"Defilement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and yet a public charge must be preferred. You must be the champion of my cause. Your's shall be the task of conferring a lasting obligation on your friend—your's shall be the glory of ridding the sanctuary of defilement." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... reveals to man his sins, but it provides no remedy. While it promises life to the obedient, it declares that death is the portion of the transgressor. The gospel of Christ alone can free him from the condemnation or the defilement of sin. He must exercise repentance toward God, whose law has been transgressed; and faith in Christ, his atoning sacrifice. Thus he obtains "remission of sins that are past," and becomes a partaker of the divine nature. He is a child of God, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... that the affair was sordid, while finding an excuse for his own connection with it in the involuntary defilement that comes from touching pitch. It was impossible, he said, for a man of business not to touch pitch, and he was not a man of business of his own accord. The state of life had been forced on him. He was a trustee of other people's property by inheritance, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering among ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... allowed me to draw from him all that I have here related of his house and family, and much more that I have not space to relate. Of course, he could not have shared the repast with me,—all the holy water of Ganges could never have washed out so deep a defilement,—but he accompanied my hookah with his hubble-bubble. The reader has observed that, although the viands were choice enough, they were laid on the cheapest pottery, and even on leaves, that the plate from which I ate was of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the sun, as it awaited the consuming fire amid the uncleanness of ashes outside the camp—its throat gashed across—its entrails laid open; a vile and horrid thing, which no one could see without experiencing emotions of disgust, nor touch without contracting defilement. The description appeared too painfully vivid—its introduction too little in accordance with the rules of a just taste. But the master in this difficult walk knew what he was doing. And that, he said, pointing to the strongly-coloured picture he had just completed—"And ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... tea or any other refreshments; where men could repair when their day's work was over and spend an hour or two in rational intercourse with their fellows or listen to music and singing. Taverns to which they could take their wives and children without fear of defilement, for a place that is not fit for the presence of a woman or a child is not ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... game!" cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultant darkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... When increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him as a harvest—good measure, heaped up, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... influence from the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the slave trade from the south, but the face of the finest Negro civilization the modern world had ever produced was veiled from Europe and given to the defilement of wild Moorish soldiers. In 1623 it is written "excesses of every kind are now committed unchecked by the soldiery," and "the country is profoundly convulsed and oppressed."[21] The Tuaregs marched down from the desert and deprived the Moors of many of the principal ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... traditions the sect of Nikon has lost all claim to the apostolical succession, so that the established clergy constitute no longer a Church, but the synagogue of Satan. All communion with these emissaries of hell is a sin, and ordination by the apostate bishops a defilement. The Oriental patriarchs have shared the heresy of the Russian prelates by agreeing to their anathemas against the ancient rites, and orthodoxy has carried with it in its fall the episcopate, apostolical succession ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... that I am doing right," resumed the Don, "in accepting such invitations, as it throws me into the society of heretics so often; and you know we cannot touch pitch without defilement." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... drapery were now faded and shabby, only enhanced the tender reverence with which the Senora knelt before them, her eyes filling with indignant tears at thought of the heretic hands which had wrought such defilement. Even the crumbling wreaths which had been placed on some of the statues' heads at the time of the last ceremonial at which they had figured in the Mission, had been brought away with them by the devout sacristan, and the Senora had replaced each one, holding it only a ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... place in the other world.[5] At least the word, which means a garden or park and was applied to the abode of our first parents in Eden, could not but call up in the consciousness of the dying man a scene of beauty, innocence and peace, where, washed clean from the defilement of his past errors, he would begin to exist again as a new creature. Even Christians have believed that the utmost that can be expected in the next world by a soul with a history like the robber's is, at least to begin with, to be consigned to the fires of purgatory. But far different ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts; in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... for pedestrians. So it would be, I suppose, in any one's ideal city. Surely Town, in theory at least, is a place one walks about as one walks about a house and garden, dressed with a certain ceremonious elaboration, safe from mud and the hardship and defilement of foul weather, buying, meeting, dining, studying, carousing, seeing the play. It is the growth in size of the city that has necessitated the growth of this coarser traffic that has made "Town" ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... saved by stimulants and warmth. This suspended animation is common enough in cholera. Why, the Brahmins have a regular ritual for dealing with cases of recovery on the funeral pyre—purification after defilement by the corpse-washers or something of the sort. These stupid oafs are letting ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... themselves up to the excesses of this debasing indulgence, carry about with them, continually, a consciousness of their defilement, and cherish a secret suspicion that others look upon them as debased beings. They feel none of that manly confidence and gallant spirit, and chaste delight in the presence of virtuous females, which stimulate young men to pursue the course of ennobling refinement, and mature them for the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... being an unparalleled instance without any pollution or defilement, and a virgin not knowing any man, shall ring forth a son, and a maid shall bring forth the Lord, who both by his grace and name and works, shall be the Saviour ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... most imperfect tilling. At a safe distance of a day's riding lie the tartarean copper-forges of Swansea, the tartarean iron-forges of Merthyr; their sooty battle far away, and not, at such safe distance, a defilement to the face of the earth and sky, but rather an encouragement to the earth at least; encouraging the husbandman to plough better, if ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... thousands to be the Mother of His beloved Son? If we ourselves, though sinners, can help one another by our prayers, how irresistible must be the intercession of Mary, who never grieved Almighty God by sin, who never tarnished her white robe of innocence by the least defilement, from the first moment of her existence till she was received by triumphant ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Next in order of defilement to the sweepers,—or, as some particularly righteous folk with inside reservations on the road to Heaven firmly insist, even beneath the sweepers, and possibly beneath the jackals—come the English, looking boldly on whatever their eyes desire and tasting out of curiosity the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... blood—its throat gashed across—its entrails laid open—and steaming in its impurity to the sun, as it awaited the consuming fire, amid the uncleanness of ashes outside the camp,—a vile and horrid thing, which no one could see without experiencing emotions of disgust, nor touch without contracting defilement. The picture appeared too painfully vivid, its introduction too little in accordance with the rules of a just taste. It seemed a thing to be covered up, not exhibited. But the master in this difficult walk well knew what he was doing. 'And that,' he said, as if pointing to ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... in thought beneath the oak-tree, and a child in a sky-blue kirtle sprawled at play upon the threshold of one of the houses. The coo of doves and cluck of hens, the only voices, sounded peaceful in the sun-filled air. Iskender moved on, trusting hard in Allah to save his Sunday clothes from base defilement. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... ceremonies to which the Divinity, they say, attaches some secret virtue, by unseen views, of which we can form no ideas. In baptism, without which no man can be saved, the water sprinkled on the head of the child washes his spiritual soul, and carries away the defilement which is a consequence of the sin committed in the person of Adam, who sinned for all men. By the mysterious virtue of this water, and of some words equally unintelligible, the infant finds itself reconciled to God, as his first father had made him guilty without ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... conveniently contain no more pits a new one is selected and prepared. None but priests and bearers of the dead may enter, or even look into, these walled cemeteries. The priests, by virtue of their holy office, are preserved from defilement, but the bearers are men set apart for this express purpose, and they are considered so unclean that they may not enter under the roof of any other Parsee or salute him on the street. If in passing a bearer do but touch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... fire?'—yes; then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'—yes; then why in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us' is sorely hindered by the weakness in which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... with fear and trembling, and to cause them to meditate and see how naked and helpless the Lord of lords departed from this life. With a terrible voice He cried, to stir up all those who live in wantonness, and who have grown old in their defilement, and send forth a foul savour, like dead dogs, so that at last these miserable men may rise from their lusts and pleasures and sensual delights, and see how the Son of God, who was never strained with any spot of defilement, went ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... the other opposite causes satisfaction. Thus the soul striving to recover its natural beauty seeks to purify itself, to heal itself, and to reform itself, and to this end it uses fire, because, being like gold, mixed with earth and crude, with a certain rigour it tries to liberate itself from defilement, and this result is obtained when the intellect, the real smith of Jove, puts itself to the work and causes an active exercise ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention—that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building—that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst—that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... either male or female, should be born at a time. A twin birth is accordingly regarded as a visitation from God for some sang, or transgression, committed by some member of the clan. When the twins are of opposite sexes the sang is considered to be extremely serious, the Khasi idea being that defilement has taken place within the womb. The case is treated as one of shong kur, or marriage within the clan, and the bones of the twins cannot be placed in the sepulchre of the clan. There are no special birth customs ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... point; and among the Romans, Greeks Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without defilement, in mind or body. The fathers, from the very disciples of the apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellency of holy virginity, as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... divine union to which we are heirs and for which we are either blindly, consciously, or supra-consciously, striving, be described and exploited without danger of defilement and degeneracy, save and except by the phrase ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... brass dish, poured water upon the hand that had gripped the wrist of Hunsa, saying, "Thus I will cleanse the defilement." Then he sat down upon his heels, adding: "Guru, holy one, repeat a prayer to appease Bhowanee, then we will go into the jungle and ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... good in him was not so deeply buried under refuse as in many a better-seeming man. Sickness had awakened in him a sense of requirement—of need also, and loneliness, and dissatisfaction. He grew ashamed of himself and conscious of defilement. Something new began to rise above and condemn the old. There are who would say that the change was merely the mental condition resulting from and corresponding to physical weakness; that repentance, and the vision of the better which maketh shame, is but a mood, sickly as are the brain and nerves ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... acknowledge a conversion to Protestantism, a statute was actually passed to require them to prove their sincerity by five years' adherence to their new form of religion before they could be regarded as having washed off the defilement of their old heresy sufficiently to be thought worthy to wear a gown in the Four Courts. No Roman Catholic might keep a school; while a strange refinement of intolerance had added a statute prohibiting parents from sending their ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... even yet recovered from the moral blight of that religion; and had such a cultus been allowed to spread over all Europe and the world, not even a second Deluge could have cleansed the earth of its defilement. The extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith, and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of Peace to all lands, becomes a ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... features of Shint[o] was the emphasis laid on cleanliness. Pollution was calamity, defilement was sin, and physical purity at least, was holiness. Everything that could in any way soil the body or the clothing was looked upon with abhorrence and detestation. Disease, wounds and death were defiling, and the feeling of disgust prevailed over that of either sympathy or pity. Birth and death ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... manage him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what does that mean, if you're right, but that she—understands him; his talk; his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere—any angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she says, to manage the publicity for her. Do you realize what that means? He's licensed to try to make the public believe anything that he thinks would heighten their ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... found one soul which was akin to mine, that of a beautiful woman who loved me and whom I had come to love and desire. But what was the end of it? Owing to the necessities of statecraft and her own nobleness, she had been separated from me and although, as it would seem, she had as yet escaped defilement, was spirited away into the temple of some barbarous worship where I was almost ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... of the Town, whereby a Multitude of Innocents are sacrificed in a more barbarous Manner than those who were offered to Moloch. The Unchaste are provoked to see their Vice exposed, and the Chaste cannot rake into such Filth without Danger of Defilement; but a meer SPECTATOR may look into the Bottom, and come off without partaking in the Guilt. The doing so will convince us you pursue publick Good, and not meerly your own Advantage: But if your Zeal slackens, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is ignoble or base. And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all breath of defilement. It showed clear right through, as some gem of the purest water. To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and ambitions. Hence that its perfection should be now endangered ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... around the tomb of Patroclus, leaving him at length stretched in the dust. But Apollo would not permit the body to be torn or disfigured with all this abuse, but preserved it free from all taint or defilement. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... self-joined by bond For interest sake, or swarming into clans Beneath one head for purposes of war, Like flowers selected from the rest, and bound And bundled close to fill some crowded vase, Fades rapidly, and by compression marred Contracts defilement not to be endured. Hence chartered boroughs are such public plagues, And burghers, men immaculate perhaps In all their private functions, once combined, Become a loathsome body, only fit For dissolution, hurtful to the main. Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin Against the charities ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Upright men spent their lives in unyielding and indignant protest, not so much for any immediate result as because they could do no otherwise,—because the constant violation of sacred right, the constant defilement and degradation of country, wrought so fiercely and painfully in their hearts that they could not hold their peace. Though they expected no sudden reform, they believed in the indestructibility of truth, and knew, therefore, that their word should not return unto them void, but waited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Citadel of Piacenza, Cosimo d'Anguissola might stand at his usual post beside the Duke and might fall with him. Surely justice demanded it!" she cried out. "God's justice, as well as man's. His act in marrying me was a defilement of one of the holiest of sacraments, and for that he should surely be punished and ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... avoid. But if you have occasion to take part in them, let not your attention be relaxed for a moment, lest you slip after all into evil ways. For you may rest assured that be a man ever so pure himself, he cannot escape defilement if ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... have sanctioned, though it has not among them the rigidity it has among the Hindus. I was told regarding one boarding institution for young men, all ate together; but on returning to their homes they performed certain ceremonies which removed the defilement they had contracted. As to the general character of the native Christians, I inferred it was much the same as in India, with similar ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... period had elapsed without any cleansing, and therefore the discord between the demands of his conscience and the life he was leading was greater than it had ever been before. He was horror-struck when he saw how great the divergence was. It was so great and the defilement so complete that he despaired of the possibility of getting cleansed. "Have you not tried before to perfect yourself and become better, and nothing has come of it?" whispered the voice of the tempter within. "What is the use of trying any more? Are you the only one?—All are alike, such is life," ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Catholic communion: he accuses their wickedness by appeal to the decree of Melchiades: he convicts their heresy by reference to the order of succession of Roman Pontiffs: he lays open their frenzy in their defilement of the Eucharist and of schism: he abhors their sacrilege in their breaking of altars "on which the members of Christ are borne," and their pollution of chalices "which have held the blood of Christ." I greatly desire to know what they ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... ceremony and importance, arrived with his musical appendage before the gate. The requisite formalities being gone through, the drawbridge was lowered, and this parliamentary representative was speedily admitted through a little wicket into the Babylon which he abhorred. His very feet seemed in danger of defilement. He looked as if breathing the very atmosphere of pollution; but when ordered to kneel down that he might be blindfolded, his spirit rose ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... him. There was no denying that Woodville had great cause for anger, when he found his father's house occupied by a regiment of the enemy. He considered it defilement. The right or wrong of the war had nothing to do with it. It was to him a ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... personate heathen damsels; and we only ask, What must have been the effect of representing far fouler characters than Terence's on the minds of uneducated lads of the lower classes? Prynne and others hint at still darker abominations than the mere defilement of the conscience: we shall say nothing of them, but that, from collateral evidence, we believe every word they say; and that when pretty little Cupid's mother, in Jonson's Christmas masque, tells how 'She could have had money ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... humiliated, subjected: so long as there is no chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement.... ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... bow into the nearest thicket, and seizing the most convenient ammunition, which chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... exhausted to carry their ideas any further for the time, and having wiped their mother and removed every trace of her defilement—and allowed a little time for the blood to cool in their veins—she was placed in her former position in her chair, her dress readjusted, and then Frank, with a few passes, brought her back to consciousness, after which they all soon retired ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... of God's people, perfumed with the sweet incense of Christ's intercession: the golden candlestick, shedding forth light, as of the influences of God's Spirit: the laver, for washing, representing the means of purification from all defilement: the altar of burnt-offering, from which arose the flame of sacrifice, that betokened the offering of Him who made his soul a propitiation for sin; were sacred utensils, all of which referred to the ratification of God's covenant, and the dispensation of its blessings ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... drew from this hypothesis was, that since All evil resulted from matter, the depravity of mankind arose from the pollution derived to the human soul, from its connexion with the material body which it inhabits; and, therefore, the only means by which the mind could purify itself from the defilement, and liberate itself from the bondage imposed upon it by the body, was to emaciate and humble the body by frequent fasting, and to invigorate the mind to overcome and subdue it ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of defilement ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 272] [Greek: tauron kai tragon kai spodos damaleos rhantizousa tous kekoinomenous hagiazei pros ten tes sarkos katharoteta. mallon to haima tou Christou ... kathariei ten suneidesin hemon apo nekron ergon eis to latreuein Theo zonti.] The defilement by dead bodies, against which the water of purification was specially used, is the most significant symbol of sinners and sins.—4. "It is, in general, not probable that the Servant of God, who farther down is described as a sacrificial beast (!),—who, by taking upon Himself the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... stone statues of the Place de la Concorde, veiled in black by unknown hands, did not see the soiling of Paris. The Arch of Triumph of the Place de l'Etoile had been barricaded and obstructed in such a manner that the Germans could not pass under it. The triumphal monument remained virgin of this defilement. In the evening, Paris assumed the aspect, strange and prodigious, of a city asleep. Nowhere were there any lights, rare pedestrians, no omnibuses, no carriages. The footsteps of a patrol which resounded rhythmical and sonorous in the distance, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... the purity, she realized what the poisoning of the fountain springs of life could mean. By the triumph, she realized what the defeat, the debasement could be. She thought of love as a fountain spring, a spring into which you could not both cast defilement and drink of waters undefiled; as an altar flame fed with incense lighting the darkness; and one could no more offend love with impurity, than cast the dung heap on the altar flame and not expect blastment. She wanted to clap her hands as the gay, twinkling ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... in silence. Fatally she recognised the old fellow's description; but—was it possible her lover had brought this man to marry them?—this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their hands? If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy, this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous farce. If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... valleys, through which the Thames (not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills (which pour into it their tributary rivulets, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... clear that the Targumists intended here a strong allusion to the original meaning of Jezebel's name; viz. that she who was named "the undefiled" should become as "defilement." I am not sure whether a disquisition of this kind may be considered irrelevant to your work; but as the idea seems not an improbable one to some whose judgment I value, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... city howl at her ugliness! How she did curse! She cursed my father and mother—she cursed their graves—flung dirt upon my brother and sisters, and filth upon the whole generation. She gave me up to Jehanum, and to every species of defilement. It was a dreadful thing to hear that old woman curse. I pulled my turban over my eyes, that she might not recognise me, and lifted up my garment to cover my face, that I might not be defiled with the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... in this pleasant room, so entirely feminine, where everything was safe and warm! Their imperfections were so small as compared with their sacrifice. Modern-day Christs, that's what they were! Christs by the thousands, who had found no Josephs of Arimathea to hide their defilement in garden-sepulchres. There they lay at this moment in the wilderness of corruption where they had fallen, while living people between puffs of cigarettes, undertook to explain why they should not ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... liberty, if not my life, at the mercy of your wonderful police system. But those things count for little. I have been forced, Isobel, to leave you very much to yourself. You come of a race who would regard any association with me as defilement. And there is always the chance that you may be able to take your proper position in the world. That is why it has been my duty to keep away from you, why I have been forced to leave to others what I would gladly have done myself. To-night ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Lord, and touch not the impure; and I will receive you, [6:18]and will be to you a father, and you shall be to me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. [7:1] Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us purify ourselves from every defilement of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the ...
— The New Testament • Various
... priesthood (xvi., xvii.). Again the narrative element gives place to legislation regulating the duties, relative position and revenues of the priests and Levites (xviii.) and the manner of purification after defilement (xix.). [Footnote 1: Caleb alone in JE, Joshua ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... at their priestlike task Of pale ablution round earth's human shore. But they do not escape without defilement On the surface of the tide, when it ebbs from the mudbanks, there gathers an iridescent slime. Tiny particles of floating sand catch and reflect the light Fragments of dead weed, black or brown, are borne along. The tide has stolen across ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... narrow space; what great eclipses, and how very great and thick an one it suffered under Antichrist; how it has sometimes emerged from desperate circumstances, and especially in this our age under the mighty Luther; with what defilement and spots it is often stained; how much it is conversant with the flesh. Many other such things they have in store; as also its periodical changes, and the harmonious vicissitudes of its seasons. They diligently impress them on the youth ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed; statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... but it taketh not away free will, nor alloweth the forgiving of sins after baptism, or immersion in the font a second time. For it is one baptism that we confess, and need is that we keep ourselves with all watchfulness that so we fall not into defilement a second time, but hold fast to the commandments of the Lord. For when he said to the Apostles, 'Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' he did not stop there, but ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... should appear to any one hardly religious enough for the purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as"the living body is from ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... if, instead of constructing, at great expense, dams across the Nile to increase the extent of its inundations, he were to scatter his piasters in attempts to deepen its bed, that he might rescue Egypt from the defilement of the foreign mud which is swept down upon it from the mountains of the Moon? Exactly such a degree of wisdom do we exhibit, when at the expense of millions, we strive to preserve our country.... From what? From the blessings with which ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns, and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on their beards. The curse of the Shaykaim is on ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... towards putting into practice his plans for a reorganisation of labour under improved conditions. "Fors Clavigera" consisted of a series of letters to workingmen, inviting them to join him in establishing a fund for rescuing English country life from the tyranny and defilement of machinery. In pursuance of this project, the St. George's Guild was formed, about 1870, Ruskin devoting to it 7,000 pounds of his own money. Trustees were chosen to administer the fund; a building was bought at Walkley, in the suburbs of Sheffield, for use ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... stone-built altar, and the cleft-wood for its fire, That with sacrificial offering shall the soul to God aspire, Purged and pure from sin's defilement, lifting holy hands on high, "Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me, cleave the wood ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... chamber with me? Lo now oft it befalls that some worthy man will be with me, and that do I deem void of any shame; but hereby will I swear that to no man have I given gold, and of no man have I had fleshly defilement save of my husband, and that wretched staff-carle who laid his miry hand on my thigh when I was borne over the slough this ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... to use you in His service, you must first be sprinkled, made pure from all defilement of sin. Until this has been done you cannot do one single thing to please God; until you have been cleansed, it is impossible for you to work ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... of God was represented to her under the semblance of a vast sea, with whose limpid waters no defilement however small was allowed to mingle, all such being instantaneously rejected. Overwhelmed at—sight of the disproportion between the purity of the human, soul, and the holiness of the great God with whom she aspires to be united, she could only exclaim again ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... creature was in the hands of Beauchamp—a selfish and vulgar-minded fellow! That he whom he had heard insult a dead woman, and whom he had chastised for it, should dare to touch Kate! His very touch was defilement. But what could he do? Alas! he could only hate. And what was that, if Kate should love! But she could not love him already. He would tell her what kind of a person he was. But she would not believe him, and would set it down to jealousy. And it would be mean to tell her. Was Kate ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... child's chastity in order to avenge her own; caring nought for the purity of her own blood, so she might stain with incest the man who had cost her her own maidenhood at first! Infamous-hearted woman, who, to punish her defiler, measured out as it were a second defilement to herself, whereas she clearly by the selfsame act rather swelled than lessened the transgression! Surely, by the very act wherewith she thought to reach her revenge, she accumulated guilt; she added a sin in trying to remove a crime: she played ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a peculiar horror of the dress of the old world. The men's clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, except an occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year or so; they were made of dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal the stage of defilement they had reached, and they were of a felted and porous texture admirably calculated to accumulate drifting matter. Many women wore skirts of similar substances, and of so long and inconvenient a form that they inevitably trailed among all the ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Castille, Philippe the Hardy, and the city fathers all aided the work substantially, and the fabric speedily took on its finished form. Through the later centuries it still preserved its entity, and even during the Revolution its walls escaped destruction and defilement through the devotion ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... gold is impure in the end, it is because it has contracted fresh defilement by coming in contact with other bodies. But this impurity is only superficial, and does not prevent its being used; whereas its former impurity was hidden within it, and, as it ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... voice. "Doomed to sati. For, since I am a widow—since thou dost maintain thou art not my husband—then my face hath been looked upon by a man not of mine own people, and I am dishonoured. Fire alone can cleanse me of that defilement—the pyre and the ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... beside it. An octagonal occasional table, which carried a bronze statuette and a number of choice books, had been rudely overturned, and down the primrose paper of the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it seemed for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of the delicate chintz curtains had been violently torn from its rings and thrust upon the fire, so that the smell of its smouldering filled the room. Indeed the whole place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a few ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the vials of affected wrath. There, however, he was executing a profound pathological study in a serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we have to blame the composition of human character, or the mischievousness of a human institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748—a story which is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all centuries, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... on the very soul!—the words of Holy Writ, deprecating the wrath of an offended Creator, announcing pardon to the repentant, and cleansing from the pollution of guilt to the heart, vexed with the defilement of this evil world, and yearning after the purity of that higher existence for which, erst designed, the inherited frailty of its nature, and the threefold temptations that unweariedly beset it, have rendered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... hatred of her Beloved. She seeks to cleanse and to purify herself, but she is no sooner washed than she seems to fall into a slough yet more filthy and polluted than that from which she has just escaped. She does not see that it is because she runs that she contracts defilement, and falls so frequently, yet she is so ashamed to run in this condition, that she does not know where to hide herself. Her garments are soiled; she loses all ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... waked up and found all their sins but hideous dreams! How many would loathe the sin? How many would remain capable of doing all again? But few, perhaps no burdened souls can have any idea of the power that lies in God's forgiveness to relieve their consciousness of defilement. Those who say, "Even God cannot destroy the fact!" care more about their own cursed shame than their Father's blessed truth! Such will rather excuse than confess. When a man heartily confesses, leaving excuse to God, the truth makes him free, he knows that the evil has gone from him, as ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... where they repose except certain men who are officially appointed for that purpose. They receive high pay, but theirs is a dismal life, for they must live apart from their species, because their commerce with the dead defiles them, and any who should associate with them would share their defilement. When they come out of the Tower the clothes they are wearing are exchanged for others, in a building within the grounds, and the ones which they have taken off are left behind, for they are contaminated, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... letter in reply. He said most truly, "Once allowed, this clause would let in a flood of promise-breaking, bold injustice, wanton insult, deceit, and mutual distrust, to the defilement of true religion, shaking the very foundations of trust and security;" and he also declared that nothing could be more opposed to the precepts of our Lord and His apostles, than to destroy men's souls by depriving them of the benefits of the pastoral office by giving unfit persons ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... us sit in a row on a ridge of the pebbles; and we were sore afraid, yet more for defilement at their hands than for death; for they were evil-looking men exceeding foul of favour. Then said one of them: 'Which of all you maidens is the Hostage of the House ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... His Majesty resolves, that Regenspurg 150 Be purified from the enemy, ere Easter, That Lutheranism may be no longer preached In that cathedral, nor heretical Defilement desecrate the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... under such circumstances, he could not remain with me any longer. In his view, I was committing a great sin. To kill an ox or a cow, is considered by them as a crime which can never be atoned for, and to eat their flesh is a defilement which can never be washed away. To kill a cow is, by Hindoo ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... Then a number of tarpaulins were got up on deck and hung over the ship's sides, fore and aft, covering the hull from the bulwark rail right down to the surface of the water, to protect the white paint from defilement by flying coal dust; and, this having been done, the yacht was taken alongside the coal hulk, and the process of coaling the vessel at once began under the joint supervision of Milsom and the second engineer, the skipper being especially particular in the arranging of the fenders ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... he answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers—the defilement of common life." ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... again she had to send the girls to bring babes to the Mission House, and many a stirring night she had, she sleeping with them in her bed, whilst outside stealthy forms watched for a chance to free the town from the defilement of their presence. The first that survived was a boy. The husband, angry and sullen, was for murdering it and putting the mother into a hole in the swamp. She faced him with the old flash in her eye, and made him take oath not to hurt or kill the child. He even promised ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... soul; which is commonly called sanctification. But none can come to know Christ to be their sacrifice, that reject him as their sanctifier: the end of his coming being to save his people from the nature and defilement, as well as guilt of sin; and, therefore, those that resist his light and Spirit, make his coming and offering ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... Sextus and that of Paris, son of Priam. (1) Paris was the guest of Menel[a]os, when he eloped with his wife, Helen; and Sextus was the guest of Lucretia when he defiled her. (2) The elopement of Helen was the cause of a national war between the Greek cities and the allied cities of Troy; and the defilement of Lucretia was the cause of a national war between Rome and the allied cities under Por'sena. (3) The contest between Greece and Troy terminated in the victory of Greece, the injured party; and the contest between Rome and the supporters of Tarquin ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... addressed the Senate in opposition to the measure. His speech was five hours in length, and occupied parts of the sessions of two days in its delivery. Mr. Sumner argued that the proposed amendment would introduce "discord and defilement into the Constitution," by admitting that rights could be "denied or abridged on account of race or color," and that by its adoption Congress would prove derelict to its constitutional duty to guarantee a republican form of government to each State, and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... see them yet, Alone and starving in their pride,— Their glittering plumage still intact, While standing bravely side by side; And, although put to hunger's test, Continuing mutely to protest Against defilement with the rest. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... would overthrow all else. "Glory!" he cried mechanically aloud. He put down the hairbrush and inspected the razors on their shelf. The bright morning light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, with a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ear—doubted whether he could detect a breathing; and though scared, he being a Cohen, and the presence of death defilement, yet he stayed, bending over Mephi several minutes, thinking, not ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... caves or abandoned hovels. They recognize their degradation by falling on their knees when addressing even toilers on the highway, and shout a warning on the approach of a traveler, that he may halt long enough for them to get off the road to secure his passing without possibility of defilement. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the impressive prayer, "Father of Heaven, from Thy eternal Throne," sung by the Priest. As the fire ascends from the altar, the sanctuary having been purified of its heathen defilement, the Israelites look upon it as an omen of victory and take courage. A Messenger enters with tidings of Judas's triumph over all their enemies. The Israelitish Maidens and Youths go out to meet him, singing the exultant march chorus, "See the Conquering Hero comes," which is familiar to every ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... tints of pink, blue, and orange, like the draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate. Then came the rush and splatter of cabriolets, scattering terror and defilement. The well-mounted English dandy shows his sense by hoisting his parapluie; the French dragoon curls his mustachio at such effeminacy, and braves the liquid bullets in the genuine spirit of Marengo; the old French count picks his elastic steps with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in the ante-room of a Legislature, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... blushes made my shame the deeper! Why did you turn me from the death I sought? Ah! When his sword was pointed to my bosom, Did he grow pale, or try to snatch it from me? That I had touch'd it was enough for him To render it for ever horrible, Leaving defilement on the hand ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... oratory; and a very pretty little show-room it is, with its marble altar-piece, its silver candlesticks, its crucifixes, and, in short, all the paraphernalia of such places. If there be any efficacy in holy water, the little chamber must by this time be effectually cleansed from the sad defilement of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... and thrids the labyrinth of the deepest mine; he calls to the heights of the heavens and to the depths of the sea. But there is no answering voice, and he is left to nurse his dumb and piteous despair. Every attempt that he makes to rid his soul of its defilement is like the effort of a man who, in trying to remove the stain from his window, rubs on the wrong ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... gates of heaven are opened, and, behold, The herald comes upon the wings of night, When men in slumber lie, and when abroad The robber goes to plunder what he can; And when the lusty have gone forth to cull A night's defilement in an evil way; The gambler sitteth at his dizzy game, The sotted drunkard feeds his bestial thirst, And revel dancers are aloud in mirth. Alike the heedless and the godly sleep, When from the herald's waking trumpet comes The awful and ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... to Thee, And at Thy gates we moan like doves. Vouchsafe unto us a life of tranquil joy, Purge us of our stains, make us white and pure. O that our youthful faults might vanish like passing clouds! Renew our days as of old, Remove defilement hence, set presumptuous sins at naught; The purifying waters of truth sprinkle upon us, For we confess our transgressions, we rebellious, ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... of action. He was the true son of Luther. He loved to attack, to upheave, to overthrow. Where Clarke spoke gently and lovingly of the church, as their holy mother, whom they must love and cherish, and seek to plead with as sons, that she might cleanse herself from the defilement into which she had fallen, Garret attacked her as the harlot, the false bride, the scarlet woman seated upon the scarlet beast, and called down upon her and it alike the vials of the wrath ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 1905.) Thence rose the obligation on virgins to yield to a stranger first. Only then were they permitted to marry a man of their own race. Furthermore, various means were resorted to in order to save the husband from the defilement which might result from that act (see for inst., Reinach, Mythes, cultes, I, p. 118).—The opinion expressed in this note was attacked, almost immediately after its publication, by Frazer (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 50 ff.) who preferred to see in the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... it, meant, especially to a man of high caste, whether of the right or left hand section, the total loss to him of all that was worth living for. He could never be received in intercourse again with his own people, and so strong are the caste ideas of ceremonial uncleanness that it would be defilement to his friends and relations even to offer to him sustenance of any kind, and he was in point of fact excommunicated and avoided. Happily this dread of caste defilement has now, by railway communication over the country and ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... wonder and command our imitation), may be freed from the calumnies and detractions of ignorance and envy; and so their honour may continue as unspotted, as they have kept their persons uncontaminated and free from defilement. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... hands of his own daughter after she is married; as soon as the ceremony is over her belongings are at once removed from the hut, and even the floor beneath the seat of the bride and bridegroom during the marriage ceremony is dug up and the surface earth thrown away to avoid any risk of defilement. Only when it is remembered that these rules are observed by people who do not wash themselves from one week's end to the other, and wear the same wisp of cloth about their loins until it comes to pieces, can the full absurdity ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... chastity, which consists in abstaining from the rovings of whoredom: the reason is, because virtue or potency, with him who loves his married partner alone, is confined to one, and is thus collected and as it were concentrated; and then it becomes refined like a quintessence from which all defilement is separated, which would otherwise be dispersed and cast away in every direction. One of us five, who is a priest, has also added predestination as a cause of that virtue or potency, saying, 'Are not marriages predestinated? and this being the case, are not the progeny thence issuing and the means ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... that this man also has his disgust of defilement. While the ambitious world of wealth and power despises him, he in his turn thinks that the world's touch desecrates him who has been made sacred by the touch of his Lover. He does not envy us our life of ambition and achievements, but he knows how precious his ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... right. In many men it is love for an ideal woman that does it. They keep themselves from evil because, though they may never have met her, they believe one day they will, and they want to bring her their best selves without any spot of defilement. In many girls love works in the same redemptive way. And perhaps in both what is really working is a mystic longing after the best that life can hold, and a half-conscious understanding that that best is only for those who preserve unity between ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... so great, the defilement so thorough, that at first he despaired of the possibility of a complete cleansing. "Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... others, women, hanged by their hair over that mire that flamed up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. And the men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery, were hanging by the feet with their heads in that mire, and they exclaimed in a loud voice: We did not believe that we should ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... others, is the testifying that there is no god but God and that Mohammed is His apostle; that, of which all others have need, is ablution; that, which compriseth all others, is that of [total] ablution from [ceremonial] defilement; the Traditional ordinance, that enters into the Koranic, is the separation of the fingers and the thick beard; and that, wherewith all Koranic ordinances are completed, is circumcision.' Therewith was manifest the insufficiency of the doctor, who rose to his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... through the city flies the sound of that unhappy tale, And all hearts sink: Latinus goes with raiment rent and torn, Stunned by his wife's unhappy lot, and city lost and lorn, 610 And scattering o'er his hoariness defilement of the dust; And often he upbraids himself that he took not to trust That Dardan lord, nor willingly had hallowed him ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... I could have been very bad; and to me she was, luckily, horrible. I could not divorce her two apparent natures, still less my own. We are bound—all of us—by our natures, bound by them and bounded. I could not have touched the pitch she lived with, the pitch of which she was, without defilement. Let me hope that I realised that much. I shall not say how my feet burned to enter that slum of squalor where hovered this bird of the night, unless I add, as I can do with truth, that I did not slake them there. I saw her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... sin against decency, or an attempt to poison the minds of the people, for a person to be ungrammatical, it might be wise enough to hire men to protect the well of English from defilement. But a stationary language is a dead one—moving water only is pure—and the well that is not fed by springs is sure to ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... outside of the village, for no horse nor vehicle is permitted to enter its precincts, lest it should cause defilement of the well-scoured pavements. Shaking the dust off my feet, therefore, I prepared to enter, with due reverence and circumspection, this sanctum sanctorum of Dutch cleanliness. I entered by a narrow street, paved with yellow bricks, laid edgewise, and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... you, and you both refuse to ratify the war in which these very men elected to serve, and show yourselves inferior to them, who are ready to face dangers; for while you praise the soldiers that detected the defilement of Antony and withdrew from him, though he was consul, and attached themselves to Caesar, (that is, to you through him), you shrink from voting for that which you say they were right in doing. Also we are grateful to Brutus that he ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... teeth angrily, and thought no more of the defilement which might threaten Bent-Anat from the paraschites, but exclusively, on the contrary, of the impending desecration by the princess of the holy feelings astir in this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ought to be removed. But this is true of American San Francisco as well as of Chinatown. What, we may ask, are the men and women of as beautiful a city as ever sat on Bay or Lake or Sea-Shore or River, doing for its purgation, for its release from moral defilement and "garments spotted with the flesh?" This indeed is one of the searching questions to be asked of any other City, such as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, London, Paris, Cairo, Constantinople, as well as San Francisco. Among the ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... days. In former days! And a little doubt dropped into it, "If former days there ever were." For who can tell? This crumbling, ragged business which to us means that we stand before the Past; this gradual perishing of things in neglect and defilement, may very well have formed a necessary part of our ancestors' present. Our own standard and habit of tidiness, decorum, and uniformity may be quite recent developments; barbarism, in the sense of decay and pollution, may have existed together with prosperity. It is quite possible that dead ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... young man who had devoted most of his leisure for several years to handling them, McBane was past master in their manipulation. During a stormy career he had touched more or less pitch, and had escaped few sorts of defilement. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... above all, in spirit and desire. That there was no remedy for it but His remedy. No rains in all the heavens to wash it, no waters in all the seas to cleanse it away, no fires in Hell itself to purge its defilement. The only hope was in the blood of His sacrifice. And so He came to shed it, to save ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... hast subdued and conquered Mrityu who always has pursued thee, seeking thy laches? O best of men, no one in the three worlds has the ability to insult, even with looks, this chaste lady devoted to her husband, far less to touch her person. She has been protected from defilement by thy virtue and by her own chastity. There can be nothing contrary to what this proud lady will say. This utterer of Brahma, endued with austere penances, shall, for the salvation of the world, be metamorphosed into a mighty river. And thou shalt attain to all the worlds in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... My fathers! whom I will rejoin, It may be, purified by death from some Of the gross stains of too material being, I would not leave your ancient first abode To the defilement of usurping bondmen; If I have not kept your inheritance As ye bequeathed it, this bright part of it, Your treasure—your abode—your sacred relics 430 Of arms, and records—monuments, and spoils, In which they would have revelled, I bear with me To you in that absorbing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... brain foods? The advertisement columns of our magazines and newspapers are full of them. Their announcements grin down upon us from every hoarding. Do you know that we are going to do the same thing? We are going to contribute our share to the defilement of journalism. We are going to make a similar appeal to the quack ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... That betokens inward defilement. I never bathe, but my body is always clean. But I have noticed, as soon as my thoughts become impure, the body becomes impure! What do you think, then, will do you good? You do not wish to marry. Tertullian says marriage and fornication are the same. And St. Jerome is of opinion ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... is not by me; and, if it were, its defilement is such that I could not be tempted to give it at length. Laughable and lamentable as the article is in the main, I still thank Hibbard for some portions of it, and especially for that one which substantiates the charge which I have brought ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... when our Lord had gone, His Father's pleasure willing, He took his baptism of St. John, His work and charge fulfilling; Therein he did appoint a bath To wash us from defilement, And there to drown that cruel Death In his blood of assoilment: 'Twas no ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... not become immodest in the same degree that she abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience rejected its defilement, struggled fiercely in its shame, rent itself in its repentance and did not for one second permit itself the full enjoyment of vice, was never completely stunned ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... greatest propriety of demeanor, to suppress all rudeness of speech and manner, to abstain from all carnal indulgence, to deny themselves specified articles of food, and above all to avoid contact with a corpse. If anyone, even by accident, suffered such defilement, before being received again into fellowship or permitted to enter the halau and take part in the exercises he must have ceremonial cleansing (huikala). The kumu offered up prayers, sprinkled the offender with salt ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the glade is a mile distant from water—the nearest being that of the creek already mentioned as running past the cabin of the squatter. Thus Nature, as if jealous of this pretty wild-wood garden, protects it from the defilement of man. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... absurdities passing through Malcolm's mind, as, after Liftore's punishment, he lifted the portrait, set it again upon its easel, and went on trying to clean the face of it—with no small promise of success. But as he made progress he grew anxious—lest with the defilement, he should remove some of the colour as well: the painter alone, he concluded at length could be trusted to restore the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... of the skin diseases which are so common. The reformed religion of New Japan—whether Buddhist, Shinto, or Christian—could do few better services for the people at large than by entering on a crusade against this religious rite. It could and should preach the doctrine that sin and defilement of the hearts are not removed by such an easy method as the rite implies and the masses believe. If retained as a symbol, the purification rite should at least be reformed ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... apart from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel there is defilement even in the shadow of ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the fear struck home. Suppose she had meddled in a matter which no lady could touch without indecorum, perhaps actual defilement? Suppose, in answer to her entreaty, Christian should confide to her something which no lady ought to hear? What a fearful position for her—Miss Gascoigne—to be placed in! What should she say to ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... cotton things are rendered impure by her at this time, and any cloth or other article which she touches must be washed before it can be touched by anybody else; but woollen cloth, being sacred, is not rendered impure, and she can sleep on a woollen blanket without its thereby becoming a defilement to other persons. When bathing at the end of the period a woman should see no other face but her husband's; but as her husband is usually not present, she wears a ring with a tiny mirror and looks at her own face in ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... who determines the worth or the worthlessness of the gift. God looks not at the gift, but at the hand that brings it. "Your hands are full of blood!" "Your hands are unclean!" The Lord demands "clean hands." He will not have our compliments if there is defilement behind them. Our courtesies are rejected if iniquity attends them. The shining gloss on the linen is an offence if the dirt looks through! Who cares for food if presented by unclean hands? "Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... their mouthpiece and "the guardian of the treasury of civil and religious duties." Modern schools and colleges threatened to undermine his ascendancy just as Western competition had by more dubious methods undermined Indian domestic industries. No man's caste was said to be safe against the hidden defilement of all the strange inventions imported from beyond the seas. Prophecy, vague but persuasive, hinted that British rule, which dated in the Indian mind from the battle of Plassey in 1757, was doomed not to outlive ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol |
