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Defilement

noun
1.
The state of being polluted.  Synonyms: befoulment, pollution.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Defilement" Quotes from Famous Books



... A metal drinking vessel, which the Hindu religiously guards against defilement, and to which he clings as a cherished possession when he has nothing else belonging to him in ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... annihilate me in the depths of the immaculate snow that falls from your every limb. You are the miracle of eternal chastity. Your race has sprung from a very beam of grace, like some wondrous tree unsown by any germ. Your son, Jesus, was born of the breath of God; you yourself were born without defilement of your mother's womb, and I would believe that this virginity goes back thus from age to age in endless unwittingness of flesh. Oh! to live, to grow up outside the pale of the senses! Oh! to perpetuate life solely by the contact of a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... of defilement to the sweepers,—or, as some particularly righteous folk with inside reservations on the road to Heaven firmly insist, even beneath the sweepers, and possibly beneath the jackals—come the English, looking boldly on whatever their eyes desire and ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... Gautam would have sanctioned, though it has not among them the rigidity it has among the Hindus. I was told regarding one boarding institution for young men, all ate together; but on returning to their homes they performed certain ceremonies which removed the defilement they had contracted. As to the general character of the native Christians, I inferred it was much the same as in India, with similar excellences ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... affected wrath. There, however, he was executing a profound pathological study in a serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we have to blame the composition of human character, or the mischievousness of a human institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748—a story which is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all centuries, for it promised full satisfaction ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... twilight fell; night came; and then Madeline rose to sit by the window to let the cool wind blow upon her hot face. She passed through hours of unintelligible shame and impotent rage and futile striving to reason away her defilement. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... show-room it is, with its marble altar-piece, its silver candlesticks, its crucifixes, and, in short, all the paraphernalia of such places. If there be any efficacy in holy water, the little chamber must by this time be effectually cleansed from the sad defilement of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... melancholy than the aspect of H——.... It was a miserable day, dark, dismal, and foggy; the Manchester smoke came down, together with a penetrating cold drizzle, like the defilement and weeping of irretrievable shame, and sin, and sorrow; and the whole aspect of the place struck me with dismay. The house was shut up, and looked absolutely deserted, not a soul stirring about it; the garden dismantled and out of order. Altogether, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... to the souls of men, that it was never too late to retract errors, and if, in the first hurry of separation, some remains of popish impurity adhered to a new-born church, it behoved its members to remove the defilement, as soon as a more simple and scriptural view of the subject allowed them to complete ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... deeply discussed between the rector and his wife. She had given it as her opinion that priest M'Carthy was pitch, pitch itself in its blackest turpitude, and as such could not be touched without defilement. Had not all the Protestant clergymen of Ireland in a body, or, at any rate, all those who were worth anything, who could with truth be called Protestant clergymen, had they not all refused to enter ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... ugliness! How she did curse! She cursed my father and mother—she cursed their graves—flung dirt upon my brother and sisters, and filth upon the whole generation. She gave me up to Jehanum, and to every species of defilement. It was a dreadful thing to hear that old woman curse. I pulled my turban over my eyes, that she might not recognise me, and lifted up my garment to cover my face, that I might not be defiled with the shower of curses which were thrown at me like mud, and sat there watching ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... of the day before Christmas, were these Shining Ones, moving to and fro with the crowd, whose faces were loving and serene as the invisible stars, whose robes took no defilement from the spatter and the rush of earth, whose coming and going was still as the falling snow-flakes. They entered houses without ringing door-bells, they passed through apartments without opening doors, and everywhere they were bearing ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... church. From me the accusation will come with ill grace, and yet a public charge must be preferred. You must be the champion of my cause. Your's shall be the task of conferring a lasting obligation on your friend—your's shall be the glory of ridding the sanctuary of defilement." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... son of Priam. (1) Paris was the guest of Menel[a]os, when he eloped with his wife, Helen; and Sextus was the guest of Lucretia when he defiled her. (2) The elopement of Helen was the cause of a national war between the Greek cities and the allied cities of Troy; and the defilement of Lucretia was the cause of a national war between Rome and the allied cities under Por'sena. (3) The contest between Greece and Troy terminated in the victory of Greece, the injured party; and the contest between Rome and the supporters of Tarquin terminated in favor of Rome, the injured party. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbour's footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master's, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... excite our wonder and command our imitation), may be freed from the calumnies and detractions of ignorance and envy; and so their honour may continue as unspotted, as they have kept their persons uncontaminated and free from defilement. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... spring, they slowly and miserably died. And all the while they knew almost nothing of the real causes that made crops succeed or fail. They only felt sure it was somehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defilement. It is this state of things that explains the curious cruelty of early agricultural doings, the human sacrifices, the scapegoats, the tearing in pieces of living animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping of the fields in blood. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... the collar of his shirt and dragged him to the stairs. The man fought and bit and cursed. A black slime of words fell from his lips, covering them all with its defilement. Finally the struggles subsided, and with one mighty effort the doctor threw him into the upper chamber and closed the door behind them. In a few moments he came downstairs, bolting the door carefully. When he entered the room, he saw Mrs. Preston staring at the door as if entranced, her face ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... truth, justice, and love shall visibly reign, in which temptations shall cease and sin shall cease also; in which the upward strivings of noble souls shall find their end, and holiness shall supersede penitence, and hearts shall be pure of all defilement. This is the Faith which holds to the sure conviction that all things shall one day come to judgment; and whether by sudden catastrophe or by sure development, the physical system shall surrender to the moral. This is the Faith ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... sorrow of it must be. By the purity, she realized what the poisoning of the fountain springs of life could mean. By the triumph, she realized what the defeat, the debasement could be. She thought of love as a fountain spring, a spring into which you could not both cast defilement and drink of waters undefiled; as an altar flame fed with incense lighting the darkness; and one could no more offend love with impurity, than cast the dung heap on the altar flame and not expect blastment. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... be ashamed of the flag of our passion, which mother Nature has sent with us as our standard into the battlefield of life. Passion is beautiful and pure—pure as the lily that comes out of the slimy soil. It rises superior to its defilement and needs no Pears' soap ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... whether he could detect a breathing; and though scared, he being a Cohen, and the presence of death defilement, yet he stayed, bending over Mephi several minutes, thinking, not of ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... from other passages, where God is said to incline or draw according to his own pleasure, Satan himself and all the reprobate. For the carnal understanding scarcely comprehends how he, acting by their means, contracts no defilement from their criminality, and even in operations common to himself and them, is free from every fault, and yet righteously condemns those whose ministry he uses. Hence was invented the distinction between ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... letters they make use of the Aleph, by which we can tell that they are not of the seed of Israel, although they know the law of Moses with the exception of these three letters. They guard themselves from the defilement of the dead, of the bones of the slain, and of graves; and they remove the garments which they have worn before they go to the place of worship, and they bathe and put on fresh clothes. This is their constant practice. On Mount Gerizim are fountains and gardens and plantations, but Mount ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... disregard my hest, Hear what I then resolve; I lay my ban On the assassin whosoe'er he be. Let no man in this land, whereof I hold The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him; Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes. For this is our defilement, so the god Hath lately shown to me by oracles. Thus as their champion I maintain the cause Both of the god and of the murdered King. And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):— Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness! And ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... destroying aqueducts, sowing seeds twice in the same place, putting spits in rice-fields, flaying an animal alive or against the grain, etc. The crimes against the State were cutting and wounding (whether the living or the dead), defilement on account of leprosy or cognate diseases, unnatural offences, evil acts on the part of children towards parents or of parents towards children, etc. Methods of expiating crime were recognized, but, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... wounds which they received in past years while fighting for you, and you both refuse to ratify the war in which these very men elected to serve, and show yourselves inferior to them, who are ready to face dangers; for while you praise the soldiers that detected the defilement of Antony and withdrew from him, though he was consul, and attached themselves to Caesar, (that is, to you through him), you shrink from voting for that which you say they were right in doing. Also we are grateful to Brutus ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... My fathers! whom I will rejoin, It may be, purified by death from some Of the gross stains of too material being, I would not leave your ancient first abode To the defilement of usurping bondmen; If I have not kept your inheritance As ye bequeathed it, this bright part of it, Your treasure—your abode—your sacred relics 430 Of arms, and records—monuments, and spoils, In which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... Your face, your language, and your tigerish fun. How winning are your tones, how fine your air! Your beard how silken and how sweet your hair! Pah! you've a sick man's lips, a blackamoor's hand: Your breath's defilement. Leave me, I command." ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... passing through Malcolm's mind, as, after Liftore's punishment, he lifted the portrait, set it again upon its easel, and went on trying to clean the face of it—with no small promise of success. But as he made progress he grew anxious—lest with the defilement, he should remove some of the colour as well: the painter alone, he concluded at length could be trusted to restore the work he ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... dissatisfactions and bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is ignoble or base. And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all breath of defilement. It showed clear right through, as some gem of the purest water. To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and ambitions. Hence that its perfection should be now endangered ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he, 'The images ye ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... of Kuroda Ke, or that of Saio[u] Dono. Daihachiro[u] now takes his meal. There is nothing wrong with it?" He looked meaningly at Densuke. The latter, with eyes on the shining sword, at once denied all defilement. He now plumed himself on the care taken of the Danna's interests. Daihachiro[u] descended; to feed at ease and keep watch ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... SIGISMUND. If 'tis me thou'rt seeking, Prince, At thy feet behold me lying. [Kneeling. Let thy carpet be these hairs Which the snows of age have whitened. Tread upon my neck, and trample On my crown; in base defilement Treat me with all disrespect; Let thy deadliest vengeance strike me Through my honour; as thy slave Make me serve thee, and in spite of All precautions let fate be, Let heaven ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... steal my affections more than I ever thought of. O God, take my poor heart, lost a creaturely attachment be too strongly rooted within my breast. Lord, Thou knowest me altogether, and the secret springs of my affection, cleanse me from all defilement; purify me from all my sins, and let me this moment yield myself entirely to Thee; and as Thou deignest to visit dust, visit me.—Time glides away; eternity approaches; and yet, alas! my mind fluctuates as the wind. O my God, shall ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... the answer of a good conscience toward God. 1 Pet. 3:19-21. We must obtain a good or "undefiled conscience" before we are a Scriptural candidate for baptism. How can defilement be purged from the conscience? By the blood of Jesus. Heb. 9:14. We are taught in Mat. 3:8 that we must bear fruits of repentance to be worthy applicants for baptism. The man of Ethiopia was asked to profess faith in Christ before Philip considered ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... is not by me; and, if it were, its defilement is such that I could not be tempted to give it at length. Laughable and lamentable as the article is in the main, I still thank Hibbard for some portions of it, and especially for that one which substantiates the charge which I have brought against the "respectable men of Fulton." Thus ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen

... ceremonies to which the Divinity, they say, attaches some secret virtue, by unseen views, of which we can form no ideas. In baptism, without which no man can be saved, the water sprinkled on the head of the child washes his spiritual soul, and carries away the defilement which is a consequence of the sin committed in the person of Adam, who sinned for all men. By the mysterious virtue of this water, and of some words equally unintelligible, the infant finds itself reconciled ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... scope for difference of opinion. One may understand by [Hebrew: pgriM] the carcasses of animals;—the valley of Hinnom would, in that case, be the public flaying-ground. It is in itself probable, and it is generally held[8] that, after the defilement by Josiah (2 Kings xxiii. 10), it received this designation. But there are not wanting evident traces that, [Pg 456] even in former times, the valley served this purpose. In Is. xxx. 33, it is said in ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... attached to the large community of the impure castes formed from the indigenous tribes, who have settled in Hindu villages and entered the caste system. These are relegated to the most degrading and menial occupations, and their touch is regarded as conveying defilement like that of the Sudras. [27] The status of the Sudras was not always considered so low, and they were sometimes held to rank above the mixed castes. And in modern times in Bengal Sudra is quite a respectable ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... "Have you seen all those advertisements of brain foods? The advertisement columns of our magazines and newspapers are full of them. Their announcements grin down upon us from every hoarding. Do you know that we are going to do the same thing? We are going to contribute our share to the defilement of journalism. We are going to make a similar appeal to the ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... saying, for, with trembling hands, she took it off and threw it to a child. I hoped this meant something definite, and tried to lead her to Jesus. But as soon as she understood Who He was, she drew back. "I cannot be a disciple of your Guru, here," she said; "would my relations bear such defilement?" Being a Christian really meant sooner or later leaving her home and all her people for ever. Can you wonder an old lady of perhaps ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... subjected: so long as there is no chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement.... ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... wearying friendships that the most are here. The thought came to Fleda like one of those unearthly clear Northwestern skies from which a storm cloud has rolled away, that seem almost to mock Earth with their distance from its defilement and agitations. "Truly I know that it shall be well with them that fear God!"—She could remember Hugh,—she could not think of the words without him,—and yet say them with the full bounding assurance. And in that weary and uneasy afternoon her mind rested ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... the stonework in places are burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed; statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a soul than ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... instead of constructing, at great expense, dams across the Nile to increase the extent of its inundations, he were to scatter his piasters in attempts to deepen its bed, that he might rescue Egypt from the defilement of the foreign mud which is swept down upon it from the mountains of the Moon? Exactly such a degree of wisdom do we exhibit, when at the expense of millions, we strive to preserve our country.... From what? From the blessings with which Nature ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... all their sins but hideous dreams! How many would loathe the sin? How many would remain capable of doing all again? But few, perhaps no burdened souls can have any idea of the power that lies in God's forgiveness to relieve their consciousness of defilement. Those who say, "Even God cannot destroy the fact!" care more about their own cursed shame than their Father's blessed truth! Such will rather excuse than confess. When a man heartily confesses, leaving excuse to God, the truth makes him ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... this—not that she would call evil good and good evil, but that she would take the beautiful for the true and the outer shows of goodness for goodness itself—not the worst result, but bad enough, and involving an awful amount of suffering and possibly of defilement. He who thinks to climb the hill of happiness thus, will find himself floundering in the blackest bog that lies at the foot of its precipices. I say he, not she, advisedly. All will acknowledge it of the woman: it is as true of the man, though he may get out ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... also others, women, hanged by their hair over that mire that flamed up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. And the men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery, were hanging by the feet with their heads in that mire, and they exclaimed in a loud voice: We did not believe that we should come ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... is bright and pure, and the water which flows over the slime-smudged roots limpid and refreshing. If you cut into the bark of the tea-tree you will find water in beads and trickles, water which sparkles with purity and has a slightly saline taste. The bare roots alone suffer defilement. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... Tom was as clever with the cards as might be expected of a young man who had devoted most of his leisure for several years to handling them, McBane was past master in their manipulation. During a stormy career he had touched more or less pitch, and had escaped few sorts of defilement. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... of the drapery were now faded and shabby, only enhanced the tender reverence with which the Senora knelt before them, her eyes filling with indignant tears at thought of the heretic hands which had wrought such defilement. Even the crumbling wreaths which had been placed on some of the statues' heads at the time of the last ceremonial at which they had figured in the Mission, had been brought away with them by the devout sacristan, and the Senora had replaced each ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... servants' offices and kitchen, which at the beginning of the spring had been painted white, and were immaculate in their purity, became literally a yellow-brown coffee color, darkened all over with spots as black as soot, with the defilement of these torments, of which three and four dustpanfuls a day would be swept away dead without appreciably diminishing ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts; in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk covered ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... a real success. In India it exactly supplied a want. The card is cheap (it only costs 1/4d.), and it is complete in itself. Stamps and envelopes have to be wetted. The gum may have been made of the hoofs or bones of the cow, and the thought of possible defilement of caste comes in. The post card has no drawback. Its publicity, which makes English people dislike it, is not considered a disadvantage by the Indian. He reads other people's letters as a matter of course, and expects other people to read his. I have often seen ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... of His beloved Son? If we ourselves, though sinners, can help one another by our prayers, how irresistible must be the intercession of Mary, who never grieved Almighty God by sin, who never tarnished her white robe of innocence by the least defilement, from the first moment of her existence till she was received by triumphant ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... disciples. John's account is consistent throughout, for he states that on the next day the desire of the Jews to "eat the Passover" forbade them to enter the house of the governor lest they should incur defilement (xviii. 28). The other gospels, moreover, hint in several ways that the day of Jesus' death could not have been the day after the Passover; that is, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread. Dr. Sanday has recently enumerated these afresh, remarking that "the Synoptists make the ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... is founded upon justice; but justice, to the wise man, is more a scrupulous quality in the mind than the doing of expedient acts upon sinners. Hamlet is neither "weak" nor "unpractical," as so many call him. What he hesitates to do may be necessary, or even just, as the world goes, but it is a defilement of personal ideals, difficult for a wise mind to justify. It is so great a defilement, and a world so composed is so great a defilement, that death seems preferable ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... upon the face of the earth".[162] Judah had experienced the woful effects of dalliance with pagan nations, and, at the time we are now considering, a Jew who permitted himself unnecessary association with a Gentile became an unclean being requiring ceremonial cleansing to free him from defilement. Only in strict isolation did the leaders find hope of insuring the perpetuity of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... awaited the consuming fire amid the uncleanness of ashes outside the camp—its throat gashed across—its entrails laid open; a vile and horrid thing, which no one could see without experiencing emotions of disgust, nor touch without contracting defilement. The description appeared too painfully vivid—its introduction too little in accordance with the rules of a just taste. But the master in this difficult walk knew what he was doing. And that, he said, pointing to the strongly-coloured picture ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... To the enemy. His Majesty resolves, that Regenspurg 150 Be purified from the enemy, ere Easter, That Lutheranism may be no longer preached In that cathedral, nor heretical Defilement desecrate the celebration Of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... a shot, to know that the earth would really be cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeing thought. Then there would NEVER be another foul humanity created, for a universal defilement.' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... wrath; she sickened when Braddell touched her child. All her pride of intellect, that had never slept, all her pride of birth, long dormant, woke up to protect the heir of her ambition, the descendant of her race, from the defilement of the father's nurture. Not long after her confinement, she formed a plan for escape; she disappeared from the house with her child. Taking refuge in a cottage, living on the sale of the few jewels she possessed, she was for some weeks almost ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... labour under improved conditions. "Fors Clavigera" consisted of a series of letters to workingmen, inviting them to join him in establishing a fund for rescuing English country life from the tyranny and defilement of machinery. In pursuance of this project, the St. George's Guild was formed, about 1870, Ruskin devoting to it 7,000 pounds of his own money. Trustees were chosen to administer the fund; a building ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... when lust, By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose, The divine property of her first being. Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp Oft seen in charnel vaults ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him as a harvest—good measure, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... God's eye is upon them, as if they were in a place, or a station, where they had nothing to do but to watch over the salvation of their own souls; that the meadow and the harvest-field need not be, as they too often are, places for temptation and for defilement; where the old too often teach the young, not to fear God and keep themselves pure, but to copy their coarse jests and foul language, and listen to stories which had better be buried for ever in the dirt out of which they spring. You know what ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... spodos damaleos rhantizousa tous kekoinomenous hagiazei pros ten tes sarkos katharoteta. mallon to haima tou Christou ... kathariei ten suneidesin hemon apo nekron ergon eis to latreuein Theo zonti.] The defilement by dead bodies, against which the water of purification was specially used, is the most significant symbol of sinners and sins.—4. "It is, in general, not probable that the Servant of God, who farther down is described as a sacrificial beast (!),—who, by taking upon Himself ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... reached the Rhine. It is possible that we might obtain some slight modifications, if we continued the war, but would those modifications be worth the loss of a few more hundred thousands of human lives, of a few more months of this hideous, pagan slaughter and defilement of God's beautiful world?" ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the most remarkable features of Shint[o] was the emphasis laid on cleanliness. Pollution was calamity, defilement was sin, and physical purity at least, was holiness. Everything that could in any way soil the body or the clothing was looked upon with abhorrence and detestation. Disease, wounds and death were defiling, and the feeling of disgust prevailed over that ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... was a horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... it be with the poor? I know of no one circumstance more unfavorable to moral purity than the necessity of being physically dirty. Our nature is so intensely symbolical, that where the outward sign of defilement becomes habitual, the inner is too apt to correspond. I am quite sure that before there can be a universal millennium, trade must be pursued in such a way as to enable the working classes to realize something ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... play. And the worst is, that you may be wrong, and they may be right! For is it, can it be proper for you to stain the silvery whiteness of your skin by plunging headlong into yonder pitch-bath? Consider the defilement! Contemplate your hideous aspect on issuing from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... unseeing weakness. Then a new thought came to him, and his despair flamed into rage. He leapt to his feet, clutching at his shaggy beard. The girl had been seized, without doubt, by the great Black Chief. The thought of this defilement to his woman, the mother of his man-child, drove him quite mad for the moment. Snatching up his weapons, he roared with anguish, and ran blindly forward along the trampled trail, ready to hurl himself upon the ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... soul after death. The men who burned the bodies of their dead believed that the soul had no further use for its body after death, but departed into a distant, shadowy, immaterial region, so that the body, if it had any connection with the soul, acted rather as a drag and a defilement, from which it was well that the soul should be released. Therefore they dematerialized the body, and often the things used by the body during life, by the action of fire. On the other hand, those who ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... get away from the mud and defilement of sin in this world. Sin will ever be all about us. Its stench will be in our nostrils from day to day. Our eyes will be offended by it, and our ears will be shocked. But so long as we keep it all on the outside, we can be saints ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... present. He told me that, under such circumstances, he could not remain with me any longer. In his view, I was committing a great sin. To kill an ox or a cow, is considered by them as a crime which can never be atoned for, and to eat their flesh is a defilement which can never be washed away. To kill a cow is, by Hindoo law, ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... closed in when I was in a mood akin to it. Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As soon as possible, I ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... be," he answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers—the defilement of common life." ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... of God was represented to her under the semblance of a vast sea, with whose limpid waters no defilement however small was allowed to mingle, all such being instantaneously rejected. Overwhelmed at—sight of the disproportion between the purity of the human, soul, and the holiness of the great God with whom she ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... human rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromise in the past." He declared that he was "painfully impressed by the discord and defilement which the amendment would introduce into the Constitution." He quoted the declaration of Madison in the convention of 1787, that it was wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in man. "Of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... all streams glides along the Aqua Virgo, so named because no defilement ever stains it. For while all the others, after heavy rain show some contaminating mixture of earth, this alone by its ever pure stream would cheat us into believing that the sky was always blue above us. Ah! how express these things in words worthy of them? The Aqua Claudia is ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... of the radiant sisterhood of queenly graces! She can not be crushed to earth. The eternal years of God being hers, she, no more than her author, can go down. Error may fling widely open his arsenal gates of defilement and deceit, and seek so earnestly and tirelessly the usurpation of her throne; but there she sits, as firmly and gracefully as when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. Such is truth, the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... gold is impure in the end, it is because it has contracted fresh defilement by coming in contact with other bodies. But this impurity is only superficial, and does not prevent its being used; whereas its former impurity was hidden within it, and, as it were, identified with ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... tints of pink, blue, and orange, like the draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate. Then came the rush and splatter of cabriolets, scattering terror and defilement. The well-mounted English dandy shows his sense by hoisting his parapluie; the French dragoon curls his mustachio at such effeminacy, and braves the liquid bullets in the genuine spirit of Marengo; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... line 1. Centieme. He dates the Huguenot trouble from a century. It may be said to have originated in the placards threatening the defilement of the Sacrament, placards which appeared in the streets of ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc

... that issue and nine that enter; two yield the draught and one drinks." Said he to her: "Seven are the days of a woman's defilement, and nine the months of pregnancy; two are the breasts that yield the draught, and one the child that drinks it." Whereupon she said to him: "Thou ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... A. D., and who died in 202, writing against the Valentinians and certain Gnostics led by Marcus, states explicitly that many of the women who had been led into heresy and impurity, and who afterwards returned to the Church, confessed even publicly, and wept over their defilement. "But others, ashamed to do this, and in some manner secretly despairing within themselves of the life of God, ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel

... also, for salvation in this world. The thin veil of allegory enables us to penetrate Dante's teaching that this life also is a Purgatory, and here, too, we may cast off the defilement of sin by means of repentance and expiation. But first the soul must be girt with the rush of humility, and have perfect contrition represented by its being washed with the dew, the moisture that descends ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... rose the obligation on virgins to yield to a stranger first. Only then were they permitted to marry a man of their own race. Furthermore, various means were resorted to in order to save the husband from the defilement which might result from that act (see for inst., Reinach, Mythes, cultes, I, p. 118).—The opinion expressed in this note was attacked, almost immediately after its publication, by Frazer (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 50 ff.) who preferred ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... one of the many—not all of the purest—who cherish an ideal of woman which, although indeed poverty-stricken and crude, is to their minds of snowy favor, to their judgment of loftiest excellence. I trust in God that many a woman, despite the mud of doleful circumstance, yea, even the defilement that comes first from within, has risen to a radiance of essential innocence ineffably beyond that whose form stood white in Faber's imagination. For I see and understand a little how God, giving righteousness, makes pure of sin, and that verily—by ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... Castille, Philippe the Hardy, and the city fathers all aided the work substantially, and the fabric speedily took on its finished form. Through the later centuries it still preserved its entity, and even during the Revolution its walls escaped destruction and defilement through the devotion ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... all the crimes charged against him, as far as he could commit them, is evident. The only intent which his act did not overtake, was the defilement of Isabel. Of this Angelo was ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... the spot where the Spanish torpedo boat rode at anchor. Then a number of tarpaulins were got up on deck and hung over the ship's sides, fore and aft, covering the hull from the bulwark rail right down to the surface of the water, to protect the white paint from defilement by flying coal dust; and, this having been done, the yacht was taken alongside the coal hulk, and the process of coaling the vessel at once began under the joint supervision of Milsom and the second engineer, the skipper being especially particular ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... some repulsive animal. This process of metempsychosis might be repeated far into the indefinite future. With the doctrine of Brahma and of transmigration was connected the feeling that all life is sacred. The Brahman spared even trees and plants from destruction. Pollution or defilement might be contracted in a great variety of ways. There grew out of these ideas of sin, rigorous penances, most painful forms of self-torment. It was only by practices of this sort that there was hope of avoiding ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... other liquid contaminated by the touch of a man of inferior caste can be made use of—rivers, tanks and other large sheets of water being, however, held to be incapable of defilement. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... impurities, by touching which in passing by, a Jew would be ceremonially defiled, and rendered incapable of visiting the Temple to perform his devotions, till after the evening of the day on which the defilement took place], therefore all the four Gospels which all contain, this story, must have been written by Gentiles ignorant of the custom which ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... the Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns, and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on their beards. The curse of the Shaykaim is on them—may ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... was real terror in her eyes and voice. "Doomed to sati. For, since I am a widow—since thou dost maintain thou art not my husband—then my face hath been looked upon by a man not of mine own people, and I am dishonoured. Fire alone can cleanse me of that defilement—the pyre and the ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... describes the original state of man, as a state of perfect purity and innocence. He was made in the image of God. He was made upright [Gen. i. 26, 27.; Eccles. vii. 29.]. His understanding, will, his affections and conscience, his body and soul, were free from defilement, guilt, or guile, and while he continued so, he was not liable to pain, ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson

... state of mind of primitive peoples, the flood that submerged all but the strongest swimmers. The savage spent his days suspecting and exorcising evil. The echo in the cliff is an enemy, the wind in the grass an approaching sickness, the new-born child clad in mystery and defilement. But it wasn't for us to laugh at the savage for, so to speak, not having found his earth-legs, since our quite recent ancestors had held comets and eclipses to be menacing gestures of the stars. Some primitive suspicions were reasonable, and chief among these the fear ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... been wasted in palaver, that I found they considered themselves slighted, first of all because we had not fired a salvo in their honor, and secondly because we failed to spread mats from the beach to the house, upon which the bride might place her virgin feet without defilement! These were indispensable formalities among the "upper ten;" and the result was that COOMBA could not land unless the etiquette ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... prostitution, either temporarily or as an inmate of any such house or place, and any person who shall directly or indirectly cause, procure, aid, assist, knowingly permit or abet in any manner the seduction, defilement, deflowering or the having of illicit intercourse with any such female by any person, either at her home or other place of abode or elsewhere, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison not more than ten years nor less than one year or by fine ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... whether that be so or not, if we want an answer to the questions, How can my stained feet be cleansed so as to be fit to tread the crystal pavements? how can my foul garments be so purged as not to be a blot and an eyesore, beside the white, lustrous robes that sweep along them and gather no defilement there? the only answer that I know of is to be found by turning to the final visions of the New Testament, where the spirit of this whole section of our prophet is reproduced. Again, Babylon falls amidst the songs of saints; and then, down upon all the dust ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... the word, which means a garden or park and was applied to the abode of our first parents in Eden, could not but call up in the consciousness of the dying man a scene of beauty, innocence and peace, where, washed clean from the defilement of his past errors, he would begin to exist again as a new creature. Even Christians have believed that the utmost that can be expected in the next world by a soul with a history like the robber's is, at least to begin with, to be consigned to the fires of purgatory. But far ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... palace of your son. Like to her of mortal women—is there none, her beauty's peer; In the midst, between her eyebrows—from her birth a lovely mole, Dark was seen, and like a lotus—that hath vanished from my sight, Covered over with defilement—like the moon behind a cloud. This soft mark of perfect beauty—fashioned thus by Brahma's self, As at change the moon's thin crescent—only dim and faintly gleams. Yet her beauty is not faded—clouded o'er with toil and mire Though she be, it shines apparent, like the native ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... through what this white woman had? No! She was the reincarnation of some forgotten goddess. They knew that, and Umballa would soon bring famine and plague and death among them. Whenever they uttered his name they spat to cleanse their mouths of the defilement. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... noses deep into the food,—some rubbing their backs against a post,—some huddled together between sleeping and waking, breathing hard,—all wallowing about; a great boar swaggering round, and a big sow waddling along with her huge paunch. Notwithstanding the unspeakable defilement with which these strange sensualists spice all their food, they seem to have a quick and delicate sense of smell. What ridiculous-looking animals! Swift himself could not have imagined anything nastier than what they practise by the mere ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to send the girls to bring babes to the Mission House, and many a stirring night she had, she sleeping with them in her bed, whilst outside stealthy forms watched for a chance to free the town from the defilement of their presence. The first that survived was a boy. The husband, angry and sullen, was for murdering it and putting the mother into a hole in the swamp. She faced him with the old flash in her eye, and made him take oath not to hurt or kill the child. He even promised to permit ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... sense,—girls who have a standard of their own, regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden



Words linked to "Defilement" :   defile, dirtiness, befoulment, uncleanness



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