"Befouled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sent whither it is needed with as little as possible of dirt, confusion, and the distressing of quiet people's lives. One is tempted to believe from what one has read of the condition of those districts in the nineteenth century, that those who had them under their power worried, befouled, and degraded men out of malice prepense: but it was not so; like the mis-education of which we were talking just now, it came of their dreadful poverty. They were obliged to put up with everything, and even pretend ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Parliament remained, the battle for the land would have had to go forward; for that Parliament was an assembly controlled by landlords who, for the most part, believed as strongly in the sacredness of rent as they did in the sacredness of nationality. But by the Union the conflict was embittered and befouled. The landlords invented their famous doctrine of conditional loyalty. They bargained with Great Britain to the effect that, if they were permitted to pillage their tenantry, they would in return uphold and maintain British ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... of the sun slanting over the slope, the songs of the wild birds that had sneaked into the trees along the green back yards of our dusty street, and how it came to me then that the world was too beautiful to be befouled by the hates of little men, whose appetites were no more important than the appetites of the caterpillars eating the green foliage. But I could see the hates of men reflected ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the sea hurt them more. While one man was beating off the swords, the waters stole up silently and took him. Contrariwise, another was struggling with the waves, when the steel came up and encompassed him. The flowing waters were befouled with the gory spray. Thus the Ruthenians were conquered, and Frode made ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... life, so strangely personal and pure, and of which he was so proud, seemed to him now to be befouled, and all its mystery and inner grace, and the perfect possession which was his sanctuary, lost to him for ever. For he could never quite forget the defiling thought; it would always remain with him, and the consciousness of the stain would preclude all possibility ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... day when conquering Marius seized The city's ramparts! with what fated speed Death strode upon his victims! plebs alike And nobles perished; far and near the sword Struck at his pleasure, till the temple floors Ran wet with slaughter and the crimson stream Befouled with slippery gore the holy walls. No age found pity men of failing years, Just tottering to the grave, were hurled to death; From infants, in their being's earliest dawn (4), The growing life was severed. For what crime? Twas cause enough for death that they could die. The ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... reviews of their solitary alternative-the having of a befouled degraded little dog in their chamber through the night, they were subjected to a conflict of emotions when eyeing him: and there came to them the painful, perhaps irreverent, perhaps uncharitable, thought:—that the sinner who has rolled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scorn the sage who rendered whole His child befouled, and choked his grief, Who freely gave you what you stole And added honour ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... success demonstrates a pervision of taste in the fatherland. The author of the "Litterarische Reise durch Deutschland"[82] advises his sister, to whom his letters are directed, to put her handkerchief before her mouth at the very mention of Wegener, and fears that the very name has befouled his pen. Asimilar condemnation is ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... intimidate Ascyltos with a brush dipped in satyrion. Then a catamite appeared, clad in a myrtle-colored frieze robe, and girded round with a belt. One minute he nearly gored us to death with his writhing buttocks, and the next, he befouled us so with his stinking kisses that Quartilla, with her robe tucked high, held up her whalebone wand and ordered him to give the unhappy wretches quarter. Both of us then took a most solemn oath that so dread a secret should perish with us. ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... rapidity of moral deterioration in an evil companionship is its most startling feature. It is appalling to see how soon an evil companionship will transform a young man, morally pure, of clean and wholesome life, into an unclean, befouled, trifling good-for-nothing. Lightning scarcely does its work of destruction quicker, ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... spears and the war-gear of warriors gleamed behind her; but the men tarried on the threshold till she turned about and beckoned to them, and then they poured in through the Man's-door, their war-gear rent and they all befouled and disarrayed with the battle, but with proud and happy faces: as they entered she waved her hand to them to bid them go join the quenchers of the fire; so they went ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... heaving up in the middle incredibly; it was spreading incredibly; and as it heaved and spread, it befouled itself and darkened its sky. Its boundary was mere shapelessness on the run; a raw, new house would appear on a country road; four or five others would presently be built at intervals between it and the outskirts of the town; ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... compartments. Nothing could have been more cruelly dismal than the appearance it presented at the time of this third visit of mine. A regiment, changing quarters, had departed the day before, and another was expected to arrive (from Algeria) on the morrow. The place had been left in the befouled and belittered condition which marks the passage of the military after they have broken camp, and it would offer but a melancholy welcome to the regiment that was about to take possession. Enormous ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... protests, and then buried the troublesome and persistent clamorers in the silence of calm but considerate disbelief. They were quietly allowed to sink into the charitable grave of unquestioning oblivion. It was not any personal attaint which befouled their names and blasted their public prospects, but simply the fact that they had obeyed the nation's behest and done a work assigned to them by the country's rulers. Thus it came to pass that in one third of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... below to help him up—and it was sad to see so great a man in so brave a livery so befouled! Instead of thanking me for my pains he vowed this was a trick put on him, and that some he knew of should smart for it. But for all that he found neither press, nor forme, nor printed sheet contrary to regulation, no, not by searching the whole house over, even to my sweet ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... are the Episcopal and Dutch churches. The first, being frame, was used as a hospital during the Revolution. The Provincial Congress, when it was compelled to leave White Plains, removed to Fishkill, and at first attempted to use this church for its sessions, but the place had been so befouled by flocks of pigeons that a move was made to the Dutch Church. It was during this time that Washington crossed the Delaware, and he sent to the Congress sitting here for reinforcements, but no troops could be spared from the defense of ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... perpetual symbol of Venetian "effect." The light here is in fact a mighty magician and, with all respect to Titian, Veronese and Tintoret, the greatest artist of them all. You should see in places the material with which it deals—slimy brick, marble battered and befouled, rags, dirt, decay. Sea and sky seem to meet half-way, to blend their tones into a soft iridescence, a lustrous compound of wave and cloud and a hundred nameless local reflections, and then to fling the clear tissue against every object of vision. You may see these elements at work everywhere, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... were piling mountain-high. He had quickly forgotten his recent theories regarding the nature of God and man. He had been swept by the force of ill tidings clean off the lofty spiritual plane up to which he had struggled during the past weeks. Again he was befouled in the mire of material fears and corroding speculations as to the probable manifestations of evil, real and immanent. Don Mario was right. He must take the child and fly at once. He would go to Dona Maria immediately and bid ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking |
