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Taint   Listen
noun
Taint  n.  
1.
Tincture; hue; color; tinge. (Obs.)
2.
Infection; corruption; deprivation. "He had inherited from his parents a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove."
3.
A blemish on reputation; stain; spot; disgrace.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books



... when I spoke up for you the other night, he has never said a word of blame to me on the subject; and for why? I'll tell you—it's just because he knows and feels down in his heart of hearts as I were not to blame. But he must be angry with somebody—'taint pleasant to be angry with one's own self; he's never been used to be angry with Master Walter; 'tain't no use being angry with Miss Huntingdon, 'cos she'd look the fiercest man as ever lived into a good temper—the mere ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... of partial significances, rather than in the wider tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the ultimate laws of conduct which should govern them. We ought to be troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical situation, with its taint of an almost frantic immediacy. Not only are we not sufficiently dealing with the Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and effect of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our generation. We are tinkering here and patching there, but attempting no grand evaluation. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... barbaric and uncomfortable. The women seem determined to wear as few garments as possible, and to compensate for lack of number by brightness of coloring. In many a pretty face traces of gypsy blood may be seen. This vagabond taint gives an inexpressible charm to a face for which the Hungarian strain has already done much. The coal-black hair and wild, mutinous eyes set off to perfection the pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the delicate nostrils and beautifully moulded chin. Angel or devil? queries the beholder. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... nothing else to do. But his laughter was charged with more anger even than contempt. He had been deluding himself that he had done with piracy. The conviction that this French service was free of any taint of that was the only consideration that had induced him to accept it. Yet here was this haughty, supercilious gentleman, who dubbed himself General of the Armies of France, proposing a plundering, thieving raid which, when ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortes, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful that he had a thousand friends among the mountains. Howbeit all these things appeared as nothing ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... makes lamb her curfew. In milking a cow and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment off her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new made ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... 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

... the evidence of GOD'S Works. Learn to abhor that spurious liberality which is liberal only with what is not its own; and which reminds one of nothing so much as the conduct of leprous persons who are said to be for ever seeking to communicate and extend their own unhappy taint to others. I allude to that sham liberality which under pretence of extending the common standing ground of Christian men, is in reality attenuating it until it proves incapable of bearing the weight of a single soul. There is room on the Rock for all; but it is only on the Rock that we ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... Union men, and vote as they fight, and hold little in common with the political leaders of the Democratic Party in or out of this Hall—the Seymours, the Woods, the Vallandighams, the Woodwards, and their indorsers, who hold and control the Democratic Party here, and taint it with Treason, till it is a stench in the nostrils of all ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... REAL BLESSING.—Where one parent is consumptive and the other vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in most cases, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... the uplifted hand, and glancing around at his little master, Burl, with a look of great surprise, exclaimed, "W'y, Bushie, taint nothin' but a Injun!" ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... Government never recovered from this monstrous robbery, and the Government created by the Revolution of 1688 could hardly expect to be more trusted with money than its predecessor. A Government created by a revolution hardly ever is. There is a taint of violence which capitalists dread instinctively, and there is always a rational apprehension that the Government which one revolution thought fit to set up another revolution may think fit to pull down. In 1694, the credit of William III.'s Government ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... fruit of Milton's early genius, is the epitome of the man at the age at which he wrote it. It bespeaks the scholar and idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs. The Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... admiralty law, the taint of contraband extends to all property on board belonging to the owners of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... though the land party kept healthy. Of this Jackson writes: "In the case of the crew of the Windward I fear that there was considerable carelessness in the use of tinned meats that were not free from taint, although tins quite gone were rejected.... We [on shore] largely used fresh bear's meat, and the crew of the Windward were also allowed as much as they could be induced to eat. They, however, preferred tinned ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... meant by "fah tee, fah tee;" to which his lordship replied—"Hout, he canna speak; he means fau too, fau too." Thus one Scotticism was held in terror by those who used a different Scotticism: as at Inverary, the wife of the chief writer of the place, seeking to secure her guest from the taint of inferior society, intimated to him, but somewhat confidentially, that Mrs. W. (the rival writer's wife) was quite a vulgar body, so much so as to ask any one leaving the room to "snib the door," instead of bidding them, as she ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... efficient corps of Chinese employees who had proven themselves such valuable servants. It is with some degree of trepidation that I follow a desire which impels me to describe a bunch of grapes I saw in this vineyard. I must beg my readers to free me from any taint of the spirit of the renowned Baron Munchausen, whose intensely magnifying vision threw its impress upon all objects, but, without the faintest degree of exaggeration, I can say, that while I am no Lilliputian in size, I stood, holding ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... "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 round the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... Yates was about to offer more. "'Taint worth it. Two and a half would be about the right figure. Don'no but that's too much. I'll think on it going home, and charge you what it's worth. I'll be ready to leave in about an hour, if that suits you. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... that you have nothing whatever to fear. Clemency is her mother's living and breathing image as far as looks go, and as far as I can judge in the innermost workings of her mind. I have not seen in her the slightest taint from her evil father, though God knows I have watched for it with horror as the years have passed. After she was born I smuggled her away by night, and gave out word that the child had died at the same time with the mother. There was a private funeral, and the casket was closed. I had hard work ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... northern stars and their influences to Shelley, Burke, and Mill, and to all manner of people dangerous to the back-veld views of Lacedaemon. He opened the way to Tolstoy's rediscovery of the Christian Law, amongst other northern treasures, didn't he? And I, with the Arcadian taint in my veins, saw the way open and went northwards. Now it has come to pass that I remember my own people as Moses did, and use the wisdom of Oxford as he used the wisdom of Egypt, to help one's own people towards a ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... empty cask, crept in under the deck, where I found the four women lying, each by herself, as far apart from the others as possible, all of them apparently dead. Yet although the place smelt close and stuffy enough, I could detect no trace of the taint which, in a hot climate, so quickly betrays the presence of death, and with renewed hope ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... the body out of the way of the tide. Months after, when Nature had done her part in the removal of all fleshy taint, we returned for the bones. The teeth are now scattered far and wide as trophies of the one and only crocodile ever acknowledged to ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... for his allotted share— Brahma, the ruler of the sky, Sthanu, Narayan, Lord most high, And holy Indra men might view With Maruts for his retinue; The heavenly chorister, and saint, And spirit pure from earthly taint, With one accord had sought the place The high-souled monarch's rite to grace, Then to the Gods who came to take Their proper share, the hermit spake:— "For you has Dasaratha slain The votive steed, a ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... taste predominates: Scandal and the card-table are preferred to the pleasures of a rural walk: Virtue and Modesty are seen with only half their energies, being overpowered by the noxiousness of novel-reading principles, and by the moral taint which infects those who engage in the varied rounds of a fashionable life. Hence a want of knowledge, a love of trifles, and a dissipated turn of mind, generally characterize those who are considered as having had ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... from the cottages is peculiarly offensive. It is not that they are dirty inside—the floor may be scrubbed, the walls brushed, the chairs clean, and the beds tidy; it is from outside that all the noisome exhalations taint the breeze. The refuse vegetables, the washings, the liquid and solid rubbish generally is cast out into the ditch, often open to the highway road, and there festers till the first storm sweeps it away. The cleanest woman indoors thinks nothing disgusting out of doors, and hardly goes a step ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... painter an unduly favorable estimate was taken during his life, and since his death his reputation has suffered an undue depreciation. Much that he did partook of the false and bad style which, from the deeper source of degraded morality, spread a taint over all matters of art and taste, under the vicious influence of the "first gentleman of Europe," whose own artistic preferences bore witness, quite as much as the more serious events of his life, how little he deserved the name. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... coiffure so strange and quaint, Features just lacking the prim of the saint, From the mischievous dimple that lurks below; High-heeled slippers and satin bow, Red lips mocking the heart's constraint, Free from passion, devoid of taint— This was her ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... Bill, even more slowly, "there's The Pilot; he's going for to ante up a month's pay; 'taint much, o' course—twenty-eight a month and grub himself. He might make it two," he added, thoughtfully. But Bill's proposal was scorned with contemptuous groans. "Twenty-eight a month and grub himself o' course ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... you or me. She, poor creature, offends herself, and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that make for such degradation. We are conniving with her to barter her birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than that of true love, and when we regard virtue as ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... 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

... needing for their removal hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to some commentators, the force of the word); that he may be "cleansed"—the technical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaring him clear of the taint. He also, with similar recurrence to the Mosaic symbols, prays that he may be "purged with hyssop." There is a pathetic appropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who had become defiled by contact with ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... answer to huh question is yais swing towards huh and ifn taint be still. (The bottle slowly swung toward me.) Now missy see hit have done answered yo question and yo done seed hit say yes. Yes'm hit sho am yes and yo' jes wait and see ifn ole Uncle Marion aint right. Now yo jes answer the same question fuh tother young missy heah. Now ifn the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... rank. He composed about forty-nine books in lyric and dramatic verse, besides epigrams and elegies. Of his many poems, the few that remain afford passages of much elegance and sweetness, and even of sublimity,—almost sufficient to atone for the taint of grossness he derived from the licentious imagination of his land and time. While yet hardly out of his infancy, he was laid at the feet of the monarch, and reared in the palace at Lophaburee. Some dramatic pieces composed by the lad for ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... commendations, and his apparent honesty, I raised him to my favor, and gave him a post, which he has but now most basely betrayed. Fool, that I was, to think he could have served with such a master, and not bring with him the taint of treachery!" ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... odour of death. The light was shadowed by the gloom of the grave. Again and again in troubled dreams she had recalled that dreadful scene in the church with Brian; and she had seen the worms crawling out through the mouldering timbers of the church-floor—she had smelt the sickening taint of corruption. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... he will own the censures passed on those poems to be just: nay more—every year will find him more and more sensible of the paramount importance of the union of female purity with female loveliness—more alive to the imperative duty, on a father's part, to guard the maiden bosom from the slightest taint of licentiousness. It is a fact not generally suspected, though his last work, "The Epicurean," affords strong internal evidence of the truth of the observation, that few are more thoroughly conversant with Scripture than himself. Many of Alethe's most beautiful remarks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... laughter, harsh and staccato, like a dog's bark, and, it may be, half-hysterical. And, piercing these snaps of laughter, one heard the curious, contradictory yapping of such sentences as: "I sye; 'ow about them 'ot sossiges?" "'Taint true, Bill, is it?" "Disgraceful business; perfectly disgraceful!" "Wot price the Kaiser? Not arf!" "Anything to sell the papers, you know!" "What? No. Jolly lot of rot!" "Johnny get yer gun, get yer gun!" "Some one must be punished for this. Might have caused ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... about the gate, two or three under the shadow of some house, two or three more inside the house—all stricken down with fever. The air of some villages is said to have been loaded with the effluvia to such an extent that one riding along the street perceptibly discerned the taint in the atmosphere. The fever was deadly too, but evidently not so deadly in proportion as the autumn dysentery. Frequently, when talking to a boy, we would hear he was an orphan, and, on inquiry, he told that his father had died in autumn; frequently, in talking to a woman, we would hear ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... Why should this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas Finn and Lady Laura Kennedy had not seen each other for two years, and when they had parted, though they ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... to me much in her praise that she did not exult in our taint and degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite idea that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness and slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable approach to whiteness in many of her own offspring. In a kindred spirit of charity, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... no more! my heart doth faint When I the life recall Of her who lived so free from taint, So virtuous deemed by all,— That in herself was so complete I think that she was ta'en By God to deck his paradise, And with his saints to reign, Whom while on earth each one did prize The fairest thing ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... 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: ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... of my own consciousness, and the spontaneous convictions of my own understanding? or how can I be assured that, in passing from the impersonal reason to the individual mind, from the generic reason to the personal, the truth may not contract some taint of weakness or impurity from the vessel in which it is ultimately contained,—from the finite faculties by which alone it is apprehended ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... The noble origin he gave each mortal wight may claim. Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line? If ye behold your being's source, and God's supreme design, None is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin And cherished vice he foully ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... down by rigid rules. Curiosity, amusement, natural tastes, may innocently direct reading and study to a certain extent. Even in these cases, however, we are bound to improve ourselves morally as well as intellectually, by seeking truth and rejecting falsehood, and by watching against the taint which inheres in almost all human productions. What avails intellectual without moral power? How little does it avail us to study the outward world, if its greatness inspire no reverence of its Author, if its beneficence awaken no kindred love towards our fellow-creatures! How little ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy for the night. She had to be alone, and the colored woman was an irrepressible magpie. Furiously she scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his touch. That he had dared! Her teeth chattered. She could barely save herself from screaming aloud. She bathed her face, dashed some toilet water over herself, and fell into a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... disgust is justly excited when we hear of laxity of morals in a clergyman. We naturally feel that one whose calling is to teach his fellow-men the way of truth, and right, and purity, should himself be free from taint of immorality. But when we consider how these ministers are fed, we cannot suppress a momentary disposition to excuse, in some degree, their fault. When the minister goes out to tea, he is served with the richest cake, the choicest jellies, the most ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... old age, you happy man, your fields Will still be yours, and ample for your need! Though, with bare stones o'erspread, the pastures all Be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young By no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt Through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock. Happy old man, who 'mid familiar streams And hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade! Here, as of old, your neighbour's bordering hedge, That feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees, Shall oft with ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... barren snow-land; on the other, the frozen sea. With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood- lust, thick and hot. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate climes where the warm sun steals away the energies of men. But in the Northland they have discovered ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... perpetuated. What! are you to be told, with one breath, that the transcendent glory of this day consists in the proclamation that all lawful government is founded on the inalienable rights of man, and, with the next breath, that you must not whisper this truth to the winds, lest they should taint the atmosphere with freedom, and kindle the flame of insurrection? Are you to bless the earth beneath your feet because she spurns the footsteps of a slave, and then to choke the utterance of your voice lest the sound of liberty should ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... life, and so with death, free will, necessity, design, and everything else. This, at least, is how philosophers must think concerning them in theory; in practice, however, not even John Stuart Mill himself could eliminate all taint of its opposite from any one of these things, any more than Lady Macbeth could clear her hand of blood; indeed, the more nearly we think we have succeeded the more certain are we to find ourselves ere long mocked and baffled; and this, I take it, is what our biologists began ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... from the rifle of one of these freedmen took effect in the thigh of Radcliff. These men seemed to love the negro so well that they were not willing to let even freedmen leave the State, if they have but the least taint of African blood in their veins; and now they stand as sentinels around the tottering bastile, lest some of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... have accomplished all but perfection, save for a few spots of red on the outer petals—like the persistent adhering taint of ancient sins.... But you have seen the Clovellys—they are the best we have found. They have made us deeper and wiser for their beauty. Like some saintly lives—they seem to have come all but the last of the ninety degrees ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... would rob thee of thy rights, And urge with specious tongue, That theft by Act of Parliament Can surely not be wrong. I'd have them leave thy sheltering wing, And nevermore to dare To stand within thy courts of praise, Or taint ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... strong was this weakness that she had been angry with herself for her lack of pride, or even of a decent self-respect. It was, she sometimes thought, the heritage of her mother's race, and she was ashamed of it as part of the taint of slavery. She had never acknowledged, even to her husband, from whom she concealed nothing else, her secret thoughts upon this lifelong sorrow. This silent grief was nature's penalty, or society's revenge, for whatever heritage of beauty or intellect or personal charm had come to her with her father's ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... better and more Catholic education; that, in fine, he, Dr. Dilman, if Paul consented, would take the younger, Eugene, with him into the city, where his education could be attended to, and where he, at least, might be saved from the influence of the barbarous mannerism and irreligious taint of these country "common schools." His reverence the doctor furthermore added, that Mr. Prying had no objection to the arrangement he proposed, and that he had conquered the repugnance that Mrs. Prying had to the separation of the brothers by the very flattering ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... nevertheless, in a state of colonization and civilization surpassing what might have been fairly expected. And the absence of convicts, though it renders labour scarce and expensive, brings with it counterbalancing advantages, and prevents the double danger of immediate taint to society from the unhappy criminals, and of future schism arising between the emancipated convicts, or their children, and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... and we note in them, with a sickening at heart, the father's or grandfather's tendency to secretiveness or deceit, or the mother's penchant for false excuses. We can scarcely bequeath a greater sorrow to our offspring than to curse them before their birth with this hereditary taint, which is, perhaps, one of the hardest of all evils to correct. It may take the form of exaggerated speech, of courteous or cowardly prevarication, or of downright falsehood, but, in whatever guise, it is a curse to the owner thereof as well as to his family. If you are so unfortunate as to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... came back very keenly. The old wound was already open and bleeding again. All the pride and hope and love of his life were centred now on his brilliant son. A few hours before he had learnt that his mother had transmitted to him the terrible, perhaps the fatal taint of inherited alcoholism; and now he had just proved beyond doubt that Vane's half-sister—for she was that in blood if not in law—was what she had just so frankly, so defiantly even, admitted herself ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... 'Taint we as wants no new-fangled tunes; them as we sings be aal owld ones as ha' been used in our church ever since I can mind. But you only choose thaay as you likes out o' the book? and we be ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... obserue their mood on whom he iests, The quality of persons, and the time: And like the Haggard, checke at euery Feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice, As full of labour as a Wise-mans Art: For folly that he wisely shewes, is fit; But wisemens folly falne, quite taint their wit. Enter ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... man of kind and generous nature would, under such a system, willingly bear arms? Who, that was compelled to bear arms, would long continue kind and generous? And is it not certain that, if barbarity towards the helpless became the characteristic of military men, the taint must rapidly spread to civil and to domestic life, and must show itself in all the dealings of the strong with the weak, of husbands with wives, of employers with work men, of creditors ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... dishonest, second-rate officials, whose one idea was how to get rich and get home. The inspectors who were sent out either failed in their duty and joined the official gang of thieves, or else resigned in disgust. Worse still, because this taint was at the very source, the royal government in France was already beset with that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis XIV and the meteoric ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... to the Saviour's fold; That were an action worthy of a saint; But not in malice let the crime be told, Nor publish to the world the evil taint. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... soul to better conditions. A supernaturally favoured kingdom is to be established for posterity upon earth, or for all the faithful in heaven, or the soul is to be freed by repeated purgations from all taint and sorrow, or it is to be lost in the absolute, or it is to become an influence and an object of adoration in the places it once haunted or wherever the activities it once loved may be carried on by future generations of its kindred. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... and gave the order with a slight touch of imperiousness which was one of the few attributes that stamped him as a Spaniard. The feudal taint was still running in ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... great sinners. But the disease is the same—in breaking one commandment, the whole law is violated; and, however in some the moral leprosy does not make such fearful ravages as in others, the slightest taint conveys moral, spiritual, and eternal death. ALL, whether young or old, great or small, must be saved by grace, or fall into perdition. The difference between the taint of sin, and its awfully developed leprosy, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... much pulled about in public prints, and have been often discussed from many different, and not always from very high, points of view, there is ever a tendency that the decision of the parties may contract some taint of meanness from the spirit of their critics. All that is desired is to press upon you, as ministers of the Church of Scotland, some sense of the high expectation with which your country looks to you at this time; and how many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from sea to sea, Bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow that needs must be, Needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory to lawn ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... a sacerdotal character which is at once unctuous and solemn, this stone, too, is abused on the blood-red ears and veined hands of butchers' wives who love to adorn themselves inexpensively with real and heavy jewels. Only the sapphire, among all these stones, has kept its fires undefiled by any taint of commercialism. Its sparks, crackling in its limpid, cold depths have in some way protected its shy and proud nobility from pollution. Unfortunately, its fresh fire does not sparkle in artificial light: the blue retreats and seems to fall asleep, only awakening ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... done in Nicholson's estimation when he took over the leadership of the Movable Column was to purge it thoroughly of any taint of disaffection. Two native regiments were suspected, and he resolved on disarming these at once. On the morning of the 25th of June, while the column was halting on the high road leading to Delhi, the British regiments, with the guns, were manoeuvred into ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley

... as they, a cloak of religion to cover all abroad, while all naked and shameful at home.' p. 536. 'He looked for a house full of virtue, and behold nothing but spider-webs; fair and plausible abroad, but like the sow in the mire at home.' The immoral taint infected the young. '0! it is horrible to behold how irreverently, how easily, and malapertly, children, yea, professing children, at this day, carry it to their parents; snapping and checking, curbing and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... to surge, a demon Form, That 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 ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... to be, that something else ought to be in its stead. Determinism, in denying that anything else can be in its stead, virtually defines the universe {162} as a place in which what ought to be is impossible,—in other words, as an organism whose constitution is afflicted with an incurable taint, an irremediable flaw. The pessimism of a Schopenhauer says no more than this,—that the murder is a symptom; and that it is a vicious symptom because it belongs to a vicious whole, which can express its nature no otherwise than by bringing forth just such a symptom as that at this ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... course, is recognized in the law. On the contrary, the groom is supposed to belong to the same village, and special rites are enjoined 'if he be from another village.' But again, in the early rule there is no trace of that taint of family which the totem-scholars of to-day cite so loosely from Hindu law. The girl is not precluded because she belongs to the same family within certain degrees. The only restriction in the House-rituals is that she shall have had "on ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... if we are wise we will immediately desist from eating any more of it. It is here that the impartial tribunal of nature pronounces definitely against roast goose, mince pies, pate de foie gras, sally lunn, muffins and crumpets, and creamy puddings. It is here, too, that the slightest taint in meat, milk, or butter is immediately detected; that rancid pastry from the pastrycook's is ruthlessly exposed; and that the wiles of the fishmonger are set at naught by the judicious palate. It is the special duty, in fact, of this last examiner to discover, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... and he had led him to believe that he was in little danger of injury, much less death. Kapolski, reckless, a despiser of all things American, eagerly consented to the plan, and Ugo saw a way to rid himself of a dangerous rival without the taint of suspicion besmirching his cloak. Sallaconi was an accomplished swordsman, but it would have been unwise to send him against Quentin. Ugo himself was a splendid shot and an expert with the blade, and ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... woman here with the new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... therefore, by whom God had first made the world, entered into the womb of the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of a new organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creative energy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when it passed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thus wonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost power of mankind. He came ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... "I've got my garden into pretty good heart at last, and if so be as there warn't quite so many sparrs and greybirds and roberts and one thing and t'other, I dunno but what I might get a tidy lot of sass. But there! 'taint no use what ye do as long as there's ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... and sin. True she had been cruelly disappointed, and through long years compelled to struggle on in all the bitter loneliness of feelings unreplied to, bound by indissoluble chains to one who had no tastes or sympathies in common with her. Death had freed her now, but, ah! too late. The taint of sin was on her soul. She had forgot her vows at the altar, debased herself and wronged her husband by listening to words of passion from another. O, far less bitter would have been her grief, as she stood weeping over his ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... was to have been expected, camp fevers, choleras, and other corrupt and infectious maladies, broke out with great violence as the army advanced along the northern shores of the AEgean Sea; and as every victim to these dreadful and hopeless disorders helped, by his own dissolution, to taint the air for all the rest, the wretched crowd was, in the end, reduced to the last extreme of ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... strengthless, his eyes fixed on the corner—at the same moment something dark and shapeless seemed to slip past the group, and there came to the nostrils of Father Thomas a strange sharp smell, as of the sea, only that there was a taint within it, like the ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... from the same pulpit he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the chapel from which to praise the Lord. So you see that there are some sheep who have a taint of goat hair in their wool still left—I won't say with you—out in the world. And speaking of that world, have you come back ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... and stretched himself out in his chair, when he heard the waggon drive away a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of a somewhat grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the surface, a taint of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had first come out the change in her had been a shock to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since then, however, her coldness and half-perceived disdain had angered him, and the interview which was ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... 