"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... welcome as any which Miss Paget received from her father. In sad and bitter truth, he did not care for her. His marriage with Mary Anne Kepp had been the one grateful impulse of his life; and even the sentiment which had prompted that marriage had been by no means free from the taint of selfishness. But he had been quite unprepared to find that this grand sacrifice of his life should involve another sacrifice in the maintenance of a daughter he did not want; and he was very much inclined to quarrel with the destiny that had given him ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... who had been Esme Graham, and wondering if he would see her at the wedding. It was probable, and he did not want to see her. In spite of ten years' effort, he did not think he could yet look upon Tom St. Clair's wife with the proper calm indifference. At the best, it would taint his own memory of her; he would never again be able to think of her as Esme Graham but ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fear of the future. The delicious present monopolised his existence. The ties of duty, the claims of domestic affection, the worldly considerations that by a cruel dispensation had seemed, as it were, to taint even his innocent and careless boyhood, even the urgent appeals of his critical and perilous situation; all, all were forgotten in one ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... it will be useless. And now, Reason, you are to remember, as of course you do, for Reason forgets nothing, that you are to think neither of brothers or of sisters. You are entirely to drop your feelings as Agatha, and to be pure Reason undefiled by mortal taint. You are to say, whether, were you, Reason, placed as I am now, you would marry this unreasonable young man as soon as he gets to Chatillon, which means tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that at the very latest. Now, Reason, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... illustration which offends the etiquettes of England, but fits him the better for the class he has to address. His powers are uncommon and unfettered in their play; his aim is worthy. He is fulfilling and will fulfil an important task as an educator of the people, if all be not marred by a taint of self-love and arrogance now obvious in his discourse. This taint is not surprising in one so young, who has done so much, and in order to do it has been compelled to great self-confidence and light heed of the authority of other minds, and who is surrounded almost exclusively by admirers; neither ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... then got on his feet and staggered down the bar. As Poleon overtook him, he cried out piteously, a shrill scream of terror, and, falling to his knees, grovelled and debased himself like a foul cripple at fear of the lash. His agony dispelled the savage taint of Alluna's aboriginal training in Necia, and the pure white blood of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... students' lodgings, on the second floor of a house in Quartier Latin. The occupant of the room below, Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of Mulatto blood ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... came about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of the Wolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thor to call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm. So great was the fame of Master ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... I'se comin'," said a voice from behind the golden-rose bushes, and out stepped Aunt Lucy in a new turban, making a curtsey to me. "La, Marse Richard!" said she, "to think you'se growed to be a fine gemman! 'Taint but t'other day you was kissin' ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... paroxysms of rage I always respected you. I descried the angel in the woman, and bowed to the ascendency of a celestial purity. Now I am happy and blessed indeed; for I have in you precisely what I needed, without knowing it—this pure affection, free from all earthly taint—unalterable—eternal. I possess at last the love of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... clean, going over it twice or three times. After the last skimming add half a dozen whole cloves, a dozen whole alspice, a pod of red pepper, a few whole grains of black pepper, and if you like, a young onion or a stalk of celery. Personally I do not like either onion or celery—moreover they taint the fat one may save from the pot. Let the water boil hard for half a minute, no longer, then slack heat till it barely simmers. Keep it simmering, filling up the pot as the water in it boils away, until the ham is tender throughout. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... whom he could have complete control, restricted by no human paternal weakness, to the task he had begun. But how? Of all the boys eagerly offered to the Church by their parents there seemed none sufficiently pure and free from parental taint. He remembered how one night, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin herself, as he firmly then believed, this dream was fulfilled. An Indian woman brought him a Waugee child—a baby-girl that she had picked up on the sea-shore. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... forms and courtesies of duel in the age of chivalry. No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the wave,—the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she feels the taint in her veins,—the slow victory is begun. What mattered all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the serpent,—his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught and wholesome the viand,—that master of the science of murder needs not the means of the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inherited taint, but merely an acquired habit, this fact has an important practical bearing upon the proper method of dealing with it. Acquired habits, we are now being taught by Professor Weismann, are incapable of being transmitted to posterity, and Mr. Galton ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... fellow rang his bell one day after the dinner was served. 