"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found expression in actions more eloquent than words. She was thankful for the slightest evidence of kindness from her self-constituted protectors. She even exaggerated the amount of consideration which she received. She was not free from the hereditary taint of pride; but in her it took a new form and unprecedented expression. The sense of indebtedness spurred her on to discover ways by which she could avoid being a burden upon the generosity of her benefactors,—ways by which her obligations might be lightened, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... "Hush! 'Taint no use to fight with Jim. He'd get the best of you sure, and besides, then he would be your enemy. Just make a joke of it, and I'll tell you more later," and Ben prepared to start as soon as the boys, who were climbing into the motor boat, ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... natural attraction. But, if I acted for the sake of another, I acted for you also. Would it have been better or worse for you to have been friends with us if my suspicions of your mother's conduct had proved true? But believe me, Miss Dexter, I never for one moment could have thought of you with any taint of suspicion. It is horrible to me to ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... 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 ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... and unphilosophical taint, which marked the earliest heavenward cries of terrified man, has clung to the petitions which he offers up at this hour for material favours and blessings. At the close of a prolonged drought, the Archbishops ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the memory of your brothers, whose names are written on the roll of martyrs to their Faith and country. Ah, Pascal, how I loved you! And your son? An English Deschamps you say! A son born to perpetuate his father's degradation! No, Pascal, I shall save my honor! Your traitor blood shall never taint posterity. You may live your life of misery, but you ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... with wonder, perhaps with anguish, with anger or despair. Yes, as a threatened man may look fearfully at his own face in the glass, formulating to himself reassuring excuses for his appearance marked by the taint of some ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... high degree that talent for discovering or inventing slights which is pride of race run crooked, and reveals the taint of mixed blood in a man's veins. As District Superintendent of Police he had relieved his predecessor in the middle of the hot weather. His sister being at Mussoorie, he had arrived alone; and, in accordance with the friendly spirit of the Frontier, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... life. Muretus, who brought with him to Italy from France a ruined moral reputation with a fervid zeal for literature, who sold his soul to praise the Massacre of S. Bartholomew and purge by fulsome panegyrics of great public crimes the taint of heresy that clung around him, found his efforts to extend the course of studies in Rome thwarted.[138] He was forbidden to lecture on Plato, forbidden to touch jurisprudence, forbidden to consult a copy of Eunapius in the Vatican Library. It cost him days ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... pirouetting of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those odious tunes, which ram themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing to the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... shall later demonstrate—shall be pilloried to far-distant ages in the character of Sir John Falstaff. Though Shakespeare had acquired a legal badge of gentility with his coat of arms in 1599, the histrionic taint—according to Davies—proved a bar to ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... and replaced by artificial ones. When this cannot be done, or is inconvenient, the evil may be greatly lessened by the frequent use of an antiseptic tooth powder, areca nut charcoal or camphorated chalk. Dirty teeth, even when quite sound, always more or less taint the breath. When a foul or a diseased stomach is the cause, mild aperients should be administered; and if these do not succeed, an emetic may be given, scrupulous cleanliness of the teeth being observed, as in the former case. When worms are the cause, worm medicine, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... treatment of so horrible a subject. Those fair ladies riding on horseback with so brave a show of cavaliers, even they too must come at last to be just dust, is it, or like that swollen body, which seems to taint even the summer sunshine, lying there by the wayside, and come upon so unexpectedly? What love-song was that troubadour, fluttering with ribbons, singing to that little company under the orange-trees, cavaliers and ladies ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... past, no fear of the future. The delicious present monopolised his existence. The ties of duty, the claims of domestic affection, the worldly considerations that by a cruel dispensation had seemed, as it were, to taint even his innocent and careless boyhood, even the urgent appeals of his critical and perilous situation; all, all were forgotten in one intense delirium ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... his sword beneath the Cambridge elm he stood forth as the first American, the best type of man that the New World could produce, with no provincial taint upon him, and no shadow of the colonial past clouding his path. It was this great quality that gave the struggle which he led a character it would never have attained without a leader so constituted. Had he been merely a colonial Englishman, had he not risen at once to the conception of ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... corresponds with the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus which also provides for the cleansing of that part of our nature that clings to the things of life which in themselves are not sinful but are God-given blessings. Our unsanctified affections must also become purified from every taint of depravity. That this may be accomplished, it becomes necessary that the heart yield up to the death every cherished object, even though it be a God-given blessing; it must be yielded up and laid upon the altar as a "burnt offering." The affections cannot be purified until the object of ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... mistake. Your friendship came to me, not too late to save me from a premature misanthropy, but too late to eradicate every morbidity of mind. Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. To be unamiable is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if I have but a few objects to love. You ask me my inducement to leave you. 'The World' will be sufficient answer. I cannot share your contempt of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... national government for a quarter of a century, and there seemed no reason to doubt that Blaine, its candidate in the campaign of 1884, would at last realize his consuming ambition to be elected President. He had an immense personal prestige, he had outlived the taint of corruption attached to him during the administration of Grant, and he had for years been preparing and strengthening himself for this contest. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... said and done things that would have offended you. Now he has left you a purged and stainless memory—one, I think, which must come very near to the reality. The man who went up there—for an idea, a fantastic point of honor—sloughed off every taint of the baseness that hampers most of us in doing it. It was a man changed and uplifted above all petty things by a high chivalrous purpose, who ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... poisoned at these schools, our trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No factory will be settled in France, that will not become a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of young men of that description will receive a taint in their religion, their morals, and their politics, which they will in a short time communicate to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be putting his hand round your neck and kissing of you when you're good, and pick a white hair off your coat if he do but see one when you're going out, and shine upon you in-doors more than the sun does on you out-of-doors; and 'taint to be supposed as Mr. Walter will never meet me on the stairs without breaking out into a smile to cheer an old fellow's heart, and showing L2000 worth of ivory all at one time; and if I've a cold or a bit of a headache he won't send his lady's maid to see after me and tell me what I am ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... who was never in a brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which I longest resided, and with this intention I sent ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... a saint, Was much imbued with vulgar earthly taint; E'er he renounced the honors of a Knight And doffed his coat of mail and helmet bright, For sober cassock and monastic hood, Leaving the castle for the cloister rude, And changed the banquet's sumptuous repast For frugal crusts and the ascetic fast; ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... vessel 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... free growth the elm and plane Fling their huge arms across my way, Gray, old, and cumbered with a train Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray! Free stray the lucid streams, and find No taint in these fresh lawns and shades; Free spring the flowers that scent the wind Where never scythe ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... I fear'd the breath of foolish praise, Might taint the lily which so humbly grew; That flattery's sun might shoot delusive rays, Impede her progress, and ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... mister—for I s'pose we must call a gentleman 'mister' who speaks so fine an' looks so fine, tho' he be's an Injun—it's mighty easy to settle who hut the bird. That thing's a fifty or tharabouts; Killbar's a ninety. 'Taint hard to tell which has plugged the varmint. We'll soon see;" and, so saying, the hunter stepped off towards the tree on which hung the gruya, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... satire, subsequently to Horace, is represented by Persius and Juvenal. Persius (34-62 A.D.) early attached himself to the Stoic philosophy. He was pure in mind, and free from the corrupt taint of an immoral age. Although Lucilius was, to a certain extent, his model, he does not attack vice with the biting severity of the old satirist, nor do we find in his writings the enthusiastic indignation which burns in the verses of Juvenal. His purity of mind and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... friend, Captain Nat, who is talking now. It is the father who is speaking. Think for a moment. Who has borne the weight of this, you or I? You had a wayward son whom the people here think you drove out of your home for gambling on Sunday. No other taint attaches to him or to you. Dozens of other sons and fathers have done the same. He returns a reformed man and lives out his life in the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... trader, a good bourgeois. At the same time certain circumstances being given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface, he had all the requisites for a blackguard. He was a shopkeeper in whom there was some taint of the monster. Satan must have occasionally crouched down in some corner of the hovel in which Thenardier dwelt, and have fallen a-dreaming in the presence of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... accord alike with his early career and with his later opportunities for development. In trying to explain this, it is easier to say what was not the underlying quality than what it was. Certainly there was no taint whatsoever of that vulgar self-confidence which is so apt to lead the "free and equal" citizens of the great republic into grotesque positions. Perhaps it was a grand simplicity of faith; a profound instinctive confidence that ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... white, an—it's beginnin' to git dark! Why don't Moran come? I'd ruther have him, than them—an' now there's another one of 'em—to raise out of the ashes of a fire! I'd ort to camp, but if I keep a pluggin' along mebbe I kin git to the Injun village. 'Taint fur, now—acrost this flat an' then dip down onto the river—What's that!" The man halted abruptly and stared. "It's one of 'em now!" he faltered, with tongue and lips that felt stiff. "An' it's covered with fine white ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... "Jest yet 'taint easy to tell. Thar's somethin' on foot among 'em—some darned Injun trick. Clar as I kin see, that big chief wi' the red cross on his ribs, air him they call the Horned Lizard; an' ef it be, thar ain't a cunniner coon on all this contynent. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... mam I sho was. Jes put up on a platform and auctioned off. Sold right here in Des Arc. Nom taint right. My old mistress [Mrs. Snibley] whoop me till I run off and they took me back when they found out where I lef from. I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... is seen in the moral purity of the Christian Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level. And so in what is written, the exact grade of the author will surely appear. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... system of transportation to the American colonies. The felons were, however, too limited in numbers to make any serious inroad upon the morals or tranquillity of the settlers. Many of the convicts were men sentenced for political crimes, but free from any social taint; the laboring population, therefore, did not regard them with contempt, nor shrink from their society. It may be held, therefore, that this partial and peculiar system of transportation introduced no distinct element into the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... went to the Wild West show instead. Sir, I know it was childish, but—I couldn't help it! I saw the posters; I thought of the horse-breaking, the guns, the swing and snap and dash of galloping men, the taint of sweating horses—and by God, sir, I couldn't stay away! Are ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... creeping up. Her lips were wet; the hair on her neck stood up. Behind her came others. I gave the low growl of a lion— the cry he makes when he is angry at being disturbed. She threw up her head and sniffed the air. Then she growled in her throat, for there was no taint of lion in the air, but the taint of man! Her white eyes found me out where I sat in a low tree, and there was death in them. So I gathered the air in my lungs and shouted. A man's shout is as much dreaded as the lion's roar. The dogs jumped up, but the old mother called to them, and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... "'Taint exactly what I ought to have," Banule responded cheerfully. "I forgot to specify when I ordered, but I guess I can make it ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... fond o' my hoein', and ploughin', and drill, And my hosses all knows me and works with a will; I'm fond o' my 'chinin', and thackin' and drainin', For when work's to be done, 'taint no use a complainin.' ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... one place she says: "I thank God that my Eugene is tending a drug-store in Brooklyn instead of being surrounded by the divers temptations of this modern Babylon; for, circumspect and pure though he may be by nature, hardly could he be environed by all this wretchedness without receiving some taint therein." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... lily-white, This taint of roseate red, This Cynthia's silver light, This sweet fair Dea spread, These sunbeams in mine eye, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... Southampton Green. There is no evidence that Richard had conspired for any purpose; the whole affair was apparently a mere pretext to be rid of him. In character, Richard seems to have been noble and honourable, with a slight taint of his father's indecision: there is no portrait of him known. The traces of Lollardism are very slight, but I think they may be fairly considered "proven;" and if this be the case, it fully accounts for the acrimony with which he was hunted to death. His age when he died was about ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... my late-espoused Saint Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save; And such, as yet once more, I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... one taint from which society has the right and the duty of freeing itself, so far as in its power lies. This is the taint of feeble-mindedness. Of all the calamities that can befall a human being, feeble-mindedness is, perhaps, the worst. From most misfortunes it is possible to recover; with most ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... trees are in a bearing state, they are subject to a disease called tache. This is a black taint, or stain, which attacks the trees, encircling them below, and kills them. The mode of preservation is to make, in the beginning, a slight notch that shall pierce the bark. But if the taint is extensive, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... filled the judicial office, must find an echo in every bosom. The principle which dictated them does not require the aid of argument or elucidation; it is native to the conscience, and will be apparent to all who consult the monitor in their own breast. The wrong is aggravated when the taint of personal interest mingles with it, as when committed by a party to the cause, but appears in the worst form when it is the act of attorneys or counsel, who are the sworn officers of the court, whose duty it is to act as guardians of the fountains of justice, and who are false to ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... 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 everybody else"—that is, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a Thurlow Weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... you? I want to know if it's worth savin'. I've burnt up two or three receipts in my life, and had de bills to pay over; and I'se got rale careful, you know. 'Taint pleasant to pay money twice ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... full one thousand pounds he had come back to Burslem and started business on his own account. He had read and studied and worked, and he had evolved. He was an educated man; that is to say, he was a competent and useful man. He determined to free Burslem from the taint that had fallen upon it. "Burslem?" he once wrote to Sarah, "Burslem? the name shall yet be a symbol of all that is beautiful, honest and true; we shall see! I am a potter—yes, but I'll be the best one that England has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... waters at the rising sun, Kennedy folds his brawny arms across his bare, sun-tanned chest and mutters to himself, in his almost forgotten mother-tongue: "Twenty years, twenty years ago! Who would know me there now? Even if I placarded my name on my back and what I did, 'taint likely I'd have to face a grand jury for running a knife into a mongrel Portuguee, way out in the South Seas a score of years ago.... Poor little Talamalu! I paid a big price for her—twenty years of wandering from Wallis Island to the Bonins; and wherever I go that infernal ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... records he declared saturated with fable and absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical superstition at its worst, and the Church was the arch-curse and infamy. Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... he could once turn so many fine periods. He even expressed some anxiety lest doubts should begin to be entertained as to the perfect clemency of the King's character. "Here is so much confiscation and bloodshed going on," said he, "that some taint of cruelty or avarice may chance to bespatter the robe of his Majesty." He also confessed that he had occasionally read in history of greater benignity than was now exercised against the poor Netherlanders. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fire-worshippers, have sadly degenerated from that pure faith held by their forefathers, and for which they became fugitives and exiles. What persecution failed to accomplish, kindness has effected, and their religion has been corrupted by the taint of Hinduism, in consequence of their long and friendly intercourse with the people, who permitted them to dwell in their land, and to take their daughters in marriage. Incense was burning on a tripod placed upon the floor, and the priests muttering prayers, which sounded ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... that Caesar had been fascinated by the charms of Cleopatra, and allowed his politics to be influenced by a love affair. Roman fashionable society hated Caesar, and any carrion was welcome to them which would taint his reputation. Cleopatra herself favored the story, and afterward produced a child, whom she named Caesarion. Oppius, Caesar's most intimate friend, proved that the child could not have been his—of course, therefore, that the intrigue was a fable; and the boy was afterward put to death by Augustus ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... image of Italian revolutionary society: we know what vices fester and passions rage in war-time, and Italy was then almost constantly involved in war. Intellectually, men are active, but the great poems are not written in war-time, nor the highest effects of civilization produced. There is a taint of insanity and of instability in everything, a mark of feverishness and haste and transition. The revolution gave Italy a chance for new life, but this was the most the revolution could do. It was a ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... superiority in the use of their own weapon. A truer instinct warned our author that any such scene must immediately tend to a lowering of character. He refused, and from his pen is sent forth a Man whose conduct and speech are unassailably above earthly taint, who is, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... said he, "'taint much use o' tryin', I guess. I know that critter. You might as well try to squeeze ile out of Bunker Hill Monument as to c'lect a debt out of him. But any how, Squire, what'll you give, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Her first impression was thankfulness that her lot had been cast in such a spot. But it was largely because of the surroundings, essentially primitive, the clean air, guiltless of smoke taint, the aromatic odors from the forest that ranged for unending miles on every hand. For the first time in her life, she was beyond hearing of the clang of street cars, the roar of traffic, the dirt and smells of a city. It seemed good. She had no regrets, no longing ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in a dead taint; so Whitson dragged him outside, and leaving him to recover in the open air, returned to the cave, He then seized the pick and began digging, unearthing some new horror at every stroke. A glittering object caught his eye; he picked ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... characterized by a diseased imagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous, and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature. The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, with fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all better ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 'there's a fly I never knew to tell a lie; His coat, you see, is bottle-green; He knows a thing or two I ween; My dear, I beg you, do not buy: Such game as this may suit the dogs.' So on our peddling sportsman jogs, His soul possess'd of this surmise, About some men, as well as flies: A filthy taint they soonest find Who are to relish ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... never seen, in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,—not to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him as a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... he has that pullet on his conscience yet, unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my train ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... of Worcester, and was humbly confident that Divine Justice would find a way of vindicating Itself in spite of human wit. He might have added that if the sin of Adam could not only be imputed to us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness—as it certainly does if by Adam we understand our whole material heritage—so surely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope of consciousness may taint or clarify this ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... entitled to the first 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 his playmates to act attracted the notice of ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... be dragged behind. Twice he dragged him round 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 ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth "cured," like missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hail-storms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people ... do languish. The ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... for the boy when it is ready, and for the hired man too. The hired man's pleasure is somewhat damped by hearing the hired girl remark that his mouth is like a barn-door with a load of hay in it. "I declare for it if 'taint," says she. He informs her that she is always "bellerin'" about something, and she requests him not to be so "putchy;" nor does that end the matter. Guests like the Melvines of Melvine Farm, the Bligh boys of Bligh's Corners, the Plunkett girls and Deacon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... right here. I know I got for die some day. He keep me distance,[B] but when I look an see my flesh, I tenk de Lord for ebbery year what pass on my head. Taint my goodness, tis His goodness. Nothing but the pureness of heart ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... And 'taint the lissest bit o' use To tell 'em anything at all; They'll only laff, or else begin All manner o' hard names ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... to ask your pardon. My conduct was too infamous for that. Will you remember the family taint, developed by a deaf man's isolation among his fellow-creatures? But I had some days when my mother's sweet nature tried to make itself felt in me, and did not wholly fail. I am going to my mother now: her spirit has been with me ever since my hearing ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... The withering taint of "Jim Crow"-ism, must be obliterated; wiped out—will be. Railroads will be compelled to extend the same accommodations to white and colored passengers. The traveller; whatever his color, who pays the price for a ticket, must and shall in this land of Equality ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... 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 ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... said the visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me out ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... word much used when tragic tales are told; We are the younger born, yet we are very old In understanding, and our knowledge makes us bold. Boldly we look at life, Loving its stress and strife, And hating all conventions that may mean restraint, Yet shunning sin's black taint. ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of all who came under the easy classification of the term "wop." There existed a tacit agreement among property owners that no house north of the river should be sold or leased to a foreigner, and that no garlic might taint the atmosphere their children breathed in school, they had erected a small schoolhouse upon the southside. So, sequestered six days in the week in a settlement that was entirely foreign, communicating their thoughts in the tongues of the Mediterranean and ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... always in the power of the most skilful of the faculty to pronounce, with any certainty, whether a person who has been under their care, in certain stages of this malady, is so effectually cured, as to leave no possibility of his being still capable of communicating the taint. I think I could mention some instances which justify my presuming to hazard this opinion. It is likewise well known, that amongst a number of men, there are, generally, to be found some so bashful as to endeavour to conceal their labouring under any symptoms ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... apply this method consistently, from one end to the other of the gospel narrative. What was of more significance, no one had clearly defined the conception of legend. Strauss was sure that in the application of this notion to certain portions of the Scripture no irreverence was shown. No moral taint was involved. Nothing which could detract from the reverence in which we hold the Scripture was implied. Rather, in his view, the history of Jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at least, of its elements are viewed ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... an overmantel, columned and bemirrored, upon the shelves of which reposed sorrowful examples of Doulton ware and a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. It was a room divorced from all sense of youth and live beings, sunless, grave, unlovely; an arid room that bore to the nostrils the taint and humour ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... from 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 to ...
— The Federalist Papers
... And studious habit, the coarse Hebrew type, One might have elbowed in the public mart Iscariot,—nor suspected one's soul-peril. Christ's blood! it sets my flesh a-creep to think! We may breathe freely now, not fearing taint, Praise be our good Lord Bishop! He keeps count Of every Jew, and prints on cheek or chin The scarlet stamp ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Would he that his name be read "Father of Rome" on lofty pedestals, Let him chain this lawless will, And be our children's hero! cursed spite! Living worth we envy still, Then seek it with strain'd eyes, when snatch'd from sight. What can sad laments avail Unless sharp justice kill the taint of sin? What can laws, that needs must fail Shorn of the aid of manners form'd within, If the merchant turns not back From the fierce heats that round the tropic glow, Turns not from the regions black With northern winds, and hard with frozen snow; Sailors override the wave, While guilty poverty, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time; And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labour as a wise man's art: For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... father; 'taint no use tryin' that dodge any more—we're too far to leeward. Cast off the line and take a turn with it round my waist; I'm goin' to try to swim it. I know I can do it, dad; and it's the only way as we can ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... long pipe that runs by the bone should be taken out, as it is apt to taint; as also the kernels of beef. Do not purchase joints bruised by ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... born in Ireland,[134] of a barbarous people, was brought up there, and there received his education. But from the barbarism of his birth he contracted no taint, any more than the fishes of the sea from their native salt. But how delightful to reflect, that uncultured barbarism should have produced for us so worthy[135] a fellow-citizen with the saints and member of the household of God.[136] He who brings honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... are arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself, but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I say unto you, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the scene. At the spot where the game had entered the water stood the black hound, sniffing the air for some taint of ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... not open the breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious, tending to sour the meat and taint it ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... grief, inly indignant at the fate of my innocent friend. Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... arms to form a circling bower, I well remember.—He was one who owned No common soul. In youth by science nursed And led by nature into a wild scene Of lofty hopes, he to the world went forth, A favored being, knowing no desire Which genius did not hallow, 'gainst the taint Of dissolute tongues, and jealousy, and hate And scorn, against all enemies prepared. All but neglect. The world, for so it thought, Owed him no service: he was like a plant Fair to the sun, the darling of the winds, But hung with fruit which no one, that passed by, Regarded, and, his ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... faith to which we all were born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope! She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities—very much like poor Decoud—or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite understand—but ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... upon the eternal principles of justice. He must be a democrat, a believer in and an advocate of the equal rights of men. A slavery-loving, slavery-upholding lecturer would be just as much of an anomaly as a slavery-loving and slavery-singing poet. The taint so vitiates the whole aesthetic nature, so poisons the moral sense, so palsies the finer powers, so destroys all true sympathy with universal humanity, that the composition of an acceptable lecture becomes impossible to the man who bears ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... of a woman separated from her husband is undoubtedly very different from that of a man who has left his wife. He, with lordly dignity, has shaken off a clog; and the allowing her food and raiment is thought sufficient to secure his reputation from taint. And, should she have been inconsiderate, he will be celebrated for his generosity and forbearance. Such is the respect paid to the master-key of property! A woman, on the contrary, resigning what is termed her natural protector (though he never was so but in name), is despised and shunned for ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... has a taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. Did women really respect virtue for its own sake, they would not seek for a compensation ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... teacher or parent can, somehow, cause the boy of to-day to visualize his own grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in every human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... a consciousness of guilt, there is no doubt that he who falls asleep in Jesus, with reliance on his blood and righteousness, will immediately, at death, receive such a consciousness of being purified from all taint of sin, as now is beyond our conception. In the language of Scripture, we shall be presented faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. For the sake of Christ, in whom we trust, we shall be received and treated as though we had never ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... representative of national order and in its policy of peace. For two hundred years England had been almost constantly at war, and to war without had been added discord and misrule within. The violence and anarchy which had always clung like a taint to the baronage grew more and more unbearable as the nation moved forward to a more settled peacefulness and industry. At the very time however when this movement became most pronounced under Edward the Third, the tendency of the nobles to violence received a new ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... disappointment to them. They have noted her points; her beauty has burned itself into their jealousy; her merry laugh has fanned their scorn; her bountiful presence is an affront to them, as is her ripe and lissom figure. They pronounce her morally unsound; they say her nature has a taint; they chill her popularity with silent smiles of slow disparagement. But they have no particulars; their slander is not concrete. It is an amorphous accusation, sweeping ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... through the senses, to the Being in whom all things are and have life! Ere two years old, she, whose dream is now with us, all over the small silvan world, that beheld the revelation, how evanescent! of her pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of sin—inherited from those who disobeyed in Paradise—seemed from her fair clay to have been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. So pious people almost believed, looking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... tranquil air; And your officious doings bring disgrace On the plain steeples of our English Church, Whose worship, 'mid remotest village trees, 420 Suffers for this. Even Science, too, at hand In daily sight of this irreverence, Is smitten thence with an unnatural taint, Loses her just authority, falls beneath Collateral suspicion, else unknown. 425 This truth escaped me not, and I confess, That having 'mid my native hills given loose To a schoolboy's vision, I had raised a pile Upon the basis of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... laugh and those words of mine just used, are not Martian, they don't belong to these rarefied beings here. They have a human or earthly taint, and they frighten me. I seem so lonely sometimes. My stray fun which I once enjoyed on earth must somehow be forgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play, but I must keep up the high key ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... corruption of human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, to go into some further details, and show, by common examples, how strangely our judgment and practice contain, with much that is right, just that one taint or defect which, as a whole, spoils them. And this one defect will be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect in our sense ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... most used to blame, recalled to mind, And, for the stripling taken to her bed, To deem the dame less culpable inclined: Less of herself than sex the fault he read, Which to one man could never be confined: And thought, if in one taint all women shared, At least his had not ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... loves, and her lover is likewise bewitched. In trying to break the spell, she drinks an antidote which kills her. The point of interest in both stories is the subtile connection, in the first, between the beauty of Georgiana and the taint of the birth-mark; and, in the second, the loveliness of Beatrice and the poison of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... each his peculiarity. Some of these, could we look within their mental structure and there take a just survey, would perhaps be found possessed of such a native taint, or bias, or disorder, that their wrong doings, for which they were in prison, would be regarded in the light of misfortunes ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... rigidity and cynicism of her guardian. She shrank from the calm, steadfast gaze of his eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning some of the philosophic phases of the age. Had he escaped the upas taint of skepticism? An opportunity soon occurred to favor her wishes, for, chancing to allude to his visit to Rydal Mount, while in the lake region of England, the transition to a discussion of the metaphysical tone of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... '"Taint as though I give her the name, myself," he observed, at last. "Seein' I just got her a week ago last Saturday. I ASKED Casper Hoyt what under the canopy possessed him to give her a name like that. Said his father named her. Well, I thought his father must be plumb foolish, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... but flize about Scatterin leaves and bloin off men's hats; In short its jest as free as Are out dores; But O Sextant! in our church its scarce as piety, Scarce as bankbills when ajunts beg for mishuns, Which sum say is purty often, taint nuthin to me, What I give aint nuthing to nobody; but O Sextant! You shet 500 men women and children Speshily the latter, up in a tite place, Sum has bad breths, none of em aint too sweet, Sum is fevery, sum is scroflus, sum has bad teeth And sum haint none, and sum aint over clean; But ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... of the plague is its forerunner. It is likely enough that at the time of my seeing poor Osman the deadly taint was beginning to creep through his veins, but it was not till after I had left Cairo that he was visibly ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... who love beauty, are always smiling and follow the Golden Rule far nearer than those who live by trade and are blest by civilization. Ah, that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day! The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease, death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs in exchange ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... confidence. And yet I could see why they should do so, for just the very reason that he took their confidence as a matter of course, knowing that his loyalty would always be above suspicion. He had a great capacity for loyalty. There was no taint in it of self-interest, nor of snobbishness. He believed, for instance, in the divine right of kings; and from what he let fall we could see that he had given the most remarkable devotion not only to every cause ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Fulvia. She admired and respected Crescenti, yet she had never fully trusted him. The taint ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... my child," said the Earl, "be the consequences what they may, and to do justice to the honour of Eveline, which I have only permitted to be suspected to avoid discovery of the yet more horrible taint to which I was made ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves any mark on it. The Solomon Islanders are expert merchants ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... peaked houses or coops. The coachman told them that here was where they breed the pheasants which are hunted. When the birds have reached a certain age, they are set free, and a gun is fired in their midst to give them a taint of the wild. John was much interested, in spite of the fact that he considered it "a mean trick." It really does not seem quite fair to take excellent, kindly care of any animal or bird, allow it to believe you are its friend, and ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... Members gathered round to congratulate the young orator; and Father Ritchie (if he was a father then) "hailed this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live." This speech contains one passage which savors of the "chivalric" taint, and indicates the provincial mind. In replying to the objection founded on the expenses of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... been so well off that "widow's thirds" would have placed her in comfortable circumstances. As it was, the whole of his property went to her only surviving son, a youth who had inherited, with some of his father's good looks, all his bad principles; and in addition a taint—we may suppose—of the penal atmosphere in which he was born. But there was not a shadow of doubt about his being the person named in the will. Perhaps, if it had been worded "my lawful son," Themis ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Squire failed to send him to school. When asked about it, he said, "Wal, I 'low he knows a good deal more'n I do now, an' 'taint no sort o' use to learn so much. Spiles a boy to fill him chock full." But Sammy was bent on learning, any how; and in the long winter mornings, before day, he used to study hard at such books as ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... think that these ideals of service from which every taint of self-seeking and commercialism have been eliminated—do you think that these are mere figments of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry Holden out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in California. Go to any agricultural college in this broad land and ask the scientists ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... in the master of a family, and the gloss he put on the crime of covetousness; which last error was not confined to his conversation, but mingled itself with his writings, though no one could well be freer from any taint of the vice in his own life. Many a man may have indulged his inclinations to evil, with much less compunction, while he has imagined himself sheltered under the sanction of the moralist who watches one side of the entrance into ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... position of trust until it made him head of the Government. And 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 ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... compared with her chances of inheriting their vices; especially if she happens to take after her mother. There the virtue is not conspicuous, and the vice is one enormous fact. When I think of the growth of that poisonous hereditary taint, which may come with time—when I think of passions let loose and temptations lying in ambush—I see the smooth surface of the Minister's domestic life with dangers lurking under it which make me shake in my shoes. God! ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... experience is 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 experience ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... barbarity. I am ready to lead you to the places where lie their bodies, some of them burned and their ashes cast into the ditch, others charred and thrown into unused towers. I have here names, instances, evidence enough to taint and condemn a hundred monsters ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... misshapen little scoundrel's eye, when bringing home her husband in a state of beastly intoxication, and for this reason, independently of her knowledge of his vile and heartless disposition, and infamous character, she detested him. After entering, he looked about him, and even with the taint light of the rush she could mark that his unnatural and revolting features were lit up with a ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... necessary, and indeed salutary, because of their wives; and they always came back grumbling, because of their livers, which a good country rest always fortunately reduced in time for the next visit. In this way they kept themselves free from the taint ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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. ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... free from earthly taint, Where human passion played no part, As pure as thoughts that thrill a saint, Or hunt ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... your sneers, Fallen brains and hearts of brass, Tweak me by my foolish ears, Write me down a simple ass! I'll believe the real "you" Is the "you" without a taint; I'll believe each woman too, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... of earthly passion Might taint the holy sword, And no ancient error tarnish The falchion of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Graccus, do not taint thy sence With sight of these infectious animalles, 'Less[233] reason in thee have the upper hand To governe sence, to see and shun the sight. Here's new discovered sins, past all the rest; Men strive to practice how to sweare ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... their virgin beauty," speak of the conduct and vocation of "the erring sisters of the sex," in a manner that often amazes me, and has, in more than one instance, excited unpleasant feelings towards the fair satirists. This moral taint, for I can consider it as nothing less, I have heard defended, but only by men who are supposed to have had a large experience of the world, and who, perhaps, on that account, are not the best judges of female delicacy. "Every woman," as Pope says, "may be at heart a rake"; ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... spotted fever in the neighbourhood." Mrs. Coates's maid had, in repeating the news, "turned the sore throat into a spotted fever, or a scarlet fever, she did not rightly know which, but both were said by the apothecary to be generally fatal, where there was any Jewish taint in the blood." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of anything that touches on charlatanism; the taint of trickery not only alarms them, but drives them away from any suspicious subject, and usually ruins, scientifically speaking, the person who has ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... really a sort of number thirteen, a grain of spilt salt, ill-omened, disastrous? Camille would not think so; but it seemed to her that she had never been able to make anyone happy, and that there must be some taint in her therefore, some flaw ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Mart. Sure as God hears me, and 'taint cause I'm old and unsought either. I'll look after her, ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock |
