"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say it, if I could; but I have not the courage quite to shut out this dear face, and abandon all hope of its return. But do not come soon, do not come often! This is now a tainted place, and I well know the taint of it clings to me. You belong to much brighter and better scenes. You are not to look back here, my Little Dorrit; you are to look away to very different and much happier paths. Again, GOD bless you in them! ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... afterwards notorious. "Human patience was not great enough to put up with Sir Francis Clavering," people said. "He was too hopelessly low, dull, and disreputable. You could not say what, but there was a taint about the house and its entourages. Who was the Begum, with her money, and without her h's, and where did she come from? What an extraordinary little piece of conceit the daughter was, with her Gallicised graces and daring affectations, not fit for well-bred ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is less. He feels that he is connecting himself with one of an inferior and servile caste, and that there is something of degradation in the act. The intercourse is generally casual; he does not make her habitually an associate, and is less likely to receive any taint from her habits and manners. He is less liable to those extraordinary fascinations, with which worthless women sometimes entangle their victims, to the utter destruction of all principle, worth and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of thy love, in whose perfect obedience thou deignest to behold as many as have received the seed of Christ into the body of this death;—I offer this, my bounden nightly sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in humble trust that the fragrance of my Saviour's righteousness may remove from it the taint of my mortal corruption. Thy mercies have followed me through all the hours and moments of my life; and now I lift up my heart in awe and thankfulness for the preservation of my life through the past day, for the ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... contemplating a marriage submit himself to an examination, both moral and physical, by the State or city officials as to his health and habits, and even that of his ancestry, as bearing upon his posterity. Novels have been written about men who avoided marriage by reason of a taint of insanity in the family; this modern science of eugenics would propose to make ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... for woman that leaves that out works an injury. If women are to be a permanent part of the army of wage-earning Americans they must learn to get full value from their minds or hands—either one, it's the same. The trouble with us women is that there's a lot of the old mediaeval taint ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... who exhibited each his peculiarity. Some of these, could we look within their mental structure and there take a just survey, would perhaps be found possessed of such a native taint, or bias, or disorder, that their wrong doings, for which they were in prison, would be regarded in the light ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... required to report themselves to the Government health officer within fourteen days from this date for inspection, and final banishment to Molokai." It is hoped that leprosy may be "stamped out" by these stringent measures, but the leprous taint must be strong in many families, and the social, gregarious natives smoke each other's pipes and wear each other's clothes, and either from fatalism or ignorance have disregarded all precautions regarding this woful disease; and now that measures are being taken for the isolation of lepers, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... her duties in life, is mingled with her devotion. My family, like its female head, has ever been deeply impressed by religion; but it is religion in its most pleasing aspect; religion that has no taint of puritanism, and in which sin and innocent gaiety are never confounded It is the most cheerful family of my acquaintance; and this, I must implicitly believe, solely because, in addition to the bounties it enjoys, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... The morals of George IV.'s set had been handed on to him by the General,' said Lady Kirkaldy, rejoicing in the genuine indignation of the young face, free from all taint of vice, if somewhat ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... having been a witness to their extraordinary biting power, I knew the fate that must necessarily befall a couple of ordinary hounds when overtaken by half a dozen full-grown wolves. On such occasions we do not spend much time in grief over a loss of any kind, "it taint according to mountain law," Pete ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... redemption wrought by Jesus Christ. The Church holds that children are born to earth in a sinless state, that they need no individual redemption; that should they die before reaching years of accountability, they return without taint of earthly sin; but as they attain youth or maturity in the flesh, their responsibility increases with ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... Smith, the gifted editor of the Albany Journal, who headed the delegation thus selected, deemed it expedient to withdraw. Five associates did likewise. Nevertheless, the opponents of a third term refused to participate in a second election, called to fill the vacancies, since it did not remove the taint from the majority ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... rejected all attempts of consolation; and remained deaf to the most earnest and respectful remonstrances of those who had a right to render their advice. In this case, the affliction of the mind must have been reinforced by some peculiarity in the constitution. He inherited a melancholy taint from his father, and this seems to have been dreaded as a family disease; for the infant don Louis, who likewise resided in the palace of Villa-Viciosa, was fain to amuse himself with hunting and other diversions, to prevent his being infected with the king's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... distinction is seen in the moral purity of the Christian Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level. And so in what is written, the exact grade of the author will surely ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... I should think you did hev 'em," retorted his mother as she trailed after him in the direction of the front hall. "'N' whatever you got, you got 'em bad. Now you stop right where you air 'n' tell me whatever you got. 'Taint likely its measles, fer you've hed them three times, 'n' whoopin' cough ain't 'them,' it's 'it,' 'n'—." Mrs. Case paused and gasped—horrified. "Fer lan' sakes, Willie Case, you come right out o' this house this minute ef you got anything in your head." She made a grab ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ideas crowd the vacant brain, While peers, and dukes, and all their sweeping train, And garters, stars, and coronets appear, And in soft sounds, Your Grace salutes their ear. 'Tis these that early taint the female soul, Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll, Teach infant cheeks a hidden blush to know, And little hearts to flutter at ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... or explosive, the public have understood that he is trustworthy. We may expect to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist principles does not require any violent disturbance ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... have more closely defined the scope of this remarkable work. Here we have a new phenomenon, history written for the labouring class and from the point of {8} view of the labouring class. And although not free from the taint of the party pamphlet, not of the first rank for historical erudition, intellectual force or artistic composition, Jaures' history presents the Revolution under the aspect that gives most food for thought and that places it most directly ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... money'd Worldlings with dismay: Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air With words of apprehension and despair: While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray, Men unto whom sufficient for the day And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, Sound, healthy Children of the God of Heaven, Are cheerful ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... advanced ought to be sufficient," answered the General. "But if they are not, let me give you another. Your friend Don Hermoso Montijo, whom I see with his wife and family on the upper deck yonder, are not altogether free from the taint of suspicion of being in sympathy with the revolutionaries; indeed, it has been whispered to me that—but it would perhaps be unfair to them to repeat suggestions which have not as yet been absolutely proved: let it suffice for me to say that I wish the present predicament ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... and to all manner of people dangerous to the back-veld views of Lacedaemon. He opened the way to Tolstoy's rediscovery of the Christian Law, amongst other northern treasures, didn't he? And I, with the Arcadian taint in my veins, saw the way open and went northwards. Now it has come to pass that I remember my own people as Moses did, and use the wisdom of Oxford as he used the wisdom of Egypt, to help one's own people towards a promised land. They want ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... played in the terrible drama, Abd-el-Kader, who is now our prisoner, has himself confessed. The necessity for secrecy, you, my dear Marquis, will appreciate. The publicity of the affair now would work incalculable injury to the nation. It is imperative to preserve the army from the taint of scandal. The nation hangs on a thread. God knows there is iniquity abroad. I, who have labored for the honor of France and planted her flag in distant lands, look for defeat, not through want of bravery, but from internal causes. A matter like this might ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... there be any of them left, which we will hope there are not. No! all these come from the gracious spirit of humanity—the spirit of Christ and of God. Pray to him, that he may take possession of all your thoughts, feelings, and desires, and purge you from every taint of selfishness. Give up your hearts to him; and grieve not, by any selfishness, passion, or hardness of your own, his gracious instructions: but let him teach you, and guide you, and purge you, and sanctify you, till you come to the ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... but that cannot change his duty, or ours. He is helping us to struggle for that which is our own; but he would mar his generosity if he put a taint on that which he is ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... before me, from the least forgotten venial fault of infancy to the worst passion of youth,— only they came to me clear and vivid, in retrograde order. The lies I told when I was a little boy, the wicked words I spoke, the cruel things I did, the first taint that polluted my mind, the faces of school-fellows whom I had irreparably injured, the stolen waters of manhood—all were dashed into my remorseful recollection; they started up like buried, menacing ghosts, without, or even against my will. I felt convinced ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless extinguished animals, there is, there ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... week's supply at a time, and during the week exposed to dirt and flies and often spoiled before eating, pellagra is most common. Experiments have shown that in these districts, by excluding corn from the diet and furnishing a substantial fare, the disease has been banished. Unfortunately, the taint of the disease passes from parent to child and even to the third and fourth generation, and the physical deformities commonly seen in pellagrous districts are due to this hereditary taint. Dr. Babcock, Superintendent of the City Hospital at Columbia, South Carolina, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... pounds he had come back to Burslem and started business on his own account. He had read and studied and worked, and he had evolved. He was an educated man; that is to say, he was a competent and useful man. He determined to free Burslem from the taint that had fallen upon it. "Burslem?" he once wrote to Sarah, "Burslem? the name shall yet be a symbol of all that is beautiful, honest and true; we shall see! I am a potter—yes, but I'll be the best one that England ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... thought; and whilst they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never could have redressed it effectually, was—to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice, (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe,) was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... without a miracle, to perdition; and whose immoralities, propagated among them by his vile example, might, too probably, bring down a curse upon them? And, after all, who knows but that my own sinful compliances with a man, who might think himself entitled to my obedience, might taint my own morals, and make me, instead of a reformer, an imitator of him?—For who can touch ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... "Why, massa, 'taint worf while for to git mad about de matter— Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him—but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a goose? And den he keep a syphon all ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... dysentery (neither of which is difficult to subdue by a little rational treatment), opthalmia, and umbilical hernia, and sometimes, but not frequently, inguinal hernia, are the principal diseases. The opthalmia I suspected as originating from taint, probably having been primarily carried from the coast, as it was not so frequently met with as to warrant the idea of its being either a contagion or the effects of poisonous sands or winds, as supposed to exist. The hernia is caused by the absence of ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... to make the most noise when he was violently agitated, as do the dead leaves of a long-withered but still firmly attached bough. Thus he was regarded in Chicago as an American of the old type; but being human, his strength had not been strong enough to resist the taint in the atmosphere he had breathed ever since he began to be very rich and to keep the company of the pretentious. His originally sound constitution had been gradually undermined, just as "doing like everybody else"—that is, everybody ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... should exhibit her as an elderly, but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even as her conduct had been ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... is not in the nature of pure love to burn so fiercely and unkindly long. The flame that in its grosser composition has the taint of earth may prey upon the breast that gives it shelter; but the fire from heaven is as gentle in the heart, as when it rested on the heads of the assembled twelve, and showed each man his brother, brightened and unhurt. The image conjured up, there soon returned the placid face, the softened ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... insights he no doubt obtained a residue of wisdom which might be applied to his own ulterior uses. These were indirect and incidental issues; but from the consulate qua consulate Hawthorne was radically alien, and when he quitted it, he carried away with him no taint or trace of it. As he says in his remarks upon the subject, he soon came to doubt whether it were actually himself who had been the incumbent of the office ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... salutary, because of their wives; and they always came back grumbling, because of their livers, which a good country rest always fortunately reduced in time for the next visit. In this way they kept themselves free from the taint of provincialism. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Pollock, being a good democrat and holding office under a democratic administration, had deemed it wise to abbreviate his first name, thereby removing all taint of republicanism. He reduced Abraham to an initial, but, despite his supreme struggle for dignity, was forced by public indolence to submit to a sharp curtailment of his middle name. He was known ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... warm enough. But it was dark, and squalid, and it reeked with the taint which only the centuries can impart. These things impressed themselves never so much upon Keeko as now, while she sat over ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... outcome of a melancholy humor. Tasso was, in fact, a Catholic molded by Jesuit instruction in his earliest childhood; and though, like most young students, he had speculated on the groundwork of theology and metaphysic, there was no taint of heresy or disobedience to the Church in his nature. The terror of the Inquisition was a morbid nightmare, first implanted in his mind by the experience of his father's collision with the Holy Office, enforced by Antoniano's strictures on his poem, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... however intelligent and alert, who wishes to enjoy a masterpiece, and is content simply to enjoy it. It does not really matter how close to anything else something which possesses independent goodness is; the very utmost technical originality, the most spotless purity from the faintest taint of suggestion, will not suffice to confer merit on what does not otherwise possess it. Whether, as I rather think, Fielding pursued the plan he had formed ab incepto, or whether he cavalierly neglected it, or whether the current of his own genius carried ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... been visibly in operation for a dozen years or so in the successive Whistlers put before the public during that time. First of all we remember pictures of ladies pale and attenuate poring with tender interest over vermilion scarfs. The taint of realism was on them, but even in them were hints of the pensive humour that was to fetch mankind in the well-known 'arrangements' at a later time. A good deal was left to the spectator's imagination even ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... this favor to your son, who has the name of you both, that whoever enters these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man, and that he may suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched." Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... no more reports; let them fly all: Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm? Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know All mortal consequences have pronounc'd me thus,— "Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman Shall e'er have power upon ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... earliest childhood, he learned, she had known servitude, and been familiar with scorn and reproach. She had been swineherd, goose-girl, scare-crow, laundress, scullery-wench, and what not, as her mother could win for her. She could never better herself, because of the taint of witchcraft and all the unholiness it brought upon her. As laundress and scullery-maid she bad been at the Abbey; that had been her happiest time but for one circumstance, of which she told him later. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal, The highest Life with noblest Form made one, To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun; The living germ in this strange planet-ball, Even as thy form in mind of striving saint. So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint, Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield, In every splendour shadowy revealed: But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint, Power falls down straightway, speechless, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... an' that good fire, oh! my," and the old man buried his face in his hands and wept like a child, then looking up, he said, "Ef I cud only ahad my chilun in thar; 'pears de Lord Himself might ahelped me a minnit sooner—but dey is gone, all done gone, an' 'taint no use." ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... "Laws, honey, 'taint 'cording to rules for we coloured folks to hold meetin's no how. 'Course, we's ought to 'bey de ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... reflections of a man whose powers of thinking and reasoning will surely not be pronounced inferior to those of any, even of the most distinguished champions of the Unitarian school, and whose theological opinions cannot be charged with any supposed taint from professional habits or interests. A layman (and he too a familiar friend of David Hume), whose life was employed in scientific, political, and philosophical researches, has given to the world those sentiments as the natural suggestions of reason. Yet these are the sentiments which ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... sandy floor, and—best of all—there was a pool of deliciously cool, sweet water at the far end of it—the first fresh water that we had found. And the air was as clean and sweet as the water; no Zoological Gardens odour, or taint of rotting bones, you understand. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... another, to learn from yourself that the affection you once professed for me is gone. I release you from your troth. If folks ask why we two henceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, if you please, that you could not give your hand to a man who had known the taint of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to you an ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness,—happiness to hear that you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnly than ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Denmark was French at heart: ready to co-operate in all the views of France, to recognise all her usurpations, and obey all her injunctions. Sweden, under a king whose principles were right, and whose feelings were generous, but who had a taint of hereditary insanity, acted in acquiescence with the dictates of two powers whom it feared to offend. The Danish navy, at this time, consisted of 23 ships of the line, with about 31 frigates and smaller ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... questions, even going so far as to prevent the ringing of the animas [54] at night or the singing of the alabado hymn. It may be that in regard to the most holy sacrament and the pure conception of our Lady the Virgin Mary, who was conceived without the taint of original sin, he does not wish that any mention be made of the Virgin, to say that she is immaculate. Lastly, sir, this matter demands a remedy, by the archbishop sending a cura as judge-provisor. That is very necessary, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... vault. How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing and passing, like the gladness and sorrow of a man's life. How sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay. How humanizing to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city. Each in his own way was solemn and ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... bemirrored, upon the shelves of which reposed sorrowful examples of Doulton ware and a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. It was a room divorced from all sense of youth and live beings, sunless, grave, unlovely; an arid room that bore to the nostrils the taint and humour of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... all the natural beauty of Monaco Durkin had been continuously haunted by the sense of something unclean and leprous and corroding. Under its rouge and roses, at every turn, he found the insidious taint. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... runs than those in the other colonies. They reared stock on the English system, and their domains were sheep-farms rather than stations. Indeed, the whole of Tasmania wore rather the quiet aspect of rural England than the bustling appearance of an Australian colony. But the efforts to throw off the taint of convictism were crowned with marked success; and, from being a gaol for the worst of criminals, Tasmania has become one of the most moral and respectable of ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... the nature of an experiment. There were people who sneered. And it is working out well. There is not the slightest taint of charity in it. If I used a lot of money that may be a long time coming back to me that is my own business. Everybody here pays his own way. All these men needed was ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the plague is its forerunner. It is likely enough that at the time of my seeing poor Osman the deadly taint was beginning to creep through his veins, but it was not till after I had left Cairo that he was ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... 