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 rages most fiercely and most venomously when it has lurked in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... victims members of that great class of degenerates who are unfit to procreate healthy normal offspring. Many of these conditions are partly congenital and partly acquired, but in the majority of defectives a transmitted taint is present. ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... and had driven him to these savage shores, where, shut out from all companionship with his kind, he did a lonely penance? If so, I preferred to remain in ignorance, for his was a friendship so dear, so pure, I desired not to taint it with ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... change his duty, or ours. He is helping us to struggle for that which is our own; but he would mar his generosity if he put a taint on that which he is endeavouring ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... obtained an imperial decree that all Hebrew books, except the Scriptures, should be destroyed. Reuchlin sprang forth to defend his beloved Cabala, and maintained that only those volumes ought to be burned which were proved to have a taint of magic or blasphemy. He was cited to answer for his heresy before the Grand Inquisitor at Cologne; and the world, at first indifferent, soon saw that the cause of the New Learning was at stake. In the summer of 1514 there was a notable gathering of Reformers at Frankfort Fair. We have nothing ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... memorable people; and we want only a proper application of the qualities which are frequent among us, to be as worthy as they. There is hardly a man to be found who will not fight upon any occasion, which he thinks may taint his own honor. Were this motive as strong in everything that regards the public, as it is in this our private case, no man would pass his life away without having distinguished himself by some gallant instance ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... the aims that, newly returned to England, he confides to the sister who had ever prophesied great things of "her boy"; and in the end he made good the works spoken so boldly, yet surely in no mere spirit of boasting. He "left his mark somewhere, clear and distinct," without taint of the insincerities which he had an almost morbid dread of discovering in any ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... would hold it. However, most are of opinion that all this is a mere made-up story, no slight evidence of which is, that during the dissensions among the commanders, which lasted several days, the body continued clear and fresh, without any sign of such taint or corruption, though it lay neglected in a ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... 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, hard, devoid of fat, and well cut up under the chops. Her nostrils were full, very ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting. Augustus could have Horace and Ovid; he could never have had Homer ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper.[6] He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the court ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... Nature, it was the fault committed by the first ancestors of humanity in the exercise of their moral freedom which condemned their descendants to punishment, and by bequeathing to them an original taint predisposed them to sin. But this predisposition to sin does not condemn man fatally to its committal; he may escape from it by the exercise of his free will; and in the same way he may by personal effort raise himself gradually out of the state of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied, acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... civilization except what they have acquired in this condition of abject slavery; separated, too, from the dominant class, not only by this stigma of slavery, but by complexion and features so marked and peculiar, that a small taint of the blood of the servile class can be detected with unerring certainty. If history decides anything, it is that a system of political equality cannot be formed out of such elements. The experience of the world is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... heard by the ears of educated people nor uttered by their lips: it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman's eyes: it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England or America, could profess honest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... face touched mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very different from the insensibility which I had accused[295] her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But apparently she got tired of it[295] and let go my wig. "'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... concentrated anywhere, too much diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To all this dismal prospect there was slight hope of improvement, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... newspaper or book. They tell me that in 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 ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... be too late to scold arterward. Wot I sez is, do you' scoldin' an' yo' whippin' 'fo' dere's any cause fer it—'taint no good to do it arterward; 'twon't ondo nuffin' wot's done," said Henny; but her wisdom was lost on the party, who had already started on their way, aunt and niece riding double, and Dan walking ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... conscience and govern the will. He starts with our articles of faith and follows them out to the end; he endorses our acts, he recites our creed, he observes our discipline, he is a believing and practicing Jacobin, an orthodox Jacobin, unsullied, and without taint of heresy or schism. Never does he swerve to the left toward exaggeration, nor to the right toward toleration; without haste or delay he travels along the narrow, steep and straight path which we have marked out for him; this is the pathway of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... onnateral screech, that the chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now you all know you can't larn seamanship to a parson or passenger—and the bloody fool knelt down with his face to wind'ard. 'Hillo!' says the skipper, 'you'd better fill away, and come round afore the wind, hadn't you?' 'Mynheer ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... contemplated as both positive sin and negative falling short of the 'glory' (which here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God). 'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all. 'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... its boundary the existence of slavery as a legal right. The ermine is said to die if a single stain fall on its spotless skin, and one would suppose that the giant republic of the new world would be equally susceptible throughout her mighty frame of the taint of slavery; but, perhaps, there is a fine moral in the fact, to shew us that the works of man, even in his most elevated inspirations, must of necessity be imperfect. The wisdom and power of the Godhead alone can ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... get intoxicated. empaar dim, tarnish. empapar soak, steep. empedernido, -a hard-hearted. empearse persist, insist. empeo m. determination, desire. empero adv. however, notwithstanding. empezar begin. empleo m. employment, use. emponzoar poison, taint. empuje m. impulse. empuar grasp, grip. en prep. in, into, at, for, among, on, upon, with, of, to, against, by, over, like; —— que when. enamorado, -a enamored, loving, in love. enamorar inspire love, woo; —se de fall in love with. encadenar ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... owes a measure of confidence to his child's lover, and there are some warnings that it is cruel to withhold, notably where there is any taint of insanity in the family. In the case of a fatherless girl the suitor must address himself to her mother, nearest ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... them!" muttered Rosemary McClean, wiping the blown dust from her eyes and facing the wind again that now began to carry with it the unspread taint—the awful, sickening, soul-revolting smell inseparable from Hindoo funeral rites. There were three pyres, low-smouldering, close by the river-bank, and men stirred with long poles among the ashes to make sure that the incineration started the evening before should ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... Why, he loves dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good riding face, and he can sit a great horse; he will taint a staff well at tile; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that's all I know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty bark, as the ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... in the blue coif whose face has a light as of the sun,—to her who had dreamed her way into vague perceptions of her own sex's maidenhood and maternity by help of those great pictures which had been before her sight from infancy, there was some taint, some artifice, some want, some harshness in these jewelled women; she could not have reasoned about it, but she felt it, as she felt that the grand dahlias missed a flower's ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... telling an agricultural labourer of the queer farming he had seen abroad; and he had stood godfather—by proxy—to half the yellow-headed urchins within ten miles' radius of Jocelyn's Bock. No taint of vice or dissipation had ever sullied the brightness of his pleasant life. No wretched country girl had ever cursed his name before she cast herself into the sullen waters of a lonely mill-stream. People loved him; and he deserved their love, and was worthy of their respect. He had taken ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... character is about on a par with Whittle Harvey's moral character; his insolence and swaggering, bullying tone in the House of Lords have excited as much disgust out of the House as they have given offence in it, and the only excuse for him is—what many people believe—that there is a taint of madness about him. The other night, in his reply to the Duke of Wellington's violent and foolish speech, he chose to turn upon Lord Rolle, a very old man and a choleric, hard-bitten old Tory. Rolle was greatly exasperated, and after ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... brown—almost dusty in its dryness. I have observed but little difference made between the negro and the half-caste—and no difference in the actual treatment. I have never met in American society any man or woman in whose veins there can have been presumed to be any taint of African blood. In Jamaica they are daily to ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... that 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, numbering in the aggregate two dozen wattled huts, had taken counsel ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... the difference between the theologian and the naturalist is not fundamental, and evolution may be as profoundly and as particularly theistic as it is increasingly probable. The taint of atheism which, in Dr. Hodge's view, leavens the whole lump, is not inherent in the original grain of Darwinism—in the principles posited—but has somehow been introduced in the subsequent treatment. Possibly, when found, it may be eliminated. Perhaps there is mutual misapprehension ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... on with our story. There were times—once or twice to-night, for instance—when she ceased doing even her unconscious work. Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty, pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking out, her forehead leaning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the court. Bona-fide press 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... to the good with me, old hoss," snapped the pleased Perk. "'Taint often we get half the praise that's comin' to us—not that I care a whiff 'bout that, though—satisfied to do my duty by Unc' Sam, an' let them high-ups have the main credit. But I guess we'll get some kick out o' the game just the same an' that's worth ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... her virginal beauty As pure as a pictured saint, How should this sinning and sorrow Have for her danger or taint? ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... 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 ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... not hence my bark, Through wintry winds and billows dark; I come with humble heart to share Thy morn and evening-prayer; Nor mine the feet, oh! holy Saint, The brightness of thy sod to taint." ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... battle-field, an infernal machine in the street, an illness at home, may carry off the guarantor and the guarantees.[3190] On the other hand, confiscated goods preserve their original taint. Rarely is the purchaser regarded favorably in his commune; the bargain he has made excites envy; he is not alone in his enjoyment of it, but the rest suffer from it. Formerly, this or that field of which he reaps the produce, this or that domain of which he enjoys the rental, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and implied that the poor sinner who bore them could do something towards his own salvation by his own works; but that moral sackcloth, and those ashes of the heart and mind, which she was ever prescribing to Linda, seemed to her to have none of this taint. And yet, in what is the difference? The school of religion to which Madame Staubach belonged was very like that early school of the Church of Rome in which material ashes were first used for the personal annoyance of the sinner. But the Church of Rome in Madame ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... part of his conversation, to make the most noise when he was violently agitated, as do the dead leaves of a long-withered but still firmly attached bough. Thus he was regarded in Chicago as an American of the old type; but being human, his strength had not been strong enough to resist the taint in the atmosphere he had breathed ever since he began to be very rich and to keep the company of the pretentious. His originally sound constitution had been gradually undermined, just as "doing like ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... father of Jesus; for his whole narrative of our Lord's infancy assumes that He was born of a virgin mother. The truth that our Lord was born miraculously is asserted by St. Luke as well as by St. Matthew. It is assumed by St. Paul, when he argues that the second Adam was free from the taint of sin which affected the rest of the first Adam's descendants. It {44} was also cherished from the earliest times in every part of the Christian world where the teaching of the apostles was retained, and was only denied by a few heretics who had ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... something—a suspicion of coarseness, a possibility of weakness—which in the eyes of some, and of his sister among them, marred the grace and beauty of his features. Yet, as he was wont himself to say, when one thinks that each poor mortal is heir to a legacy of every evil trait or bodily taint of so vast a line of ancestors, lucky indeed is the man who does not find that Nature has scored up some long-owing family ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... desert Caves, With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown, And all their echoes mourn. The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green, Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes. As killing as the Canker to the Rose, Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze, Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear, When first the White thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear. Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas? For neither ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... creation whose meek wraith we know. The more that he, turned man of mere traditions, Now profits naught. For the large potencies Instilled into his idiosyncrasy— To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room— Are taking taint, and sink to common plots For ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... Church, fretted and disgraced by angers of controversy, or weakened and distracted by irreconcilable heresy. On the contrary, the scriptural teaching, through their art, of such men as Orcagna, Giotto, Angelico, Luca della Robbia, and Luini, is, literally, free from all earthly taint of momentary passion; its patience, meekness, and quietness are incapable of error through either fear or anger; they are able, without offence, to say all that they wish; they are bound by tradition into a brotherhood which represents unperverted doctrines by unchanging scenes; and they ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from every officer of ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... sudden, almost terrified, flash of fancy, knew to be lying, an almost insupportable blot upon all that was fair and seemly, in the stained and mouldered coffin. Yet there was a place for that difficult horror too in the scheme of things, though the thought seemed almost to taint the sweet ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... fire be no longer necessary, but the fish so cooked,—or even thoroughly dried in the blaze and smoke,—would be likely to keep better. In fact, fish thus preserved,—as is often done with herrings, ling, codfish, mackerel, and haddock,—will remain good for months without suffering the slightest taint of decomposition. It was an excellent idea; and, Ben having communicated it to the others, it was at once determined that it should ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State. In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according ...
— The Federalist Papers

... thereto, for he was a golden talker, and he sat in the midst of hero-worship devoid of all taint of self-interest. The boys asked him of the birth of his book, and whether it was hard to write, and how his notions came to him; and he answered with the same absolute simplicity as he was questioned. His big eyes twinkled, he dug ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... first among those that should be encouraged is music, because it is always ennobling, and can be enjoyed simultaneously by the greatest number. Its effect is well described in Margaret Fuller's private journal: "I felt raised above all care, all pain, all fear, and every taint of vulgarity was washed out of the world." I think this is an extremely happy expression. Female writers sometimes have a knack of getting at the heart of a problem by instinct, more easily than men with their superior ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... eyes of the world, as the daughter of Norman Westfall, to protect her from any consequences incident to his possible discovery and enforced return to Houdania, it is impossible to say. Hating royalty as he did, he may have sought thus to shield his daughter from its taint. Why he weakened and consigned the secret to paper—how or when he hid it in an ancient candlestick in the home of Norman Westfall, remains shrouded in utter mystery. It is but one of the many ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... 1824. Also, House Reports, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, ii: 170.] and how Elkins, for some years himself a Delegate in Congress from New Mexico, succeeded in having the grant finally validated on technical grounds, and "judicially cleared" of all taint of fraud, by an astounding decision of the Supreme Court of the United States—a decision contrary to the facts as specifically shown by successive Government officials—all of these details are set forth fully in another part of this work. [Footnote: See "The Elkins ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... is," said he after reflection, "that the assiduous practice of religion generally results in some intense effects on the soul. Only they may be of two kinds. Either it develops the soul's taint and evolves in it the final ferments which putrefy it once for all, or it purifies the spirit and makes it clean and clear and exquisite. It may produce hypocrites or good and saintly people; there ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... through, somehow, when you saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... a new phase in her life. She had something to love and respect which had no taint of this present world and the worldliness reigning therein. She had entered humbly and heartily into the simple life at the curate's home, where she had been so ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... barked vehemently, as if the very air bore some ominous taint; but La Corriveau knew she was safe: they were shut up in the courtyard, and could not trace her to the tower. A harsh voice or two and the sound of whips presently silenced the barking dogs, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby



Words linked to "Taint" :   disinfect, contaminate, contamination, smut, deflower, foul, vitiate, sully, dust contamination, impurity, cloud



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