and unclean thing. At first he swept aside the phantasy. Strong as he was, his nervous system had been subjected to severe strain that evening. He knew well that the mind can create its own specters, that the five senses can be subjugated by forces which science has ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... cannibalism may be made a duty by religion. Amongst the ancient Semites some animals were under a food taboo for a reason which has two aspects at the same time: they were both offensive (ritually unclean) and sacred. What is holy and what is loathsome are in like manner set aside. The Jews said that the Holy Scriptures rendered him who handled them unclean. Holy and unclean have a common element opposed to profane. In the case of both there is devotion or consecration ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... guides the editor's pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha. According to that sentence fathered upon Solon, {Houto demosion kakon erchetai oikad' hekasto}. This unclean spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular sentiment could carry ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... in both the Old Testament and the New the dog was spoken of almost with abhorrence. He ranked among the unclean beasts. The traffic in him and the price of him were considered as an abomination, and were forbidden to be offered in the sanctuary in the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... garden. He rose with a shaking of branches and a flapping of broad black wings. He crossed the lake, croaking as he flew with a note more harsh, rasping and cynical than the consequential caw of English rooks. His was a malevolent presence "from the night's Plutonian shore," the symbol of something unclean and sinister lurking behind this dainty beauty and this ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... before him, knowing that where that can live, he can live; the Christian's test-flame is the peace of God; when that fails, he ought to know that it is safe to go no farther. This peace is like some magic mirror, by the dimness growing on the surface of which we may discern the breath of an unclean spirit that would work us ill. As the Apostle says, "Let the peace of God rule (i.e. be arbiter or umpire) in your hearts." We may almost say that for most of us it is true that what we can do quietly we can do safely. So we see ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... improved under the direction of the horse-fancying Briton; but they are never used on the farm. Ponies, donkeys, and mules are in use for various purposes. There are plenty of sheep and goats—so there are of hogs; but the higher of the middle class, like the Jews, regard them as unclean beasts, and would as soon take poison as eat the flesh of a pig. I don't sympathize with them, for I like roast pork when it is well brought up ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... consider the subject of physical cleanliness, but from the hygienic. How few people there are who are really physically clean! The outward semblance of cleanliness too frequently poses as the real article. Even people who pride themselves on their cleanliness are frequently guilty of the unclean practice of sleeping in the underwear they have worn during the day, and would feel aggrieved if their unclean habit was called by its right name. Yet, what can be more repulsive to the truly cleanly individual ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... Moses, whereof seven of a kind entered into the ark, namely, three couples for breed, and one odd one for sacrifice; the other eight-and-twenty kinds were 'taken by two of each kind; so that in all there were in the ark one-and-twenty great beasts clean, and six-and-fifty unclean; estimable for largeness as ninety-one beeves; yet, for a supplement (lest, perhaps, any species be omitted), lot them be valued as a hundred and twenty beeves. Of the lesser sort feeding on vegetables were in the ark six-and-twenty kinds, estimable, with good allowance ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... serve Him and love Him the more; or if thou beest in grief to glad thee with. Sometimes, it falls out that in GOD'S doom, one is better whom men deem evil than some that men deem good. Many are worthy without and unclean within. Some worldly and dissolute, and GOD'S private friends within. And some, in man's sight bear themselves like angels; and in GOD'S sight, they stink as sinful wretches. And some seem sinful to men's doom, and are full dear ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... rather than not persecute at all, he would persecute people out of one heresy into another, this man is held up as the champion of religious liberty. This man, who persecuted in the cause of the unclean panther, would not, we are told, have persecuted for the sake of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the spits of cooks, and the distaffs of enraged women; and that the entrails of Christian priests and virgins, after they had been tasted by those bloody fanatics, were mixed with barley, and contemptuously thrown to the unclean animals of the city. [118] Such scenes of religious madness exhibit the most contemptible and odious picture of human nature; but the massacre of Alexandria attracts still more attention, from the certainty of the fact, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... prominent, and too large for her wan face. The soft brown locks which she had once loved to brush back, scorning, as she would boast to herself, to care that they should be seen were now sparse enough and all untidy and unclean. It was matter of little thought now whether they were seen or no. Whether he could be made fit to go into his pulpit—whether they might be fed—those four innocents—and their backs kept from the cold wind—that was now the matter of ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Leopoldowna's palace; it had been borne and accompanied by four serfs, over whose gold-embroidered liveries, as if to protect them from the weather, had been laid a tolerably thick coat of dust and sweat. Equally splendid, elegant, and unclean was the chair which the servants now opened for the purpose of aiding their age-enfeebled master to emerge from it. That person, who now made his appearance, was a shrunken, trembling, coughing old gentleman; his small, bent, distorted form was wrapped in a fur cloak which, somewhat tattered, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... up at him, quiescent, and smiled. Reddin eyed them for a moment, construing their attitudes in his own way. To the unclean mind all frankness of word or action is suspect. Then he turned ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... me was a surprise, one must remember that by nature the Indian is most courteous, and if it were not for Caste rules we should be allowed to come much closer to them than is possible now. To-day they were all ceremonially unclean, so our presence was not considered polluting. Also the Indian loves a function; sad or glad, it matters little. Life is a bubble on the water; enjoy it while you may. And they sympathised with what they thought was our desire to see the show. This was human; they could ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... eccentric I have swung around now and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand corrected. I concede and acknowledge ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... attempt giving any description of this tangled maze of closely-interwoven cedars, fallen trees, and loose-scattered masses of rock. It seemed the fitting abode of wolves and bears, and every other unclean beast. The fire had run through it during the summer, making the confusion doubly confused. Now we stooped, half-doubled, to crawl under fallen branches that hung over our path, then again we had to clamber over prostrate trees of great bulk, descending from which ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... statements are set forth in the document. Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, of the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Services, declares that "The United States is seven times dirtier than Germany and ten times as unclean as Switzerland." He declares that: "Lack of interest in preventive measures against diseases is slaughtering the human race." He takes the position that the real trouble is not so much race suicide as ...
— 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.

... taxes and tribute to the King, who gives of his bounty to just and upright men when he is in Thalanna. But while he is away the surfeit of his wealth will go to unjust men and to men whose beards are unclean and who ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany

... (the only one, he believed) in the circle of my English acquaintances who took the trouble to entertain me. I had to go once or twice to the Italian Opera at Covent Garden with his daughter. There I heard Fidelio, given in rather grotesque fashion by unclean Germans and voiceless Italians, and with recitatives. I consequently managed to evade paying frequent visits to this theatre. When I went to say good- bye to Mr. Howard on leaving London, I was surprised to meet Meyerbeer at his house. He had just arrived in London to conduct his Nordstern. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... heart, that no taint of the throne or the stage Could touch with unclean transformation, or alter To the likeness of courtiers whose consciences falter At the smile or the frown, at the mirth or the rage, Of a master whom chance could inflame or assuage, Our Lady of Laughter, invoked ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... works, especially of "The Pilgrim's Progress," lies in the pure Saxon English in which they are written, which render them models of the English speech, plain but never vulgar, homely but never coarse, and still less unclean, full of imagery but never obscure, always intelligible, always forcible, going straight to the point in the fewest and simplest words; "powerful and picturesque," writes Hallam, "from concise simplicity." Bunyan's ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... 14, the same spirits are again brought to view, and called "unclean spirits," and "spirits of devils." Their last work of deception is to go forth to the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. Thus all that is revealed of them from beginning to end (and scriptures might ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... the theft of a few pence filched from the poor; nothing but the illicit gains and rascalities of a cheating shopkeeper and vile money-lender, a depraved cowardice which dared not strike openly, but slew in the dark. It is the story of an unclean reptile which drags itself underground, leaving everywhere the trail of its ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Clare grew very thirsty when he saw the pump, and imagined the rush of a thick sparkling curve from its spout. But its handle was locked with a chain, to keep men and women from having water instead of beer. He went with longing to the trough, but the water in it was so unclean that, thirsty as he was, he could not look on it even as a last resource. He ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... be a swearer, a liar, a Sabbath-breaker; I know him to be a fornicator and an unclean person; I know him to be guilty of abundance of evils. He has been, to my knowledge, a very ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... dare to name me to you, you would no longer remember this unselfish love, which, without doubt, you feel passionately for me at this moment. Ah! I see you now rising from St. Peter's chair with apostolic sublimity, and exclaiming with praiseworthy indignation: 'How! this heretic, this unclean, this savage from hell! I curse him, I condemn him. Let no man dare even to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... measure also of the stripes be." Now a greater punishment is due to believers than to unbelievers, according to Heb. 10:29: "How much more, do you think, he deserveth worse punishments, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath esteemed the blood of the testament unclean, by which he was sanctified?" Therefore unbelief is not the greatest ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... leper is one of such remarkable cases. Leprosy was a foul disease much dreaded by the people of Oriental countries. And the unfortunate person afflicted by it became an outcast and pariah from whom all others fled as from an unclean and impure thing. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... Standing beside it now, and remembering it in its purity, just as God made it, my eyes are full of unshed tears, and its mellifluous ceaseless song seems pleading to be saved from the vandalism which threatens to destroy all its sweet influences and make it common and unclean. But as I, alone, of all who saw it in those days long gone by, stand mourning by its side, there dawns in my heart the hope that the half formed purpose now talked of, for making it the centre of a park for the delight of the two cities between ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'd with some time; he ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward in Washington, with his ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... place. The color in life—the sounds—the shapes! We have had our jealousies, our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have chattered and pecked one another and fouled the world—like daws in the temple, like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions—all. I am a meagre dark thing in this morning's glow, a penitence, a shame! And, but for God's ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... and give them ribbons, earrings, strings of beads,—more than they knew what to do with. It is true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about accepting his presents: God knows, perhaps they had passed through unclean hands. My grandfather's aunt, who kept a tavern at that time, in which Basavriuk (as they called that devil-man) often had his carouses, said that no consideration on the face of the earth would have induced her to accept a gift from him. And then, again, how avoid accepting? Fear seized on every ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... large group of their fellow-countrymen. Inasmuch as the Southerners were willfully violating a Divine law, they became in the eyes of the Abolitionists, not merely mis-guided, but wicked, men; and the Abolitionists did not scruple to speak of them as unclean beasts, who were fattening on the fruits of an iniquitous institution. But such an inference was palpably false. The Southern slave owners were not unclean beasts; and any theory which justified such an inference must ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... conditions? But the conditions are the only natural possibilities of entrance. Enter as you are and you would but see the desert you think to leave behind you, not a glimpse of a promised land. The false cannot inherit the true nor the unclean the lovely. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... looked at her husband over the footboard of the bed. She saw his red, congested face; the huge mouth wide open; his unclean shirt, with its frayed wristbands; and his huge feet encased in thick woollen socks. Then her grief and the sense of her unhappiness returned more poignant than ever. She stretched her arms out in front of her on her work-table, and, burying her face in them, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... the synagogue there was a man, that had a spirit of an unclean demon; and he cried out with a loud voice, "Ah! what have we to do with thee, Jesus thou Nazarene? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong

... and treatment given in one hospital is of peculiar interest. She was received there four years ago and evidently had been unable just previously to take care of herself properly on account of roaming. Her clothing was dirty and her head unclean. She was found to have the old appendicitis scar, which contained a small sinus. She remained in bed after admission, complaining of much pain in her abdomen, not well localized however, and would lie moaning, crying, and rolling across the bed. She was then running a ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... humble part of a very humble house, in a very humble street. The two-pair back was his domain, and his territory was less adorned than crowded with the evidences of his taste and handiwork. In the remote corner of his unclean apartment was a lathe for turning ivory—near it the material, a monstrous elephant's tusk. Shelves, carried round the room, supported bottles of various sizes, externally very dirty, and internally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... to face him they saw an unclean, tousled man, very tall, with stooping shoulders, protruding black eyes, spiky hair, and a generally ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... had been spread that the cartridges to be used in them—and the ends of which had to be bitten off—had been greased with the fat of pigs and bullocks. This was done, it was said, that every Hindoo soldier might thus become unclean and lose caste, and have no other resource but to turn Christian; the British Government having determined, it was affirmed, to compel all its subjects to ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... the leaven that urine does to the animal body. As Pasteur says, "ferment eats, as it were," or consumes the nourishing and useful ingredients in the juice of the grapes, decomposes them, and casts out excretions, as man does when he eats grapes. Consequently, fermented wine is an utterly unclean fluid, and it fills man, when he drinks it, with all manner of uncleanness, mentally and physically, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, as we well know. It is preeminently a leavened substance, for it is ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... Jew, unclean and cadaverous, with patriarchal grey beard and piercing eyes, a man renowned for his marvellous cures ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... not have gone away and died by myself, like some unclean beast?" he muttered. Then, in a tone which she never forgot, and with the manner of one who was indeed leaving hope and life behind him, he said, "Farewell, Miss Walton; you will be better after ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... enthusiasm, that the Convention should go out and fraternize with the multitude. Who would have the temerity, in such an hour, to oppose the affectionate demonstration? The degraded Assembly obeyed the mandate of the mob, and marched into the streets, where they were hugged in the unclean arms and pressed to the foul bosoms of beggary, and infamy, and pollution. Louis was avenged. The hours of the day had now passed; night had come; but it was noonday light in the brilliantly-illuminated streets of the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... around which the long black hair hung wildly, he approached, singing to himself with maudlin voice a song that would have been sweet and tender in a lover's mouth. Friend Mitchenor drew to one side, lest his spotless drab should be brushed by the unclean reveller; but the latter, looking up, stopped suddenly face ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... laid unclean eyes upon her in the dining-room of the Cactus House, and contrived meetings where their bodies must brush close in passing. And followed her to the station. And she was biting her lip now to keep from being silly and screaming; trying to plan ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... everything living or dead is officially declared infected: whoever has been in contact with it comes under the same ban, and must be in quarantine for ten or twenty days. If the cable of a left-bank ship touches the cable of a right-bank vessel, the whole crew of the former is unclean, and she must lie for ten days in the middle of the stream; for the plague might pass along the ropes from one to the other, and be ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... see that God was around them, about their path and about their bed, and spying out all their ways; and in the light of His presence, they dare not be frivolous, dare not be ignorant, dare not be mean, dare not be spiteful, dare not be unclean. ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... up on his spear, as a kite snatches up a kitten!" cried Kharrak Singh proudly. "I felt the breath of the unclean beast on my leg!" ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble by his side. He has his place neither in the background nor in the foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its outskirts, enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... never yet basely deserted a friend in time of trouble. I did consider you a good comrade, but I know now you are nothing but a whited sepulchre, a miserable hypocrite, a Judas betraying his master with a kiss. Pah! go your way, you are unclean; nor ever hope again for word of fellowship from lips of honest men. I shall die having performed my duty to the extent of my knowledge, but you as a dog, a traitor to your comrades, the betrayer of a woman in time ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... and calamities, viz. 1. How great is God's displeasure and how great His hatred of a man who is insincere and a liar. 2. What security there is that a man who is specially hated by God may not be visited by the heaviest punishments. 3. What more unclean and foul, as St. James says, than ... that a fountain by the same jet should send out sweet water and bitter? 4. For that tongue, which just now praised God, next, as far as in it lies, dishonours Him by lying. 5. In consequence, liars are shut out from the possession ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... deathly being who, with face swathed in linen and with bandaged stumps of limbs, hobbled forth now and then, and came down to beg also, but always keeping at a distance from all human creatures, and, as he approached the pitiful, rattled loudly his wooden clappers, wailing out: "Unclean! Unclean!" ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... so repulsive as to see a lady or gentleman, however well dressed they may otherwise be, with unclean nails. It always results from carelessness and inattention to the minor details of the toilet, which is most reprehensible. The nails should be cut about once a week—certainly not oftener. This should be accomplished just after washing, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... filthy. His face was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled with a sense of loathing, and determined to avenge the insult he had offered to my name, I put a stone in my sling, and without further ado hurled it at him with all ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... with some rapid flits of thumb, tempered and enriched it nobly with the mellow juice of quid. Treated thus, it took consistence, plastic, docile, and retentive pulp; and the color was something like that of gold which had passed, according to its fate, through a large number of unclean hands. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Prickett was ill in bed with scurvy, and the tremor of self-fear came into his plea. Then the mutineers swore on the Bible that what they planned was to sacrifice the lives of the few to save the many. When the destroyer profanes the Cross with unclean perjury, 'tis well to use the Cross for firewood and unsheath a sword. Peevish with ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... idols?"[88] "What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."[89] The injunction, "Be ye separate," inculcates not merely the performance of the act of separating ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... Alexandria, at Rome as Secretary to Pope Damasus, in Syria, and finally in Bethlehem translating the Scripture, died in 420. He writes: "In the same way, therefore, that there (among the Jews) the priests make the leper clean or unclean, so also here (in the Church) does the bishop or priest bind and loose not those who are innocent or guilty, but, according to his office, after hearing the various kinds of sins, he knows who is to ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel

... have, they do not as really abhor themselves for their own righteousness as for their unrighteousness. They make that the covering of their nakedness and filthiness which is in itself as menstruous and unclean as any thing. It is now the very propension and natural inclination of our hearts, to stand upright in ourselves Faith bows a soul's back to take on Christ's righteousness, but presumption lifts up a soul upon its own bottom. "How can ye believe that seek honour one of another?" ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Whose light was as a Titan's smile or tear; Then rose a ray more flowerlike, starry white, Like a child's eye grown lovelier with delight, Sweet as a child's heart-lightening laugh to hear; And last a fire from heaven, a fiery rain As of God's wrath on the unclean cities, fell And lit the shuddering shades of half-seen hell That shrank before it and were cloven in twain; A beacon fired by lightning, whence all time Sees red the bare black ruins ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... faintness passed off Grettir, and he then drew his dagger, cut off Glam's head, and laid it beside his thigh. Thorhall then came out, having put on his clothes while Glam was talking, but never venturing to come near until he had fallen. He praised God, and thanked Grettir for overcoming the unclean spirit. Then they set to work, and burned Glam to ashes, which they placed in a sack, and buried where cattle were least likely to pasture or men to tread. When this was done they went home again, and it was ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... stood gaping and marvelling at his eating with dogs and all said, "Is he mad or are his wits gone wrong? How can the Viceroy of Bassorah city, he who is greater than a Wazir, eat with dogs? Knoweth he not that the dog is unclean?[FN538]" And they stared at the dogs, as they ate with him as servants eat with their lords,[FN539] knowing not that they were his brothers; nor did they cease staring at them, till they had made an end of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... house washed and cleaned and a caste feast given. The most solemn oath of a Mahar is by a cat or dog and in Yeotmal by a black dog. [131] In Berar, the same paper states, the pig is the only animal regarded as unclean, and they must on no account touch it. This is probably owing to Muhammadan influence. The worst social sin which a Mahar can commit is to get vermin in a wound, which is known as Deogan or being smitten ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... town without the dram-shops." The brewers and distillers say, "It enhances the value of property and products of all kinds." The fools answer, with idiotic promptness and docility, "Yes, we must continue this ulcerous cancer upon the body politic—this unclean, pestilential, gangrenous sore, reeking with disease, vice, poverty, madness, to increase the price of grain." Yes, gentlemen, grain is more profitable deposited in the stomach of your son or your neighbor's son, in the form of whisky, mixed with sundry deadly drugs to give it "tone," than in pork, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... ring at the chest of Beelzeboul, saying: "Solomon the king calls thee." But Beelzeboul cried aloud with a mighty voice, and shot out a great, burning flame of fire; and he arose and followed Ornias, and came to Solomon. Brought before the king, he promised him to gather all the unclean spirits unto him. Beelzeboul proceeded to do so, beginning with Onoskelis, that had a very pretty shape and the skin of a fair-hued woman, and he was followed by Asmodeus; both giving ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... perceiving the sheep of the same fold to be different, I deservedly commended Peter for his entire confession of Christ, but called Judas most wretched, for his love of covetousness: I thought Stephen most glorious on account of the palm of martyrdom, but Nicholas wretched for his mark of unclean heresy: I read assuredly, "They had all things common:" but likewise also, as it is written, "Why have ye conspired to tempt the Spirit of God?" I saw, on the other hand, how much security had grown upon the men of ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas

... postpones, never forbids. He only knew 'that she was to him as she was to those others—only with him the struggle was fiercer. There were times as now, when his love seemed turned to fury. She seemed to him then like some beautiful but unclean animal who fed upon the souls of men. He burned to seize her in his arms, to cover her face with hot kisses, and then to press his fingers around that delicate white throat until the music of her death cry should set him free for ever. But when his thoughts led him ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... would do if the situation were reversed, and he believed that the other was waiting only to punish him with a castigation of vengeful words before he shot him down and left him lying in the trampled straw and manure of that unclean stable. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... Bob, "I was obliged to throw them away from me, as if I had been touching unclean things. I too was brought up to believe in peace at any price, and I hated war as I hate hell itself; so much did I hate it, that I refused to enlist in the English Army and alienated those who were dearest to me. Before I enlisted, ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A spider's web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred piece of property. But the die was cast, he could not go back. And he went on into the Poultry, and locked away the green morocco case and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Carolyn June exclaimed, with the uncomfortable feeling that the big Greek's look had touched her with something vile and unclean. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... strange expression of covert wickedness. It was as if some vile evil spirit, walking, as the Scriptures say, through dry places, had lighted on a comely man's body, in which he had set up housekeeping, making it look like a fair house abused by an unclean owner. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of where he was to go. Every bit of the world beyond his front door had its charms to the seeing eye. There seemed nothing common or unclean that fresh morning. Even a walk among coal-pits had its attractions.... But since he had the right to choose, he lingered over it like an epicure. Not the Highlands, for Spring came late among their sour mosses. Some place where there were fields and woods and inns, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... serve Love without loving! What a Goddess was this! I drew apart from my informant and communed alone with the mysterious Emblem. "O most tender Advocate of them that need Thee," said I, "O loving Mother of Sinners! Clean Champion of the unclean, Stem, Leaf, Blossom and Fruit of the abounding promise of Heaven that a seed of hope may fructify in our ineffable corruption! cast down Thy compassionate eyes upon me too, that in their light I may ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... afraid. She saw her children, Michael, Nicholas and Dorothy, swept every day a little farther from the firm, well-ordered sanctities, a little nearer to the unclean moral vortex that to her was the most redoubtable of all. She hid her fear, because in her wisdom she knew that to show fear was not the way to keep her children. She hid her strength because she knew that ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... limpet-like qualities were a source of never-failing concern to the unfortunate mariner. Did he ascend to the drawing-room and gaze yearningly from the windows at the broad stream of Father Thames and the craft dropping down on the ebb-tide to the sea, Uncle Porson, sallow of face and unclean of collar, was there to talk beery romance of the ocean. Did he retire to the small yard at the rear of the premises and gaze from the back door at the passing life of a Chelsea by-street, Uncle Porson was looking over his shoulder, pointing out milkmen ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... what strength is there! Thus no burden seems too heavy, too awkward, too slippery, too ill-shaped, but one can lift it. The yoke is easy, because one bears it in quiet confidence, not overtaxing ability or straining hope. Instead of watching life, as from high castle windows, feeling it common and unclean, not to be mingled with, I am in it and of it. And what is become of all my old dreams of art, of the secluded worship, the lonely rapture! Well, it is all there, somehow, flowing inside life, like a stream that is added to a river, not like a leat drawn aside from the current. The force ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... equal purity, cleanness, and holiness, and that all men should by them live to the glory of God, and at all times and for all meats give thanks unto Him, of which meats none can defile Christian men or make them unclean at any time, to whom all meats be lawful and pure, so that they be not used in disobedience or vice; yet forasmuch as divers of the King's subjects turning their knowledge therein to satisfy their sensuality, when ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... a kilt of cotton—or as often, only a cincture about the loins, and their lean bodies were blackened by the terrible sun of the desert. They were the apprentices of paraschites,[1] brewers, professional thieves, slaves and traffickers in the unclean necessities of a great city, and only their occasional riots, or such events as this, brought them into general view of the upper classes. They had nothing in common with the gentry, whom they were willing to recognize as creatures of a superior mold. Among themselves there were established castes, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... from the raft, and afterwards by nursing me through what I believed had been a serious illness? Yet, ingrate that I was, even in the brief interview that I have just described I had taken an unmistakable dislike to the man! It was not so much that he was unclean in person and attire,—it was possible that there might be a good and sufficient excuse for that,—but what had excited my antipathy, when I came to analyse the feeling, was a certain false ring in his voice, a subtle something in his ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... lovest the harlot's hire upon every threshing-floor. The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not dwell in Jehovah's land; Ephraim must return to Egypt, and eat what is unclean in Assyria. Then shall they no more pour out wine to Jehovah, or set in order sacrifices to Him; like bread of mourners is their bread, /1/ all that eat thereof ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... term used to designate milk taken from unclean animals, or those which have been kept in filthy, unventilated stables. The milk absorbs and carries the odors, which are often plainly perceptible. Such milk may not be poisonous, but ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... he replied: "O great and benignant king! mayest thou live forever. May Oromandes bless thee with a prosperous reign, and forever avert from thee the malignant influence of Arimanius. I and my household are among the least of thy servants. May the hand that offends thee be cut off, and cast to unclean dogs." ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... Yebor, and said to him, "Long live the sun and the griffins; beware of punishing Zadig; he is a saint; he has griffins in his inner court and does not eat them; and his accuser is an heretic, who dares to maintain that rabbits have cloven feet and are not unclean." ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... proposed to modify the pending amendment so as to provide for impartial rather than universal suffrage. He thought that States should be allowed to limit suffrage. Mr. Saulsbury would not vote for this amendment because he was unwilling to "touch, taste, or handle the unclean thing." On the other hand, Mr. Davis could vote for it because he preferred a "little unclean thing" to "a big one." Mr. Hendricks finally ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... preached and taught openly, and so I purpose all my lifetime to do, with GOD's help, saying that 'such fond people waste blamefully GOD's goods in their vain pilgrimages, spending their goods upon vicious hostelars [innkeepers], which are oft unclean women of their bodies; and at the least, those goods with the which, they should do works of mercy, after GOD's bidding, to poor ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... the most The most have been forgiven, And with the Devil's host Most mightily have striven. And so it was of old With her, once all unclean, Now of the saints white-stoled— Mary, the Magdalen. For though in Satan's power She seemed for ever fast, Her Saviour in one hour Seven devils ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... your clothes soiled with unclean dirt, you will be forced to save yourself from contagious diseases by leaving your home or submitting to the strictures ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... certain surprise: 'I wonder what she does think of! I wonder!' He put his gloves and hat down in the outer hall and went into the lavatory, to dip his face in cool water and wash it with sweet-smelling soap—delicious revenge on the unclean atmosphere in which he had been stewing so many hours. He came out again into the hall dazed by soap and the mellowed light, and a voice from half-way up the stairs said: "Daddy! Look!" His little daughter was standing up there with one hand on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... main, do not know the fundamental scientific facts, and therefore can not account for actions, points of view, signs of waywardness, lack of appreciation, poor lessons, etc., etc., that sometimes characterize the youth while a student in the high school. They often lay to an unclean mind what springs from a perfectly normal development of the sex function; they are sure that moral perversity is the basis of actions that are more correctly explained by reference to a moral nature merely in the process of development; ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... her skirts gathered daintily around her, to avoid contact with the unclean earth, made her way skill fully through the crowd, and with the aid of a determined spirit and a camp-chair secured a place and a seat very near the stand. The little lady who timidly followed in her lead ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy



Words linked to "Unclean" :   bedraggled, dirty, religion, muddy, black, grubby, feculent, grungy, religious belief, dirty-faced, unswept, soiled, sooty, buggy, travel-stained, mucky, draggled, travel-soiled, scummy, terefah, sordid, lousy, maculate, impure, dingy, nonkosher, raunchy, snotty, clean, fouled, untidy, grimy, nasty, flyblown, foul, filthy, ratty, cobwebby, cleanness, oily, faith, snot-nosed, Augean, smutty, greasy, squalid, tref, untouchable, uncleanly, begrimed, unwashed, befouled, smudgy



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