'Well,' I said, 'what's the matter?' 'I want's my bacon,' said he. 'Well, you've got it,' said I. 'No I aint,' said he. 'It's in your tin,' said I. 'Taint in my tin,' said he. Then I fetched up the cook. We all three searched, and at last we found the bacon in one of the shucks ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... in ceaseless action—the strange voice of gold, roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of men. But above that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a hushed and dreamy flow of water over stones. It was hurrying to get by this horde of wild men, for it must bear the taint of gold and blood. Would it purge itself and clarify in the valleys below, on its way to the sea? There was in its murmur an imperishable and deathless note of nature, of time; and this was only a fleeting ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... "'Taint Hunt—it's Mr. Williston," she announced. "What's he want, I wonder? Look—he's wavin' at us! I guess he forgot some paper he wants you to take—he's bound to have it legal," she added with a sigh. "No, dear, let me be. I'll see what he wants ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... have just died, as they call it, and 'taint so bad a change after all; only I suppose there'll be dry times here for the want of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... these beget Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring; Hence will and thought and action, all the germs Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, That variegate the eternal universe. 150 Soul is not more polluted than the beams Of Heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines The taint ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... with our story. There were times—once or twice to-night, for instance—when she ceased doing even her unconscious work. Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty, pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... base life I had never thought," he had heard her wail, "though I had thought to end my own. But when Fate struck the blow for me, I swore that carrion should not taint ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This new ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... this sacrifice corresponds with the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus which also provides for the cleansing of that part of our nature that clings to the things of life which in themselves are not sinful but are God-given blessings. Our unsanctified affections must also become purified from every taint of depravity. That this may be accomplished, it becomes necessary that the heart yield up to the death every cherished object, even though it be a God-given blessing; it must be yielded up and laid upon the altar as a "burnt offering." The affections ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... my heart doth faint When I the life recall Of her who lived so free from taint, So virtuous deemed by all,— That in herself was so complete I think that she was ta'en By God to deck his paradise, And with his saints to reign, Whom while on earth each one did prize The fairest thing ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... no such custom, of course, is recognized in the law. On the contrary, the groom is supposed to belong to the same village, and special rites are enjoined 'if he be from another village.' But again, in the early rule there is no trace of that taint of family which the totem-scholars of to-day cite so loosely from Hindu law. The girl is not precluded because she belongs to the same family within certain degrees. The only restriction in the House-rituals ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... feel ashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I am ashamed of my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. To tell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness in my blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myself irresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry, and that of this afternoon ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... latter years Ann Edwards regarded her son Jerome with pride and admiration, and yet with a measure of disapproval. In spite of her fierce independence, a lifetime of poverty and struggle against the material odds of life had given a sordid taint to her character. She would give to the utmost out of her penury, though more from pride than benevolence; but when it came to labor without hire, that ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... world qualified it at once as a crime. This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe; the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always accepted by the people as the expression of an omnipotence derived directly from God. As an act of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... brothers and cousins, got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now, and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue and clever head, and some ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... grumbling, but this was necessary, and indeed 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
... Willoughby," pronouncing the name with an affectation of reverence. "The honour of the Willoughbys is thus preserved from every taint, and all the blame must fall ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... might'st live. He grieved as only strong, brave men can grieve For what is lost. Then wandered off a pace To seek new life in lands across the sea; He left thee here, thy life was wild and free. Long years ago came tidings of his death, Born sadly on the wind's taint whispering breath. He was a peer, the last of all his race, His Saxon strength was written on thy face. Yet in thy veins thy mother's Southern blood Is bounding with its warm, impetuous flood. Enough; my words are wandering; a will ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... hateful man! 'Twould vex a saint! Around my pretty, cherished book, The odor vile, the noisome taint Of horrid, stale tobacco-smoke Yet lingers! The hateful man, my book to spoil! Patrick, the tongs—lest I should soil ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... has led the life 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 of ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... 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 ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sufficiently repaid his brethren's hatred with love, it was no good being sorry, for sorrow was an evil, a passing to lesser perfection, diminished vitality. Let him rather rejoice that the real work of his life—his Ethica, which he was working out on pure geometrical principles—would have no taint of personality, would be without his name, and would not even be published till death had removed the last possibility of personal interest in its fortunes. "For," as he was teaching in the book itself, "those who desire to aid others by counsel ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to God for this approval of the people; but, while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black. Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil, Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance The ulcer's mouth ope: for the taint is fed And quickened by confinement; while the swain His hand of healing from the wound withholds, Or sits for happier signs imploring heaven. Aye, and when inward to the bleater's bones The pain hath sunk and rages, and their limbs By thirsty fever are consumed, 'tis good To draw the ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... amiable scamps whom she cultivated and sermonized, and there was a vast amount of merriment, wit, and gaiety, and a corresponding bill to pay. That supper led to others. And through it all Victurnien worshiped her as an angel. Mme. de Maufrigneuse for him was still an angel, untouched by any taint of earth; an angel at the Varietes, where she sat out the half-obscene, vulgar farces, which made her laugh; an angel through the cross-fire of highly-flavored jests and scandalous anecdotes, which enlivened a stolen frolic; ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... is the case I am surprised you have so little wrong-doing to confess. I believe you will ultimately convince me that a few of your sex have escaped the taint of ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in favor of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... own 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
... in his life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which I longest resided, and with ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... wooer, "I guess I might as well stop comin'. 'Taint no use to be forever worritin' after anything. I did think, howsomever, it 'ud be sorter nice to have us four live together. Young folks makes a house kinder lively. But I don't git on, somehow; so I guess I might as well hang up my ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the presiding genius of the fire sacrifice he is ever mentioned in the hymns in praise of fire. And the fire Nischyavana praises the earth only; he never suffers in reputation, splendour and prosperity. The sinless fire Satya blazing with pure flame is his son. He is free from all taint and is not defiled by sin, and is the regulator of time. That fire has another name Nishkriti, because he accomplished the Nishkriti (relief) of all blatant creatures here. When properly worshipped he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... such men: men who can endure no taint on their personal self-respect, even from a woman; men whose bodies are to themselves such sacred temples that a joke against them is desecration, and a rough touch downright sacrilege. Mr. Slope was such a man, and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... I find relief in thinking of the favor she will extend to those who have proved my friends, in such a strait. They that wear crowns love not to see disgrace befall the meanest of their blood, for something of the taint may sully even the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... the long pipe that runs by the bone should be taken out, as it is apt to taint; as also the kernels of beef. Do not purchase joints bruised by ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... metrical artist and poet born.... A beautiful and passionate work; its beauty that of construction, language, imagery,—its passion, characteristic of the artistic nature, and, while intensely human, free from any taint of vulgar coarseness.... The poem is quite original, its manner Elizabethan.... Eric Mackay is a lyrist with a singing faculty and a novel metrical form such as few lyrists have at command. With ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... he went to the equator, saw the impending change. He was weary of a Paris where everything had been painted, described, modelled, so he sailed for Tahiti, landing at Papeete. Even there he found the taint of European ideas, and after the funeral of King Pomare and an interlude of flirtation with an absinthe-drinking native princess, niece of the departed royalty (he made a masterly portrait of her), he fled to the interior and told ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... will be safe under your protection. Take no ordinary standard as the rule of your courtship, but determine from the very beginning that it shall be so conducted, that when as man and wife you look back upon it, it may be with feelings free from any taint of sorrow or shame; that when you stand before God to be married it may be as honest man and maiden, seeking for God's full blessing upon your married life, as it has rested upon your unmarried days. One thing I would say in conclusion, and I mention it last as being the most important, ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... tomahawk. In stature he is much above most youths of the same age: he is of a handsome and robust form, with high and strong but smooth features, light-brown hair, large blue eyes,—not brilliant, but beaming with a clear and steady light, as if a soul looked through them that knew no taint of vice or meanness,—and a countenance all glorious with a truth and courage, modest gentleness, and manly self-reliance; and as he thus lingers on that lonely mountain-height, glorified as it were with the fresh pure light of the newly risen sun, with head uncovered and looks reverent, he ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... heavens. The ministering angels, those who come in contact with the sublunary world,[68] now repair to their chambers to take their purification bath. They dive into a stream of fire and flame seven times, and three hundred and sixty-five times they examine themselves carefully, to make sure that no taint clings to their bodies.[69] Only then they feel privileged to mount the fiery ladder and join the angels of the seventh heaven, and surround the throne of God with Hashmal and all the holy Hayyot. Adorned with millions ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... frozen sea. With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood- lust, thick and hot. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate climes where the warm sun steals ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... walked with his fists clenched, his body bent forward, darting suspicious glances from under an enormous cocked hat. His intelligence was limited, and his sanity itself was doubtful. The hereditary taint expressed itself, in his case, not by mystic leanings as in his two brothers, Alexander and Nicholas (in their various ways, for one was mystically liberal and the other mystically autocratic), but by the fury of an uncontrollable temper which generally broke out in ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... necessity reproduced the defects of its prototype: and if (as often happens) some of those copies have descended to our times, they become quoted henceforward as if they were independent witnesses[335]. Nor is this all. Let the taint have been communicated to certain copies of the Old Latin, and we find ourselves confronted with formidable because very venerable foes. And according to the recently approved method of editing the New Testament, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the Reformation. They met with severe critics in the merciless Inquisition, and sad was the fate of a luckless author who found himself opposed to the opinions of that dread tribunal. There was no appeal from its decisions, and if a taint of heresy, or of what it was pleased to call heresy, was detected in any book, the doom of its author was sealed, and the ingenuity of the age was well-nigh exhausted in devising methods for administering the largest amount of torture ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... slightest," said the doctor emphatically. "Her father and mother were both sound and well-balanced. I know the history of the family through three generations, and there's no hint of any taint. Twenty-five years ago Holladay, who was then just working to the top in Wall Street, drove himself too hard—it was when the market went all to pieces over that Central Pacific deal—and had a touch of apoplexia. It was just a touch, but I made him take a long vacation, ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... could not find it in her heart as yet to forgive Diana's selfish conspiracy against her cousin's happiness. If Louise perished in this dreadful storm the proud Diana Von Taer could not escape the taint of murder. The ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... In initiating legislation of a far-reaching coercive character, politicians should remember far more than they do at present that the effect of these Acts of Parliament will be to fill the gaols, and to put the prison taint upon a greater number of the population. This is a responsibility which no body of men ought lightly to incur, and in considering the advantages to be derived from some new legislative enactment, an equal amount of consideration should be ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... of Christ. Instead of a thousand years of that night of crime, to which in your despair you look back, there is before her the day of the millennium, predicted by the prophets of old. In her regenerated walls there shall be no taint of sin, but righteousness and peace; no stain of the vanities of the world, no conflicts of ambition, no sordid hunger for gold, no lust after glory, no desire for domination, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... endeavouring, not always with success, to support himself by a sublime philosophy. He guided, under circumstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, and his death is one of the noblest antiquity records; but his life was deeply marked by the taint of flattery, and not free from the taint of avarice, and it is unhappily certain that, after its accomplishment, he lent his pen to conceal or varnish one of the worst crimes of Nero. The courage of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... like view of the situation, and between him and Burke the word "Hessian" reached America with a taint upon it which a century of use has not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... good biscuits—better than those Waddles stirs up," she said. "Though I'd never dare tell him so." It was the first time she had conceded that there might be even a taint of ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... other, on the defensive, 'your mother comes to me at dinner time, an' she says: 'I s'pose 'taint likely you'll see my Dick, Jacker.' I said,' No, Missus Haddon, 'taint, s'elp me.' Then she says, 'Well, if he should come to see you, will you give him this?' So I took it, an' there ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... compelled to struggle on in all the bitter loneliness of feelings unreplied to, bound by indissoluble chains to one who had no tastes or sympathies in common with her. Death had freed her now, but, ah! too late. The taint of sin was on her soul. She had forgot her vows at the altar, debased herself and wronged her husband by listening to words of passion from another. O, far less bitter would have been her grief, as she stood weeping ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... visioning that far exceeded Daylight's, he had nothing in common with Daylight outside the office. He spent his time with books, a thing Daylight could not abide. Also, he devoted himself to the endless writing of plays which never got beyond manuscript form, and, though Daylight only sensed the secret taint of it, was a confirmed but temperate eater of hasheesh. Hegan lived all his life cloistered with books in a world of agitation. With the out-of-door world he had no understanding nor tolerance. In food and drink he was abstemious as a monk, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... poison on the ground Harmless; the silvery veil of fog went up From mouldering fen and cold, malarial pool, But brought no taint and threatened ill to none. Far off adown the mountain's craggy side From time to time the avalanche thundered, sounding Like sport of giant children, and the rocks Whereon it smote re-echoed innocently. Then in a pause ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of nuts over meats is that they are absolutely free from any possible taint of disease. Those delectable foods, the walnut, the pecan, the hickory nut and the almond, are never the vehicle for parasites or other infections. Nuts are not subject to tuberculosis or any other disease which may be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... being, producing sickness or madness, exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the afflicted to health. Ritual taint (which is supernatural), incurred, for example, by touching a dead body, is removed by sprinkling with ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... dat, honey, won't you? I want to know if it's worth savin'. I've burnt up two or three receipts in my life, and had de bills to pay over; and I'se got rale careful, you know. 'Taint pleasant to pay money twice over for de ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... everything to please wimmen, and if they kick on anything that settles it. But I must go and umpire that game between Pa, and the hired girl, and the goat. Say, can't you come over and see the baby? 'Taint bigger than a small satchel," and the boy waited till the grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slipped out and put up a sign written on ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... must see that I'm right. Think of Netty. We have a child who lives. Dick is dead. How does it matter what they say about Dick's money affairs? He died bravely. His name will go down honored and esteemed. The glamour of his heroism will blot out any taint of sin his mother may have put upon him. My denial will save his sister, his father, his mother—our home. Oh, John, you must see ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... world, as the daughter of Norman Westfall, to protect her from any consequences incident to his possible discovery and enforced return to Houdania, it is impossible to say. Hating royalty as he did, he may have sought thus to shield his daughter from its taint. Why he weakened and consigned the secret to paper—how or when he hid it in an ancient candlestick in the home of Norman Westfall, remains shrouded in utter mystery. It is but one of the many points that ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Not once or twice, but several times, so that Burton, retiring hurriedly, came to the conclusion that it must be something in the Jackson blood, some taint, as it were. They were ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Hanaford the news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period, and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the readiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that very reason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment with mockery, but would leave it among ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... my feet in acceptance of the relationship and did me reverence. When he rose his eyes were full of tears ... O little brother mine! I am fast going to my death—let me take all your sin away with me. May no taint from me ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... was added an adorable friendliness and confidence, free from the slightest taint of self-consciousness or the least blemish of coquetry. Intelligent, yet modest to the verge of shyness, eager yet reserved, warm hearted yet charmingly impersonal with him, he realized that she was finding, with ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... glorifies this spirit of gain, and cripples and thwarts the spirit of service. You need but have your eyes once opened to its influence, and thereafter you will never cease to see how the needs and imperatives of property taint the honour and dignity of human life. Just where life should flower most freely into splendour, this chill, malign obsession most nips and cripples. The law that makes getting and keeping an imperative necessity poisons and destroys the freedom of men and women in love, in ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... that she wore as plain and simple a muslin gown as a lady could wear. Her hair was of the pale, delicate, neutral tint which the French call blond-cendre, a little too ashen-hued for most complexions. It was not wavy hair, but very soft and pure, as if no atmosphere of turmoil and taint had ruffled or soiled it. It made Miss Baring's fresh, clear complexion a shade too bright in the carmine, which took off the greyness of the flaxen hue and relieved the cold and steel-like gleam in her grey-blue eyes. The features of the face were fine and regular, like ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... SALTING SHOULD, like a dairy, always be cool, but well ventilated; confined air, though cool, will taint meat sooner than the midday day sun accompanied by a breeze. With regard to smoking the bacon, two precautions are necessary: first, to hang the flitches where no rain comes down upon them; and next, that the smoke must proceed from ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... thinly peopled, it is, nevertheless, in a state of colonization and civilization surpassing what might have been fairly expected. And the absence of convicts, though it renders labour scarce and expensive, brings with it counterbalancing advantages, and prevents the double danger of immediate taint to society from the unhappy criminals, and of future schism arising between the emancipated convicts, or their ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... questions of the day. So frankly does he accept life that there is in him no note of protest whatsoever, which is again fortunate, for protest, too, will lead a man to morals and leave on his work the taint of a passing system of morality as ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... life may be safeguarded from the moral perils of the community. This is not always a willful breach of duty on the part of the father, but usually comes from ignorance as to how to broach this subject to the boy. A great many growing lives would be saved from moral taint and become a blessing instead of a curse if the father discharged his whole duty to his growing son, by putting at his disposal the knowledge which is necessary to an understanding of the functions ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... living in a tainted atmosphere," he said to Marian. "We all are. I fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if I persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... of the most beautiful friendships in the history of art; full of tender offices, and utterly free from the least taint ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... stand out in contrast to the conventional judgment of the Spanish colonial system. The conquest was humane, and was effected by missionaries more than by warriors. The sway of Spain was benevolent, although the administration was not free from the taint of financial corruption. Neither the islands nor their inhabitants were exploited. The colony in fact was a constant charge upon the treasury of New Spain. The success of the enterprise was not measured by the exports and imports, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... few are more beautiful, and in some respects more touching, than a friendship between two boys, unalloyed by any taint of selfishness, indiscriminating in its genuine enthusiasm, delicate in its natural reserve. It is not always because the hearts of men are wiser, purer, or better than the hearts of boys, that "summae puerorum amicitia: saepe ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... messages of reassurance to the troubled brain. That hand was loosening now the rope which was burning into his neck—loosening it, drawing it off. And now the bridle followed; and Diablo's mouth was free from the cruel taint of the steel. The head of the stallion turned—great, soft eyes looked into the face of Bull Hunter and accepted him ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards spiritualization. The English ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pass by the witch-face arter it gits over yander nigh ter the valley, whar the ruver squeezes through the mounting agin. He be always talkin' 'bout signs an' spells an' sech, an' he 'lows the very look o' the witch-face kerries bad luck, an' it'll taint all ez goes ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... it was with the persuasion, that though outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends to touch one ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... in the presence of Nebertcher,[1] because I have done that which is right in Tamera (Egypt), neither blaspheming God, nor imputing evil (?) to the king in his day. Homage to you, O ye gods, who live in your Hall of Maati, who have no taint of sin in you, who live upon truth, who feed upon truth before Horus, the dweller in his disk. Deliver me from Baba, who liveth upon the entrails of the mighty ones, on the day of the Great Judgment. Let me come to you, for I have not committed offences [against you]; I have ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... put too fine a point upon it, they're nasty. We are greater at raising cabbages than we are at sprouting cigar tobacco. Under these circumstances the free trader (he's a smoker, or if he isn't, his aunt or sister is) says we want Havana cigars to enter our lips without the taint of revenue. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... my heart is sick, Confession bursts my lips' restraint That thou, my love, dost cast me off, Hath touched me with a death-like taint. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... an alien taint in that poisonous room. With the Japanese in mind he placed it—it was that indefinable odor the man of the Orient leaves about his abiding place, the smell one gets during a walk through Chinatown. Was this Spulvedo conducting this rookery as a ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... in whom all things are and have life! Ere two years old, she, whose dream is now with us, all over the small silvan world, that beheld the revelation, how evanescent! of her pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of sin—inherited from those who disobeyed in Paradise—seemed from her fair clay to have been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. So pious people almost believed, looking on her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the less wrong because it is uttered by one to whom all spiritual things have become indifferent. Filial affection is a motive which would, if any motive could, remove some of the taint of meanness with which pious lying, like every other kind of lying, tends to infect character. The motive may no doubt ennoble the act, though the act remains in the category of forbidden things. But the motive ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... '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
... interesting, not merely to those who care about Africa, or the great schemes to his zeal for which he fell a martyr, but to all who take delight in the spectacle of unbounded courage and heroic ardour, unalloyed with any taint of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... And impulse sprung from due degrees Of sense and spirit sweetly mix'd. Her modesty, her chiefest grace, The cestus clasping Venus' side, How potent to deject the face Of him who would affront its pride! Wrong dares not in her presence speak, Nor spotted thought its taint disclose Under the protest of a cheek Outbragging Nature's boast the rose. In mind and manners how discreet; How artless in her very art; How candid in discourse; how sweet The concord of her lips and heart; How simple and how ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... degrading this city life is, how debasing, and yet how absorbing. Money for ever clinks in your ear. You can think of nothing else. From the bottom of my heart I hate it, and yet how can I draw back without bringing grief to my dear old father? There was but one way in which I could defy the taint, and that was by having a home influence so pure and so high that it may brace me up against all that draws me down. I have felt that influence already. I know that when I am talking to you I am a better man. It is you who, must go with me through life, or I must ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eternally. For man is but a frail and changing creature as regards his mortality, seeing that his life is not longer than the lives of other created things, and he is delicate and sickly and exposed to manifold dangers from his birth. But the soul of man dieth not, neither is there any taint of death in it, but it liveth for ever and is made glorious above the stars. For the stars, also, shall have an end, and the earth—even as our bodies must end here this night; but our soul shall see the glory of God, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... which possessed him, and whose sadness she rallied most unmercifully. Now, for once in her young life, the Child of France found that it was remotely possible to meet with almonds so bitter that the taste will remain and taint all things, do what philosophy may to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... hearts and minds of all—the determination to conquer. The contagious influence of illusion, scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds; the people were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which they were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, nervous excitability in the air, a feverish condition in which men's hopes and fears alike became distorted and exaggerated, arousing the worst passions of humanity at the slightest breath of suspicion. And Maurice ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... wand'rer to the Saviour's fold; That were an action worthy of a saint; But not in malice let the crime be told, Nor publish to the world the evil taint. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... suffice for the service of the occasion if we say that guilt, in all its modifications, implies only a defect or a wound in the individual. Sin, on the other hand, the most mysterious, and the most sorrowful of all ideas, implies a taint not in the individual but in the race—that is the distinction; or a taint in the individual, not through any local disease of his own, but through a scrofula equally diffused through the infinite family ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... came to me, not too late to save me from a premature misanthropy, but too late to eradicate every morbidity of mind. Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. To be unamiable is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if I have but a few objects to love. You ask me my inducement to leave you. 'The World' ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... faint heat of a blush at the thought, and experienced a poignant sense of shame. He was appalled by what was in his blood. It was like learning suddenly that his father had been a leper and that his own blood might bear the taint of that dread disease. Isaac Ford, the austere soldier of the Lord—the old hypocrite! What difference between him and any beach-comber? The house of pride that Percival Ford had builded was tumbling about ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... manner if not in the substance of his thinking, to achieve the polished urbanity of those Englishmen who made a point of being scholars without a touch of pedantry, and men of virtue without the taint of prejudice. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... there. They did well enough by him. He was sent to school and taken to church and treated like one of themselves. Some folks think they made too much of him. It doesn't always do with that kind, for 'what's bred in bone is mighty apt to come out in flesh,' if 'taint kept down pretty well. Neil's smart and a great worker, they tell me. But folks hereabouts don't like him. They say he ain't to be trusted further'n you can see him, if as far. It's certain he's ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... finds himself, with no taint of personal concern in the African trade, in a Christian community of white Anglo-Americans, holding control over his black fellow-man, who is so unlike himself in complexion, in form, in other peculiarities, and so unequal to himself in attributes of body and ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... special fault, will be a part of the reward resulting from good conduct in the general. And as to this matter of slavery, in which I think that they have blundered both politically and morally, has it not been found impossible hitherto for them to cleanse their hands of that taint? But that which they could not do for themselves the course of events is doing for them. If secession establish herself, though it be only secession of the Gulf States, the people of the United States will soon be ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... home; You'll find her locked, this moment, in your son's Incestuous embrace. Believe your king. Now go; you stand amazed; you stare at me With searching eye, because of my gray hairs. Unhappy man, reflect. Queens never taint Their virtue thus: doubt it, and you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... has a taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. Did women really respect ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of lofty criticism, is a form of writing which, like the higher mathematics, must be free from any taint of utility. Pure literature must perforce be a form of expression, but must not ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Italian mind, at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... irritation, and Hepatin, if disorganizations have already set in. In phlegmonous and suppurative habitual erysipelas, a cure is generally facilitated, if a dose of Sulphur 30 is interpolated, in the manner which we have explained before, in order to neutralize the psoric taint ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... he responded to my attempts to rally him out of his humor; "the taint will stick to me. People will say I 'm the fellow who was arrested for killing his uncle so that he could inherit his fortune. They 'll always point me out and shake their heads and say I was released only because the police couldn't find evidence to convict ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... than fainted. It might have been that Ephraim had inherited from her the heart-taint that had afflicted and shortened his life, and it might have been that her terrible experiences of the last few months would have strained her heart to its undoing, had its valves ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... justly remarks, which no observation of character can justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass, however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain to a pious ear. The language ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... became a saint, Was much imbued with vulgar earthly taint; E'er he renounced the honors of a Knight And doffed his coat of mail and helmet bright, For sober cassock and monastic hood, Leaving the castle for the cloister rude, And changed the banquet's sumptuous repast For frugal crusts and the ascetic ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... 'taint no use tryin' that dodge any more—we're too far to leeward. Cast off the line and take a turn with it round my waist; I'm goin' to try to swim it. I know I can do it, dad; and it's the only way as we ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... actors in the book are clever, rising often into the high latitudes of genius, yet without that perverse kink which is wont to mar all satisfaction. There is no taint of poison in the air they breathe. There is no passion hovering on the border-land of crime, or defiling its garments with the dust of earthliness. Love is what it ever should be, all noble and elevating,—worship as well as devotion,—annihilating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... pulp is then removed from the bags, ground again in the mill, then replaced in the bags, and pressed a second time. The water used in the process of making oil must be quite pure; the mill, press, bags, and vessels sweet and clean, as the least taint would ruin the quality ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... gossip 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 slowly ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... not to woman's heart unalleviated. He threw himself on my protection; and where the feelings own no taint, their purity is not sullied,—even ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... cool head, a large amount of brains, and unaltering nerve, to thread one's way through the intricacies of the business of finance as carried on there. It would be interesting to know how many come out of the ordeal untouched by the taint of corruption. Members of the Exchanges are held by a rigid code of laws, but in questions of morality Wall street has a code of its own. Expediency is a prominent consideration in the dealings of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... had a strong head, and drew back in time; but his father did him harm—untold harm. His father was a bad man. I do not scruple to say so, although he was my husband; and there is a taint, a sort of wild strain, in the blood. Even the boy inherits it; I see that too clearly. And Wyvis—Wyvis will not hold himself in for long. He is falling amongst those racing and betting men again—the ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... left to the justice of another world. And yet, as we have said, this vice, which entails such scathing disgrace and suffering, is encouraged in many seductive ways. The talk in good company often runs on wine; the man who has the deadly taint in his blood is delicately pressed to take that which brings the taint once more into ill-omened activity; but, so long as his tissues show no sign of that flabbiness and general unwholesomeness which mark the excessive drinker, he is left unnoticed. Then the literary men nearly always ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman |
