"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was never seen in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,—not to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him as a good ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... trumpet blew; Thro' the long tormented air Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there What long-enduring hearts could do In that world-earthquake, Waterloo! Mighty seaman, tender and true, And pure as he from taint of craven guile, O savior of the silver-coasted isle, O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine, If love of country move thee there at all, Be glad because his bones are laid by thine! And thro' the centuries let a people's voice ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... can find a wife like you, my dear." He was rewarded for the flattering phrase with a little slap on the cheek. He continued thoughtfully: "'Taint every one either that wants to take care of a wife. Some folks hain't got much affection in 'em, I guess; perhaps Mr. Letgood hain't." To the which Mrs. Hooper answered not in words, but her lips curved into what might be called a ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... "'Taint no gal's picture," offered the man at the fire. He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick. "That's a charm; some kind of hoodoo business that one o' them priests gave him to keep him out o' trouble. I know them Cath'lics. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... the dead carcase might not taint the valley, I had it buried deep in the ground, about a score of yards from the encampment. From such a slight cause ensued a tremendous uproar from Kingaru—chief of the village—who, with his brother-chiefs of neighbouring villages, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... reproduction of the attempt made two hundred years before; and Middleton's knowledge of that incident shall be the means of his salvation. That would be a good idea; in fact, I think it must be done so and no otherwise. It is not to be forgotten that there is a taint of insanity in Eldredge's blood, accounting for much that is wild and absurd, at the same time that it must be subtile, in his conduct; one of those perplexing mad people, whose lunacy you are continually mistaking for wickedness or vice versa. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had only died! He was driven to envy such a respectable bereavement, and one so perfectly free from any taint of misfortune that even his best friend or his best enemy would not have felt the slightest thrill of exultation. No one would have cared. He sought comfort in clinging to the contemplation of the only fact of life that the resolute efforts of mankind had never failed to disguise ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Sound as a bell. The unfitness is in the soul and it's a taint and a disgrace. There, don't cry, Rilla. I'm not going if that's what you're afraid of. The Piper's music rings in my ears day ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his head. "That cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny, but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine for ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... stainless purity as a mere human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that God had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even promulgated in person severe ordinances to preserve its sanctuary inviolate. How much ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... "'Taint nashty' tuff—it's byead an' 'lasses, an' its nice, an' Budge an' me hazh little tea-parties in de kicken-coop, an' we eats it, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... condition of their mothers. Serf mothers have thus borne serf children to free-born fathers, and slave mothers have borne slave children to their masters; while unmarried mothers still bear bastard children to unknown fathers, the Church thus throwing the taint of illegitimacy upon the innocent. The relations of man and woman to each other, the sinfulness of marriage, and the license of illicit relations employed most of the thought of the Church.[183] The duty of woman to obey, not only ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... were abolished. Obviously they constituted a political aristocracy, founded on the pretence of services rendered, and the Senate which elected them also fell under the taint of aristocratic leanings since at that time it recruited its members by co-optation. This of course ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... in your nose, clog your ears, make clay in your mouth and mortar in your eyes, and so stop up all the natural passages to the soul; whereby the wickedness which that subtle organ doth constantly excrete is balked of its issue, tainting the entire system with a grievous taint. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... children of Adam, the soul of Mary was never subject to sin, even in the first moment of its infusion into the body. She alone was exempt from the original taint. This immunity of Mary from original sin is exclusively due to the merits of Christ, as the Church expressly declares. She needed a Redeemer as well as the rest of the human race and therefore ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... but it was not I, as I looked to myself. The type of my countenance was there; but, oh, transformed to an ideal, such as I now, for the first time, saw possible—ennobled in every defective line—purified of its taint from worldliness—inspired with high aspirations—cleared of what it had become cankered with, in its transmission through countless generations since first sent into the world, and restored to a likeness of the angel of whose illuminated lineaments it was first a copy. So thought Stephania ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... we should speak out to convince our native-born fellow-citizens that our fundamental conceptions of right and wrong are like theirs, that the taint is not in the German blood, but in the system of rulership, that we are with them and of them wholeheartedly, single-mindedly and unreservedly; because if we failed in conveying to them that conviction in the hour ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... loved and suffered and hoped. When she rose from the piano to a storm of applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her, her own eyes filled with tears. These people—most of them—had known and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his eyes, and kissed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... portal, arm'd with helmet, shield, And grasping his two spears, such as when first I saw him drinking joyous at our board, From Ilus son of Mermeris, who dwelt In distant Ephyre, just then return'd, (For thither also had Ulysses gone In his swift bark, seeking some pois'nous drug Wherewith to taint his brazen arrows keen, Which drug through fear of the eternal Gods Ilus refused him, and my father free 330 Gave to him, for he loved him past belief) Could now, Ulysses, clad in arms as then, Mix with these suitors, short his date of life To ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the king's own son, was. And, too, he felt such a thrill of affection for this new friend, David, that he could not help doing something to show it. And then and always, Jonathan's friendship for David was absolutely free from all taint of jealousy, and he always stood aside, that honours might be heaped upon his friend, even those which by the rights of inheritance, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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 ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... perception; and this has already been in part done in the First Quarto form. The mad Hamlet and the mad Ophelia, who had been at least as much comic as tragic figures in the older play, are already purified of that taint of their barbaric birth, save in so far as Hamlet still gibes at Polonius and jests with Ophelia in the primitive fashion of the pretended madman seeking his revenge. But the sense of the futility of the whole heathen plan, of the vanity of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... all had been accomplished; the new-comers had passed into the track of their predecessors. It is often said that the restoration of image-worship was owing to the extinction of civilization by the Northern barbarians. But this is not true. In the blood of the German nations the taint of idolatry is but small. In their own countries they gave it little encouragement, and, indeed, hastened quickly to its total rejection. The sin lay not with them, but ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint To charge the pipkins with impurity: Freedom I crave: who craves not to be free? Yet life that must be feigned for, leaves a taint. Ill conduct brings repentance?—If you prate This wise to me, why prate not thus to all Philosophers and prophets, and to Christ? Not too much learning, as some arrogate, But the small brains of dullards have sufficed To make us ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... insincere society, to whom no scheme had been too wild for acceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the grave visions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the son's unsophisticated simplicity: what he had considered as the "boyishness" of immaturity was the taint of the utterly unpractical Mainwaring blood. It was upon this blood, and others like it, that Oldenhurst had for ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... better come up with me to the mountain—away, clean away, from the trail and taint of men. You cant' think what that means for me. ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... crime, the hereditary taint being transmuted in him into an instinctive appetite for blood, the young and fresh blood from the gashed throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in the street: a horrible malady against which he struggled, but which took possession of him again ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... thou shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love. Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment Tied to the hornet's shardy wings, Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings, Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... press the hand so press'd by none but thine; To gaze upon that eye which never met Another's ardent look without regret; Approach the lip which all, without restraint, Come near enough—if not to touch—to taint; If such thou lovest—love her then no more, Or give—like her—caresses to a score; Her mind with these is gone, and with it go The little ...
— English Satires • Various
... addition of Eve, human society commenced; and the fault of our first mother furnishes a grand and terrible example of the mischief of thinking of the benefit of another. Satan suggested to her that Adam should partake of the fruit—an idea, having in it the taint of benevolence, so generally mistaken—whence sin and death came into the world. Had Eve been strictly selfish, she would wisely have kept the apples to herself, and the evil would have been avoided. Had Adam helped ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... without making a fuss about it. If there be a fault in these cats, overcomplacency might be the name for it; they err a shade too sure of themselves, and their assumption that the world means to treat them respectfully has just a little taint of the grande dame. Consequently, they are liable to great outbreaks of nervous energy from within, engendered by the extreme surprises that life sometimes holds in store for them. They lack the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could shake it or could move me." This she says with great deliberation and distinctness and with no more outward ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... intelligently interested in all that related to her husband's business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were twelve ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Italian life. Nothing is more unlike the social jealousy of the Frenchman, or the surly incivility with which a Lancashire operative thinks proper to show the world that he is as good a man as his master. In either case one feels the taint of a mere spirit of envious levelling, and a latent confession that the levelling process has still in reality to be accomplished. But the ordinary Italian has nothing of the leveller about him. The little town is proud of its Marchese and of the great palazzo that has entertained a King. It is ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... had some misgivings about the big leap she had made in the Protestant-Papist way. Finding Anton Ulrich still continue Protestant, she wrote to him out of Spain:—"Why, O honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you promised? Ah, there must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!" Upon which the absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his religion; and is marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and Histories;—truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, restored to the bosom of the Church in a somewhat ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is not a matter for gentlemen. This is the way we punish the insolence of fellows whose muddy blood would taint the swords ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doubt, and which though thus absolute do not fetter his intellect but first give it the use of all its powers to the extent of those truths; so he can conceive of an Intelligence in which all truth is thus without taint of error. Not only is such an Intelligence conceivable, it is necessary to conceive it, in order to complete the scientific induction of "a sphere of thought from which all limits are withdrawn," forced upon us by the demonstrations of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... desperation, with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds, there is a taint of this sort, something which we should call theatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... sensitiveness of milk in the absorption of taint from the atmosphere, or any substance with which it comes in contact, ought to be thoroughly understood by all persons engaged in handling it, but, we believe, that but few comparatively are alive to the true facts of the case. I herewith present several paragraphs ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... valiant deeds and noble benefits to his native shire, himself the noblest of his race. Men said that he was proud; but he could not look round him without having something to be proud of; that he was stern and harsh to his sailors: but it was only when he saw in them any taint of cowardice or falsehood; that he was subject, at moments, to such fearful fits of rage, that he had been seen to snatch the glasses from the table, grind them to pieces in his teeth, and swallow them: but that ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... For children of your loins, must know No taint of shame, no loss by lust, Your own, or of the usurping foe! Let not your sons, in future days, The children now that bear your name, Exulting in a grandsire's praise, Droop o'er a father's grave ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... ye me innocent 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 ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Jewish population of that city alone is almost exclusively the inexhaustible source for the supply of hysterical males for the clinics of the whole Continent (L'Etude des Maladies du Systeme Nerveux en Russie). As regards Austria and Germany, the same neurotic taint of the Jews has been emphasized by Krafft, Ebbing, etc.... In New York it has been shown by Collins that among 333 cases of neurasthenia which came under his observation, more than 40 per cent, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... to report themselves to the Government health officer within fourteen days from this date for inspection, and final banishment to Molokai." It is hoped that leprosy may be "stamped out" by these stringent measures, but the leprous taint must be strong in many families, and the social, gregarious natives smoke each other's pipes and wear each other's clothes, and either from fatalism or ignorance have disregarded all precautions regarding ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... for a while over the words, to which he had listened intently, re-perused, throughout, this record of the stone; and finding that the general purport consisted of nought else than a treatise on love, and likewise of an accurate transcription of facts, without the least taint of profligacy injurious to the times, he thereupon copied the contents, from beginning to end, to the intent of charging the world to hand them down ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... grumbling (to be sure he has no reason to complain) the former is always quarrelling with the world about his modicum of applause, the spolia opima of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his admirers. Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of Waverley, all is fair and natural and above-board: he never outrages the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character: broaches no staggering opinion. If ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Pollock, being a good democrat and holding office under a democratic administration, had deemed it wise to abbreviate his first name, thereby removing all taint of republicanism. He reduced Abraham to an initial, but, despite his supreme struggle for dignity, was forced by public indolence to submit to a sharp curtailment of his middle name. He was known ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... engagement between them. Cyril seemed to shrink from the materialising of his love by any thought of marriage. To him she was an ideal of womanhood rather than a flesh-and-blood woman. His love for her was a religion; it had no taint of earthly passion in ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... that the sensible thing would be for him to go to a doctor and make certain about his condition; but he could not bring himself to face the ordeal—he was ashamed to admit to a doctor that he had laid himself open to such a taint. ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,—a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,—that it suffers less than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... the taint specially on his lips it might not be easy to tell. Perhaps it was because the angelic song was a challenge to join in the praise of God, but he felt that the lips of one like him were not worthy to join in their song. Perhaps—who ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... ignorant of the fortunes of the sky, Taught by the thunderbolts alone, would know That Jupiter supreme still held the throne. Add that unnumbered nations join the fray: Nor shrinks the world so much from taint of crime That civil wars reluctant swords require. But grant that strangers shun thy destinies And only Romans fight — shall not the son Shrink ere he strike his father? on both sides Brothers forbid the weapon to be hurled? The world's ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... had been permitted to die in a freeman's bed, under his own humble roof. That consolation was to be denied her; the shadow of the poorhouse had advanced until it stood now at her door. One step and it would envelop her; the taint of its blight would ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... is particularly interesting, showing as it does the marriage of a normal man with, first a normal woman, and subsequently with feeble-minded women. The taint of the feeble mind is inevitable. Whereas the grandchildren by his second marriage appear normal there is always the danger of their progeny being blighted by the taint that is in their blood. The horror of the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... want now; and who comes off here at this time o' night? 'Taint time to turn out yet, I'll swear, for I don't seem to have been asleep more'n ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... redemption wrought by Jesus Christ. The Church holds that children are born to earth in a sinless state, that they need no individual redemption; that should they die before reaching years of accountability, they return without taint of earthly sin; but as they attain youth or maturity in the flesh, their responsibility ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... derive from it, how, though he had not labored for the plant, he had pity on it, he realized his wrong in desiring God to be relentless toward Nineveh, the great city, with its many inhabitants, rather than have his reputation as a prophet suffer taint. He prostrated himself and said: "O God, guide the world ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... cut in parallel slices of two feet and a half in thickness, then divided into pieces which might weigh about a thousand pounds each, was melted down in large earthen pots brought to the spot, for they did not wish to taint the environs of Granite House, and in this fusion it lost nearly a ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... "Well 'taint me," said Rose shrinking. "Look here — I've got a delicious plan in my head — I'm going to make them take us in the boat ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it—into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence—some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... those thirty thousand francs a year which he was credited with doing, have some special line of business. He assayed rather risky matters, which might bring both parties into the clutches of the criminal law, or, at any rate, leave them with a taint upon both their names. A sensational lawsuit is begun, and the public eagerly await the result; suddenly the whole thing collapses, for Catenac has acted as mediator. He has even settled the disputes of murderers quarreling over their booty. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... With an effort, the head lifted. Ivan was gazing into a pair of clear, blue eyes, and realizing that there was no taint of vodka in the other's breath. Nay! That face spoke of very different things. Youth was there, and hardship, and suffering, and discouragement. More than that, the gaunt pallor of face and lips, the sharp outline of jaw ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... herbs contains lime, and earthy salts, in a subtle form of high natural sub-division: whilst, at the same time, the law of cure by medicinal similars has established the cognate fact that to those who inherit a strumous taint, infinitesimal doses of these earth salts are incontestably curative. The parents had first undergone a gradual impairment of health because of calcareous matters to excess in their general conditions of sustenance; and the lime proves potent to cure in the offspring what, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of that transformation in the life of the nation which has resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in the heroic age of the Reformation in England—the Puritan wars—to ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... of stride and power. Her knees across the pan were wide, the cannon-bone below them short and thin; the pasterns long and sloping; her hoofs round, dark, shiny, and well set on. Her mane was a shade darker than her coat, fine and thin, as a thoroughbred's always is whose blood is without taint or cross. Her ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her neck rose from the withers to the head in perfect curvature, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Burmah live a happy people who love beauty, are always smiling and follow the Golden Rule far nearer than those who live by trade and are blest by civilization. Ah, that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day! The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease, death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... with all three of his Army comrades and with the friend from the Navy. "I'll brace and fight every inch of the way. But," he could not help adding, wistfully, "I wish I could see how I am going to be able to clear myself so that not even a trace of a taint of suspicion can rest ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... and at these times the coarsest and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a voice of crystalline purity that might have belonged to some little chorister chanting the Ave Maria. He would even try to assume a hoarse roughness of tone, seek to degrade and taint that exquisite freshness of childhood which made him resemble a bambino on the Madonna's knees. The fish-wives laughed at him till they cried; and he, encouraged, could scarcely say a couple of words without rapping out an oath. But in spite of all this he still remained charming, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of an old fogy to cut myself out of a big fee by smoothing the wrinkles without a lawsuit. It's the professor in me, Phil; it's the academic taint." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Like other things waxing obsolete it has served, I hasten to confess, a special purpose in the world of letters. It has lived through a generation of thirty years in the glorification of the mediocrities and in pandering to the impish taint of poor human nature, the ungenerous passions of those who abhor the novel, the original, the surprising, the startling, and who are only too glad to witness and to assist in the Procrustes' process of trimming and lengthening ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... portrait over, in my mind, I am convinced that there is not a grain of bad taste in the matter, and that there is a manly composure and courage in the proceeding deserving of the utmost respect. If Lemon were one of your braggart honest men, he would set a taint of bad taste upon that action as upon everything else he might say or do; but being what he is, I admire him for it greatly, and hold it to be a proof of an exalted nature and a true heart. Your idea of him, is mine. I am sure he is an excellent fellow. We talk about not liking ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... be removed would take him to the county hospital, where, under his own eyes, the poor fellow would have the benefit of the latest science and the highest specialists. Physically, he was doing remarkably well; indeed, he must have been a fine young chap, free from blood taint or vicious complication, whose flesh had healed like an infant's. It should be recorded that it was at this juncture that Mrs. Forsyth first learnt that a SILVER PLATE let into the artful stranger's skull was an adjunct of the healing process! Convinced that this infamous extravagance was part ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... a ring of business in her voice that struck him as amusingly delightful—and such a sweet, clear voice, too, untinged with the slightest taint of native accent. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Christian character, Barnabas sets himself to help them to grow. Now, remember how recently they had been converted; how, from their Gentile origin, they can have had next to no systematic instruction; how the taint of heathen morals, such as were common in that luxurious, corrupt Antioch, must have clung to them; how unformed must have been their loose Church organisation— and remembering all this, think of this one exhortation as summing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me out ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... to be contemplated in the restoration of the United States to their primitive boundaries and united power. But it was not without deep apprehension of moral taint and ulterior evil consequences, that a wise patriot could look even then to any attempt of the old matrimonial partners to dwell again in a common household, upon the old terms, and with no real settlement of the dispute ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... He had an open good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... "Then shall the taint of sin be purged from the earth, for every temple and pest-hole of Satan, including this whole Wizard City, will be consumed by an awful fire whose lurid light will glimmer long after the metals and granites of this great Tower shall have been reduced to ashes ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... pound The damp, deep meadows, to a pulpy mash; Or wallowing in the waters foul them; nay, Tread down the banks, and let them forth to flood Their cities; or, assailed and falling, shake The walls, and taint the wind, ere thirty men, Over the hairy terror piling stones Or earth, prevail to cover it." She said, "Husband, I have been sorry, thinking oft I would my sons were home; but now so well Methinks ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... are sophists to prove all that they wish. The crimes and follies of the ancestor leave their physical, or even their moral taint, on the child, beyond a question, good Melchior;—but is not this sufficient? Are we blasphemously, even impiously, to pretend that God has not sufficiently provided for the punishment of the breaches of his wise ordinances, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... has been partly or altogether brought up by hand, or who is of a feeble and delicate constitution, or imbued with any hereditary taint, the process of dentition will be attended with more or less difficulty, and not ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... big, broad-chested, muscular man, whose neck rose like a mortised beam out of his shoulders, straight with the back of his head. His face was handsome in a bold, shrewd mold, but dark as if his blood carried the taint of a baser race. He went about always dressed in a long frock coat, with no vest to obscure the spread of his white shirt front; low collar, with narrow black tie done in exact bow; broad-brimmed white sombrero tilted back from his forehead, a cigar ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... you've a drove of one thousand or of ten thousand it's all the same; the panic strikes every beast at the same moment. It's somethin' in the air; 'taint my business to know what. But you look like a 'run' yourself, restless and hot, and as ef somethin' was gitting 'the mad' up in you. I noticed Whaley is 'bout the same. I'd keep clear of him, ef I ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a guess, anyhow," rejoined the Texan, taking hold of the knife, in a hand passed behind him. Then bringing it forward and under his eyes, he added, "'Taint sech a bad sort o' blade eyther, tho' I weesh 'twas my ole bowie they took from me at Mier. Wal, Cap; ye kin count on me makin' use o't, ef 'casion calls, an' more'n one yaller-belly gittin' it inter his guts; notwithstandin' ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the concert-bill. First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened by experience. It was formed in one of those supreme instants, which come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... supreme in the national government for a quarter of a century, and there seemed no reason to doubt that Blaine, its candidate in the campaign of 1884, would at last realize his consuming ambition to be elected President. He had an immense personal prestige, he had outlived the taint of corruption attached to him during the administration of Grant, and he had for years been preparing and strengthening himself for this contest. So he ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... meat, is quick to taint, and never should be kept long before cooking. If you have the slightest doubt about pork, it is best to reject it, for unlike other meat which may be quite wholesome and usable, though not of precisely prime quality, pork must be in really first ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... him. More than that he cannot attain, and he will fall very short of it in snatching at the grace which is another's. Do what he will, he cannot escape from the infirmities of his own mind: the affectation, arrogance, ostentation, hesitation, native in the man will taint his style, no matter how closely he may copy the manner of another. For evil and for good, LE STYLE EST ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... representatives are also excepted. The main object of the whole system is to keep the child, the embryotic offender who has probably erred from ignorance or the pressure of circumstances or misfortune, altogether free from the taint or contagion that attaches to criminal proceedings. The moral atmosphere of a legal tribunal is injurious to the youthful mind, and children who appear before a bench, whether as accused or as witness, gain a contemptuous familiarity with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... howls thro heaven and breathes a billowing storm. His head is hung with clouds; his giant hand Flings a blue flame far flickering to the land; His blood-stain'd limbs drip carnage as he strides, And taint with gory grume the staggering tides; Like two red suns his quivering eyeballs glare, His mouth disgorges all the stores of war, Pikes, muskets, mortars, guns and globes of fire. And lighted bombs that fusing trails exspire. Percht on his helmet, two twin ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the result, I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in many other cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects, by all that I had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial. The dreadful taint of scrofula, according to the belief of all Christendom, fled at the simple touch of a Stuart [11] sovereign: no miracle in the Bible, from Jordan or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or more astoundingly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... bloodless, as blameless thy cheek divine; But a stain on it stands of the life-blood offered for thine. What thanks shall we give that are mixed not and marred with dread For the price that has ransomed thine own with thine own child's head? For a taint there cleaves to the people redeemed with blood, [Str. 2. And a plague to the blood-red hand. The rain shall not cleanse it, the dew nor the sacred flood That blesses the glad live land. In the darkness ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... my crime and blind your eyes in determining my guilt or innocence. That knife was mine, I repeat. It was possible for me to rejoin Mr. Conway, and do him to death by a blow with it. Now, retire, gentlemen! Bring in your verdict! Thank God! no taint of real dishonor will rest upon a Davenant, and I can appear before my Maker as ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... strung to the highest pitch, and party-feeling, both for and against, had always, of course, been rife here; but to-day they were manifest in an acuter form—hatred had added its taint and lent virulence to every emotion. The heathen were oppressed and angered, their rights abridged and defied; they saw the Christians triumphant at every point, and hatred is a protean monster which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... learn as Francis Borgia learned, By that lifeless form of clay, To despise the changing things of earth, All doomed to swift decay— Deep into his heart the lesson sank, Effacing earthly taint, And Spain's Court lost a gallant knight, While the Church gained ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... imperfections on my head; O, horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever, thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... churches of different denominations might have been during slavery to maintain a strict discipline, they found it exceedingly difficult to do so. It seems impossible to elevate a body of slaves, remaining such, to honesty and purity. The reekings of slavery will almost inevitably taint the institutions of religion, and degrade the standard of piety. Accordingly the ministers of every denomination in Antigua, feel that in the abolition of slavery their greatest enemy has been vanquished, and they now evince a determination to assume higher ground than they ever aspired to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... rarely as felicitous as in Corot, in every detail of whose every work, one may almost say, its informing, co-ordinating, elevating influence is distinctly to be perceived; but it is always present as a factor, as a force dignifying and relieving from all touch, all taint of the commonness that is so often inseparably associated with art whose absorption in nature is listlessly unthinking instead of enthusiastic and alert. In Rousseau, too, in a word, we have the classic strain, as at least a psychological element, and note as one ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... No taint of bye-ends was in that service; no sidelong glances at possible advantages of influence or reputation or the like, which so often deform men's philanthropies and services to one another. No more than the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... He is our unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying of every power from the taint of ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... ago, and, as she remembered this, Laura felt a jealous impulse to snatch her friend away from the restless worldliness and the inordinate desires. The pitiable soul of Gerty showed to her suddenly as a stunted and famished city child struggling for life in an atmosphere which carried the taint of death, and in her imagination the picture was so vivid that she saw the face of the child turned toward her with a ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... and swells The chime of old St. Mary's bells, Which still resound in Katie's ears As sweet as when in distant years She heard them peal with jocund din A merry English Christmas in! We pass the abbey's ruined arch, And statelier grows my Katie's march, As round her, wearied with the taint Of Transatlantic pine and paint, She sees a thousand tokens cast Of England's venerable Past! Our reverent footsteps lastly claims The younger chapel of St. James, Which, though, as English records run, Not old, had seen full many a sun, Ere to the cold ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... being punished. And here you see before you a man—who has also suffered a misfortune—the victim of an unconscious impulse—and who has had to stand two years of hard labor for it. Only by some great scientific achievement can this man wipe off the taint that has become attached to him without any fault of his own—but in order to arrive at some such achievement, he must have money—a lot of money—and money this minute! Don't you think that the other one, the unpunished one, would bring a little better balance ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... was doubtful; and their failure afterwards notorious. "Human patience was not great enough to put up with Sir Francis Clavering," people said. "He was too hopelessly low, dull, and disreputable. You could not say what, but there was a taint about the house and its entourages. Who was the Begum, with her money, and without her h's, and where did she come from? What an extraordinary little piece of conceit the daughter was, with her Gallicised graces and daring affectations, not fit for well-bred English girls ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "No, 'taint, sir," replied Jarwin, reddening, "it's a truth. I was nigh starved on that raft, but was cast on an island where I've bin till a few days ago ever since, when I put to sea on the raft that now lays ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... Labour Members are in the pay of Germany and frequent infamous flats in the West-End. Liberal Cabinet Ministers—sometimes, more shame to them, of decent birth—wince consciously when reminded of the taint of their association with plebeian colleagues. These things, and many more of equal moment, I have learnt from Mr. STANLEY PORTAL HYATT, who in The Way of the Cardines (WERNER LAURIE) describes how Sir Gerald, of that famous family, captured, with reckless profusion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... her decrepitude she is ugly, spiteful, perhaps insane, and realises in her personal appearance the description preserved by tradition of the witches of yore. Even in the neighbourhood of great towns the taint remains of this once widely-spread contagion. If no victims fall beneath it, the enlightenment of the law is all that prevents a recurrence of scenes as horrid as those of the seventeenth century. Hundreds upon hundreds of witnesses could be found to swear ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... "playing for" a woman's fall; Redeem the wreckage of a "noble" name By building hope on sin, and joy on shame; Redress the work of passion's reckless boldness By craven afterthoughts of cynic coldness; Purge from low taint "the blood of all the HOWARDS" By borrowings from the code of cads and cowards! Noblesse oblige? Better crass imbecility Of callow youth—with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... strike his best with a strong right hand, And take his strokes in return. "'Twas a barbarous practice," the Quaker cries, "'Tis a thing of the past, thank heaven"— Keep your thanks till the combative instinct dies With the taint of the olden leaven; Yes, the times are changed, for better or worse, The prayer that no harm befall Has given its place to a drunken curse, And the manly ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... one, mingled with chaste respect, And modest pride of her own excellence,— A shrinking nature, that is so adverse To aught unseemly, that I could as soon Forget the sacred love I owe to heav'n, As dare, with impure thoughts, to taint the air Inhal'd by such a being: than whom, my liege, Heaven cannot look on anything more holy, Or earth be proud of anything ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... of wrong-doing. He was not dissipated. He did not drink to excess, and his part in the gambling operations of his friends had always resulted profitably to himself. He was a regular attendant at church, conducted himself in the face of all men as one incapable of wrong, and against whom no taint of suspicion could possibly attach. A veritable "wolf in sheep's clothing" was this dishonest man, and as such I felt that he richly deserved the fate that was so soon to overtake him. The day of his hypocrisy and dishonesty was ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... crap ar heap too big a crap to be gethered 'thout whisky. 'Lasses-and-water nuver gethered no crap sence de woil' war' made, ner 'taint gwine to." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the succeeding events. They were but three. A young man and his sister; the former characterized by a diseased imagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous, and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature. The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, with fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all better purposes. The central scene of the story was an interview ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and stretching out her arms, walked just as Richard, succeeding so well that she was beginning to consider it rather agreeable than otherwise, when she unfortunately ran into a tall rose-bush, scratching her forehead, tangling her hair, and stubbing her toes against its gnarled roots. "'Taint so jolly to be blind after all," she said, "I do believe I've broken my toe," and extricating herself as best she could from the sharp thorns, she ran on as fast as her feet could carry her, wondering what Mrs. Atherton would say when she heard ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... landlady, who seems to be a very intelligent woman, of a superior class to most landladies, came into our parlor, while I was out, and talked about the present race of Byrons and Lovelaces, who have often been at this house. There seems to be a taint in the Byron blood which makes those who inherit it wicked, mad, and miserable. Even Colonel Wildman comes in for a share of this ill luck, for he has almost ruined himself by his expenditure on the estate, and by his lavish hospitality, especially ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the 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
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that he can put the "Captain" (he'd promote you to be "Admiral" on the spot if he thought that thereby he might flatter you into buying) on to the "lay" of some cigars—"smuggled," he breathes from behind a black and horny paw, whose condition alone would taint the finest Havanna that ever graced the lips of king or duke—the like of which may be found in no tobacconist's establishment in the United Kingdom. There have been young men, greatly daring, who have been known to traffic with this hoary ruffian, and who have lived to be sadder and wiser men. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious taint. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... with pleasure faint: The lily closed its cup To guard 'gainst storm and taint. The cool refreshing dew Fell softly to the earth, All lovely things to cheer, And call more ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... them, always was the man on the job. It was his name that appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... an ounce of hog fat in Cottolene, and from cottonfield to kitchen human hands never touch the product. It is pure and absolutely free from taint or contamination from source to consumer. Packed in our patent, air-tight tin pails, Cottolene reaches you as fresh as the day it was made. Lard and butter are sold in bulk, and do ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... of all people and animals?" "Ich!" (1). "If you mean yourself you should say "mich" (myself)", so she at once rapped "mich!" "And after yourself?" "Dich!" ("thee," the familiar of you commonly used in German). A frank remark, at all events, and without the taint ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... lily-white, This taint of roseate red, This Cynthia's silver light, This sweet fair Dea spread, These sunbeams in mine eye, These beauties, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... should find anything in her meeting with Rosie that lent itself to humor. He knew that humor. The superior were fond of indulging in it at the expense of the less fortunate. Even Lois Willoughby had not escaped that taint of class. Fearing to wound her by some impatient word, he made zeal in his round of duties the excuse for ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... crime deserving the severest punishment." From which representation (if the said Warren Hastings did not falsely and unjustly accuse and slander the Company's service) it appeared that the peculation which infected the whole army, derived from the taint which it had in Oude, and so fatal to the discipline of the troops, would be dangerously increased by his treaty and agreement aforesaid with the Nabob, and by his own said evil counsel to the Court ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the bars of yer cage bustes out like a lot of scent fountings a-play— 'Taint oder colong, though, by hodds; sulphur strong seems the local bokay. They call this the "Needle Bath," CHARLIE. It give me the needle fust off; 'Cos the spray would git into my eyes, and the squelch made ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... that had been heard for a thousand years. Petrarca called the appearance of the patriotic tribune and rhetorician the dawn of a new world and a golden age. Like him, he desired to purge the soil of Italy from the barbaric taint. It became the constant theme of the Humanists to protest against the foreign intruder, that is, against the feudal noble the essential type of the medieval policy. It is the link between Rienzi, the dreamer of dreams, and the followers of Petrarca. Bocaccio had already spoken of the acceptable ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... voices rouse no echo now, their footsteps have no speed; They sleep, and have forgot at last the sabre and the bit— Yon vale, with all the corpses heaped, seems one wide charnel-pit. Long shall the evil omen rest upon this plain of dread— To-night, the taint of solemn blood; to-morrow, of the dead. Alas! 'tis but a shadow now, that noble armament! How terribly they strove, and struck from morn to eve unspent, Amid the fatal fiery ring, enamoured of the fight! Now o'er the dim horizon sinks ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... called, that read aloud, she told The church commands her quick return for Florence With such a dower as Spain received with her, And that they will not hazard heaven's dire curse To yield to a match unlawful, which shall taint The issue of the King with bastardy. This done, in state majestic come you forth, Our new crowned Queen in sight of all our ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... gone. I release you from your troth. If folks ask why we two henceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, if you please, that you could not give your hand to a man who had known the taint of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to you an ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness,—happiness to hear that you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnly than ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you ask me," was the reply, "I'd shape a course due north. We'd be in the track of craft making up and down Channel before it gets dark. If we don't fall in with any vessel, we can carry on. 'Taint so very far to land, considering the number of hands we've ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... (or Six) Nations. During the reign of Louis XIV., after 1660, the French government paid great attention to Canada, but not in a way capable of leading to the formation of a colony. The king was as intent as the rulers of Spain had been to keep the American possessions free from all taint of heresy. Therefore he carried on the policy of excluding the Huguenots — the only colonizing element among his subjects, — and drove them into the English plantations. A small handful of obedient peasants, priest-ridden and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... venison, le Bourdon was suddenly struck with the movements of the dog. Instead of doubling on his own tracks, and scenting right and left, as was the animal's wont, he was now advancing cautiously, with his head low, seemingly feeling his way with his nose, as if there was a strong taint in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... grudgingly paid. There is something in it, I do not quite know what, for I can never place myself precisely in an American's place, that degrades the poor creatures who serve, so that they must not only be social outcasts, but must leave such a taint of dishonor on their work that one cannot even do it for one's self without a sense of outraged dignity. You might account for this in Europe, where ages of prescriptive wrong have distorted the relation out of all human wholesomeness and Christian loveliness; but in ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... every one says, sah," returned the boy, quickly; "but 'taint right tuh jedge a man by what his enemies tells. McGee is a big man, a giant; he's strong as an ox; and his people they looks up tuh him right smart. He's knocked a man down more'n once, with a blow from his fist; but 'twas when he needed a lesson. The McGee has ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... crept on in darkness and grief, inly indignant at the fate of my innocent friend. Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing tale, or why hold you in delay, if all Achaeans are ranked together ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... lady, for by education and good breeding she is entitled to the name. Now, she really possess a good, kind heart, is kind to the poor, tries to do her duty, but away down, under several layers of good intentions, there is a little taint of snobbery, and she really has not the moral courage to rid herself of it. This Mrs. Snob may have a large circle of friends, but to each one she accords a different reception; to all she is kind, remember, but you ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... distinction is seen in the moral purity of the Christian Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level. And so in what is written, the exact ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... won't go nigh her," replied Mr. Beardsley, with a grin which was intended to mean that he was altogether too sharp to be caught in that way. "We won't chase steamers, kase we know we can't catch 'em; and 'taint no ways likely that we'll go to sleep and let one of 'em get between ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... does not plant himself upon the eternal principles of justice. He must be a democrat, a believer in and an advocate of the equal rights of men. A slavery-loving, slavery-upholding lecturer would be just as much of an anomaly as a slavery-loving and slavery-singing poet. The taint so vitiates the whole aesthetic nature, so poisons the moral sense, so palsies the finer powers, so destroys all true sympathy with universal humanity, that the composition of an acceptable lecture becomes impossible to the man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... seems not to exist within things substantially beautiful, or yet by aid of images that coalesce out of the evolving memory of them, but outside of everything actual It is not merely that the dream itself is one of ideal purity; the wave of impulse is pure, and flows without taint of media that seem almost to know it not. The ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... 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; a languishing angel in the latticed box at the Vaudeville; an angel ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and set guards and send telegraph descriptions of him in all directions. 'Taint likely he can get clean away. He'll be a marked ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter |