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, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the haruspices; "they are invited, caressed, and honored. Like dust, when the simoon blows through the chinks of a wooden house, they crowd into the houses and temples, taint ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 vote as ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of a new organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creative energy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when it passed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thus wonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost power of mankind. He came to redeem man; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is real piety: Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint To charge the pipkins with impurity: Freedom I crave: who craves not to be free? Yet life that must be feigned for, leaves a taint. Ill conduct brings repentance?—If you prate This wise to me, why prate not thus to all Philosophers and prophets, and to Christ? Not too much learning, as some arrogate, But the small brains of dullards have sufficed To make us wretched ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... then how she must abominate the business, and detest him! It was horrible to think of her knowing it. But for knowing it, she would never be a whit the worse, for he never had a day's illness in his life and knew of no taint in his family. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... consciousness, and the spontaneous convictions of my own understanding? or how can I be assured that, in passing from the impersonal reason to the individual mind, from the generic reason to the personal, the truth may not contract some taint of weakness or impurity from the vessel in which it is ultimately contained,—from the finite faculties by which alone it ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the dead carcase might not taint the valley, I had it buried deep in the ground, about a score of yards from the encampment. From such a slight cause ensued a tremendous uproar from Kingaru—chief of the village—who, with his brother-chiefs of neighbouring villages, numbering in the aggregate two dozen wattled ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... chill wind from the hill Like a sea-breath; I shiver'd and a taint of ill Brought news of death. I blinkt my eyes as who should try To see what is to fear; The sun still shone high in the ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... sweetly plac'd, and modestie directed, But Madame, I must trouble you againe, No louing Token to his Maiestie? Mar. Yes, my good Lord, a pure vnspotted heart, Neuer yet taint with loue, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Without which how shall e'er the wife Be the one woman in the world? Love's sensitive tendrils sicken, curl'd Round folly's former stay; for 'tis The doom of all unsanction'd bliss To mock some good that, gain'd, keeps still The taint ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... peace—honorable peace—with all nations; peace with the Indians, and peace between all of the citizens of all of the States. We want a financial policy so honest that there can be no stain on the National honor and no taint on the National credit; so stable that labor and capital and legitimate business of every sort can confidently count upon what it will be the next week, the next month, and the next year. We want the burdens of taxation so justly distributed that they will ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... mountain-snows With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished 70 One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! To scatter rage and traitorous guilt Where Peace her jealous home had built; A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, Tell ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... points; her beauty has burned itself into their jealousy; her merry laugh has fanned their scorn; her bountiful presence is an affront to them, as is her ripe and lissom figure. They pronounce her morally unsound; they say her nature has a taint; they chill her popularity with silent smiles of slow disparagement. But they have no particulars; their slander is not concrete. It is an amorphous accusation, sweeping ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... said the other, as he slowly approached the spot where Max and his three chums still sat around the fire, feasting on their spread. "I happened to see yer blaze, and guessed I'd drop in to see who yah might be. 'Taint often anybody comes up this way, though to be sure thar was two gentlemen fishin' hereabouts ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... time ago, there shot across the artistic firmament a comet of daring and dazzling brightness. Every comet is hurling onward to its death: destruction is its only end: and upon each line and tracery of the work of Aubrey Beardsley is the taint ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... lest any taint of error should be supposed to infect his hero, nevertheless admits unwillingly that Giordano Bruno, Sir Fulke Greville, and Sir Philip Sidney, were wont to discuss philosophical and metaphysical subjects "of a nice and delicate nature with ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Members gathered round to congratulate the young orator; and Father Ritchie (if he was a father then) "hailed this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live." This speech contains one passage which savors of the "chivalric" taint, and indicates the provincial mind. In replying to the objection founded on the expenses of a ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... made Vesta reject this sympathy, precious to her parched breast despite the quadroon taint as the golden sand in the brooks of Africa, giving at once wealth and cooling. The slave girl's long white arms, scarcely less pale than ivory—for she had slipped in at the sign of sorrow, while making her simple toilet—drew Vesta into her lap and laid her head ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... two children to take care of and I never cleared forty dollars a month. I've been a lifetime working myself up to what I am and you jump into the game, inexperienced, green as a cucumber, and want to hog the persimmons at the start. 'Taint fair, 'taint right; I'm an honest man; I want to treat everybody right. You're taking advantage of me. It's the principle of ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... pavement among whom Guy Oscard had moved of late, this African traveller was a man apart—a being much more after his own heart. The brown of the man's face and hands appealed to him—the dark flashing eyes, the energetic carriage of head and shoulders. Among men of a fairer skin the taint that was in Victor Durnovo's blood became more apparent—the shadow on his finger-nails, the deep olive of his neck against the snowy collar, and the blue tint in the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... find himself knocked down by it. It is not like the irony of Timon, which is but the wilful refraction of a clear mind twisting awry whatever enters it,—or of Iago, which is the slime that a nature essentially evil loves to trail over all beauty and goodness to taint them with distrust: it is the half-jest, half-earnest of an inactive temperament that has not quite made up its mind whether life is a reality or no, whether men were not made in jest, and which amuses itself equally with finding a deep meaning in trivial things and a trifling one in the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Neath the daisies and the dew, Can you hear me? Can you know All the good I owe to you? You, whose spirit dwells alway Free from earthly taint and thrall! You who taught me that sweet day God's ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... value, to say the least. He was very well liked by women, and in turn considered himself irresistible. He was very impressionable to feminine charms, was at heart a libertine, and, as he grew older, became a debauchee whose memory will taint France ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... noble widow, And keeps her reputation pure, and clear From the least taint. Pr'ythee, tell ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... children are related to the sexless idealised race of Sir Edward Burne-Jones's heroes and heroines; they are purged of earthy taint, and idealised perhaps a shade too far. They adopt attitudes graceful if not realistic, they have always a grave serenity of expression; and yet withal they endear themselves in a way wholly their own. It is strange that a period which has bestowed so much appreciation on the ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... grunted old Toby. "'Taint pretty for a young gal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Poet would have made Adam talk thro the whole Work in such Sentiments as these: But Flattery and Falshood are not the Courtship of Milton's Adam, and could not be heard by Eve in her State of Innocence, excepting only in a Dream produc'd on purpose to taint her Imagination. Other vain Sentiments of the same kind in this Relation of her Dream, will be obvious to every Reader. Tho the Catastrophe of the Poem is finely presag'd on this Occasion, the Particulars of it are so artfully shadow'd, that they do not ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... destroyed immediately on quitting the body, as the many say? That can never be, my dear Simmias and Cebes. The truth rather is, that the soul which is pure at departing and draws after her no bodily taint, having never voluntarily during life had connection with the body, which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into herself;—and making such abstraction her perpetual study—which means that she has ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... Years passed; the child grew to manhood, and having received a good common-school education, and learned the shoemaker's trade, he married an estimable young white woman, and had a family of five or six children. He had not the slightest knowledge of the taint of African blood in his veins, and no one in the neighborhood knew that he was the son of an octoroon slave woman. He made a comfortable living for his family, was a good citizen, a member of the Methodist Church, and was much respected by all who knew him. In course of time his ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... personal limitations. In different ways religions promise to transfer the soul to better conditions. A supernaturally favoured kingdom is to be established for posterity upon earth, or for all the faithful in heaven, or the soul is to be freed by repeated purgations from all taint and sorrow, or it is to be lost in the absolute, or it is to become an influence and an object of adoration in the places it once haunted or wherever the activities it once loved may be carried on by future generations of its kindred. Now reason in its way lays before ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... much diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To all this dismal prospect there was ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... threatened with denunciation, was seen to revive; so, too, the anxious anger of the Baron, who was meditating how he might possibly manage to content Silviane. That woman was this sturdy, powerful man's taint, the secret sore which would perhaps end by eating him away and destroying him. But it was the frightful drama in which the Baroness, Camille and Gerard were concerned that flitted by most visibly across the faces of all three of them: that hateful rivalry of mother and daughter, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... "No, taint," said Jim, detaining him. "I 'eard 'em speak. Oh, they're sly dogs! They ain't a-goin' to run away arter settin' it alight. They're goin' to run to the station, rouse up the men, an' help to put it out! an' one of 'em says, 'Jeff,' says 'e, larfin', 'won't we lend 'em a good 'and to put it hout ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the very reason why the Spanish of all nations became the most gloomily jealous of a Jewish cross in the pedigree, was because, until the vigilance of the Church rose into ferocity, in no nation was such a cross so common. The hatred of fear is ever the deepest. And men hated the Jewish taint, as once in Jerusalem they hated the leprosy, because even whilst they raved against it, the secret proofs of it might be detected amongst their own kindred, even as in the Temple, whilst once a king rose in mutiny against the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... have gone right through that slough, and come out sheer on the other side. For sweeping the last lingering taint of it out of me, I have to thank, not sulphur and exorcisms, but your soldiers and their morning's work. Philosophy is superfluous in a world where ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating dens; or that the most ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... over his dishonour. And he took no pleasure in his food, neither could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortes, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful that he had a thousand friends among the mountains. Howbeit all these things ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... meditate this deep disease of life, What its far source and whence its remedy. So vast a pity filled him, such wide love For living things, such passion to heal pain, That by their stress his princely spirit passed To ecstasy, and, purged from mortal taint Of sense and self, the boy attained thereat Dhyana, first step of ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... came back to him. 'He is not the real Virginia Cairy,' some one had said once; 'he has the taint,—that mountain branch of the family,—the mother, you know, they say!' Very ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... it was impossible that you should know your own mind. And even had your promise to him been of a much more binding nature, his subsequent conduct, and your mother's remonstrance, as well as your own age, would have released you from it without any taint of falsehood. He knew all this as well as I do; and I am surprised that he should have forced his way into your mother's house with the mere object of causing ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... milkman, to discharge her maternal duties. Then with the rise 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 of the Church! In her ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... and spite to every ounce of reality. Moreover, her refined and Puritan spirit revolted against the people who hunted: she thought of them all as bubbles, brilliant apparently, but liable to burst at any moment and leave nothing behind them but a taint of vulgarity. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... proved sound—because as a whole this movement took the negroes as a distinct field, ignoring the needs of the whites, it incurred odium as an alien and half-hostile work. The barbaric element among the whites—and slavery had left a deep taint of barbarism—came out at its worst in insults to the "nigger teachers," with occasional burning of a school-house. The better social elements looked askance at those whose presence was a reminder ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Will-o'-the-Wisp floating above the quagmire which held them fast. They ran after the stone that was to turn all to gold, or the elixir that should conquer death, or the signs in the heavens that should foretell their destinies; and the taint of this may be traced even when the dark period that followed was clearing away. Four hundred years after Roger's death, his illustrious namesake, Francis Bacon, was formulating his Inductive Philosophy, and with complete cock-sureness was teaching mankind all about everything. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... possibility of weakness—which in the eyes of some, and of his sister among them, marred the grace and beauty of his features. Yet, as he was wont himself to say, when one thinks that each poor mortal is heir to a legacy of every evil trait or bodily taint of so vast a line of ancestors, lucky indeed is the man who does not find that Nature has scored up some long-owing ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tooth will tear and taint The Poet, Patriot, Sage or Saint, Not sparing wit nor learning. Now, if you'd know the reason why, The best of reasons I'll supply; 'Tis ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... "Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter—Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him—but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he keep a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... school and carried Claire off for refreshing country drives. Quite evidently she enjoyed Claire's society, quite evidently also she preferred to enjoy it when other visitors were not present. Claire was not offended, for she knew that there was no taint of snobbishness in this decision; she was just sorry, and, in a curious fashion, remorseful into the bargain. She did not argue out the point, but instinctively she felt that Janet, not herself, was the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... absence equally of morality and medical knowledge among their unmarried women, it did not take many years after the appearance of the Whites to taint the race throughout with certain diseases. A cold-blooded passage in Crozet's journal tells of the beginning of this curse. Though not altogether unskilful surgeons, the Maoris knew virtually nothing of medicine. Nor do they show much nervous power when attacked by disease. Cheerful and sociable ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... put it back myself, and a good job for that 'taint went out of the family and off to the mouths of strangers, ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Migrating to Lisieux, I found myself in such pleasant quarters that I was tempted to settle there for some days. The town is almost an unbroken assemblage of the quaintest and most picturesque old houses. There are whole streets without any taint of modern architecture to disturb the perfect image of the past. Two magnificent churches, one of them formerly a cathedral, rise over the whole; and there is a very pretty public garden, with its terraces, pastures, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... 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 ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy |
