Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Defiled   Listen
Defiled

adjective
1.
Morally blemished; stained or impure.  Synonym: maculate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Defiled" Quotes from Famous Books



... she felt at once a sympathy between that woman and herself, felt she was for the first time seeing another soul like her own, one that would have understood her strange sense of innocence in the midst of her own defiled and depraved self—a core of unsullied nature. Everyone else in the world would have mocked at this notion of a something within—a true self to which all that seemed to be her own self was as external as her clothing; this woman of the photograph would understand. So, there she hung—Susan's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... the sun next day the caravan, numbering about three thousand souls, defiled confusedly out of the town. The Prince, who might have been first, of choice fell in ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... purgatorie. For he good man comming into the hall with the candle, and spying his wife wyth her haire about her eares defiled and massacred, and his simple Zanie Capestrano run thorough, tooke a halberde in hys hand, and running from chamber to chamber to search who in his house was likely to doo it, at length found me lying on my bed, the doore lockt to me on the outside, and my rapier vnsheathed ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... depression, when my whole being protested against the life of the slum. I resented the familiarity of my vulgar neighbors. I felt myself defiled by the indecencies I was compelled to witness. Then it was I took to running away from home. I went out in the twilight and walked for hours, my blind feet leading me. I did not care where I went. If I lost my way, so much the better; I never wanted ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... terror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then his strength was shaken with sobbing, and his hands clutched blindly before him, and he gathered dust and cast it upon his head till the dark locks were defiled with the ashes of his dearest, and ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... the skunk; but all the wild creatures find it irresistibly disgusting. No matter how pinched and racked by famine they may be, not one of them will touch a morsel of meat which a wolverene has defiled ever so slightly. The wolverene itself, however, by no means shares this ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... white froth, or smiting broad on under her counter, showering her decks with a sprout of icy spray. It was cold; at times thick fogs cloaked all the world of water. To the east a procession of bleak hills defiled slowly southward; lighthouses were passed; streamers of smoke on the western horizon marked the passage of steamships; and once they met and passed close by a huge Cape Horner, a great deep-sea tramp, all sails set and drawing, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... thus, who would, for the future, pay respect to the Church or tribute at its shrines? At Rome a party, of which Pole was the most zealous, proclaimed that the real Turk was Henry, and that all Christian princes should unite to sweep him from the face of God's earth, which his presence had too long defiled. Considering the effect of Christian leagues against the Ottoman, the English Turk was probably not dismayed. But Paul III. and Pole were determined to do their worst. The Pope resolved to publish the bull of deprivation, which had been drawn up in August, 1535, though ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... op. cit. iii. 98, 99 sq. Compare Lorimer Fison, Tales from Old Fiji, p. 163: "A person who has defiled himself by touching a corpse is called yambo, and is not allowed to touch food with his hands for several days." The custom as to a surviving widow is mentioned by Th. Williams, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... Gerard solemnly, "you little know the peril you ran that night. That church you defiled amongst you is haunted; I had it from one of the elder monks. The dead walk there, their light feet have been heard to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... an unclean? Man is now the very reverse of what he was when first created. His understanding [2 Cor. iv. 5; Ephes. iv. 18.; Titus i. 15.; rom. viii.7.] is darkened, yea darkness itself; his will, his carnal mind, is enmity against God; his conscience is defiled; his affections, no longer fixed upon God his Creator and Benefactor, are engrossed by the vain and perishing things of this world; by sin his body is become mortal. Subject to pain, disease, and death [Rom. v. 12.]; and his soul is exposed to the displeasure ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson

... all this long, half-insane harangue, Suzanne had sat quite silent, making no reply at all, not even seeming to hear the demon, for such he was, whose wicked talk defiled her ears. But when he asked her whether she had nothing to say to him before he went, still looking not at him, but beyond him, she gave him his answer in one word, the same that she had used when she awoke from ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... could not drag out, he scattered. What he failed to remove, he defiled. And, at last, when he had made of the place, not an orderly cache, but a third-rate debacle, he sauntered, always slouching, always grossly untidy, hump-backed, stooping, low-headed, and droop-tailed, shabbily unrespectable, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... at the cotton plush furniture of dingy red, at the marble-topped centre table upon whose chilly surface a large, gilt-edged family Bible reposed—placed there by Mrs. Terriberry in the serene confidence that its fair margins would never be defiled through use. Beside the Bible, lay the plush album with its Lombroso-like villainous gallery of countenances upon which transient vandals had pencilled mustaches regardless of sex. She looked at the fly-roost of pampas grass in the sky-blue vase ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... body; here was love in one of its ten thousand forms. Love that is burning desire, that quenches all other spark of the spirit, that is boundless; love of a hideously grotesque and deformed sort; love defiled, twisted, misshapen as though Eros had become an ugly, malformed, leering monstrosity. That love which is the expression of the last degree of selfish greed, since it demands all and gives nothing; that love which is like a rank weed, choking tenderer growths; ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... food. In former years salmon were very abundant in the streams of the Sacramento Valley, and every fall they took great quantities of these fish and dried them for winter use, but alluvial mining had of late years defiled the water of the different streams and driven the fish out. On this account the usual supply of salmon was very limited. They got some trout high up on the rivers, above the sluices and rockers of the miners, but this was a precarious ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... sun gradually dispelled the heavy vapor; and as the bright verdure glittered in its beams, sending up all the perfumes of a southern clime, I thought I had never seen a more lovely morning. The staff were stationed upon a little knoll beside the river, round the base of which the troops defiled, at first in orderly, then in quick time, the bands playing and the colors flying. In the same brigade with us the Eighty-eighth came, and as they neared the commander-in-chief, their quick-step was suddenly ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... my darling! WHY did you come to this decision? How could you bring yourself to take such a step? What have you done, have you done, have you done? Soon they will be carrying you away to the tomb; soon your beauty will have become defiled, my angel. Ah, dearest one, you are as weak as a feather. And where have I been all this time? What have I been thinking of? I have treated you merely as a forward child whose head was aching. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... resolved to follow their great leader's example by stripping themselves of all worldly possessions, and suffering the loss of all things. They were beggars—literally barefooted beggars. The love of money was the root of all evil. They would not touch the accursed thing lest they should be defiled—no, not with the tips of their fingers. "Ye cannot serve ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... thing that no sanctimonious Brahman would have dreamed of doing, for fear of being defiled by the touch of a casteless foreigner; so he was either above or below the caste laws, and it is common knowledge how those who are below caste cringe and toady. So he evidently reckoned himself above it, and the Indian who can do that has met and overcome ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... from the cares that overlay and smother The memories of old woodland out-door mirth In the dim first life-burst centuries ago, The sense of the freedom and nearness of Earth— Nay, this they shall not know; For who goes thither, Leaves all the cark and clutch of his soul behind, The doves defiled and the serpents shrined, The hates that wax and the hopes that wither; Nor does he journey, seeking where it be, But wakes and finds ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... got up and told us that he had been an awful bad boy in his early days, and learned to chew tobacco and drink cider-brandy when he wasn't more than knee-high to a grasshopper. That the cider-brandy and tobacco had stuck in and defiled him through and through, till nothing but saving grace could have washed him clean and made his soul white as a lamb, which it then was, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Cameroon have confirmed the filthy habits of the Huns and Hunnesses, how they defiled the rooms in the hospital at Duala that they occupied just before they were sent away; how disgusting were their habits in the cabins of the fine Atlantic liner that took them back to Europe. Not that it is their normal custom; it was merely to render the rooms uninhabitable for us who were ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... is accredited to them. Their headman can officiate only when he has obtained the sanction of the common jailor of the district. Even to ask alms they must not enter a fenced property, and it is said at Kandy that water over which their shadows have fallen is held to be so defiled that other natives will not use it until purified by the sun's rays. And thus it is; their race is penalized in every manner, and the ban goes unchallenged ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... lande wurthan agytene, thonne fyrsie man of earde, and claensie lha. theode, owwe on earde forfare hi mid ealle, buton hi geswican and the deoper gebetan:' 'if witches, or weirds, man-swearers, or murther-wroughters, or foul, defiled, open whore-queens, ay—where in the land were gotten, then force them off earth, and cleanse the nation, or in earth forth- fare them withal, buton they beseech, and deeply better.' LI. Ed. et Guthr. c. 11. 'Saga; mulieres barbara ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... blown loudly. Many came, not only from different parts of the kingdom, but from the other states of Europe, to witness the spectacle. It took place on the 20th of June, 1715. As the troops, in their gorgeous uniforms, defiled before the terrace of Marly, quite a spruce-looking man, surrounded by obsequious attendants, emerged from the principal entrance of the palace, descended the marble steps and mounted his horse. It was the poor old king. Inspired by vanity, which ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... both fists at once, and dropped again upon their hands as if unable to maintain the upright position of the body. Grass and pebbles were torn from the soil by hands and feet; clothing, hair, faces inexpressibly defiled with dust and blood. Wild, inarticulate screams of rage attested the delivery of the blows; groans, grunts and gasps their receipt. Nothing more truly military was ever seen at Gettysburg or Waterloo: the valor of my dear parents in the hour of danger ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... an weet,— Her hair flyin tangled an wild: Shoo'd just been browt in aght o'th street, Wi drink an mud splashes defiled. Th' poleece sargent stood waitin to hear What charge agean her wod be made, He'd scant pity for them they browt thear, To be surly wor pairt ov his trade. "What name?" an he put it i'th' book,— An shoo hardly seemed able to stand; As shoo tottered, he happened to luk saw summat claspt ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... Hindu invasion. They are a most useful part of the community. As the artisans of the country, the people of every caste have much to do with them. They are largely engaged in agriculture. They do things by which the caste people would be defiled, such as carrying away the carcases of animals. In a high-caste village it is not uncommon to see, a little aside from it—if the ground permits, below it—a number of houses occupied by Doms. The pigs and fowls around the meaner dwellings, and ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... modesty Is made a haunt for harlotry; The virgin lily you may see Defiled by fingers lewd and free, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... of England! ...do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which God made at once for their schoolroom and their playground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch-deep founts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth for ever from the rocks of your native land—waters which ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater

... brings out very clearly the continuity and congruity between the life on earth and the life in heaven. Who is it of whom it is said that 'they are worthy' to 'walk in white'? It is the 'few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.' You see the connection; clean robes here and shining robes hereafter; the two go together, and you cannot separate them. And no belief that salvation, in its incipient germ here, and salvation in its fulness hereafter, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... world about her. She hurried to her bath for strength: the friendly water would rouse her to the present, make the past recede like a dream, and give her courage to face the future. Her very body seemed defiled by the knowledge that was within it. Alas! how must poor Leopold feel, then! But she ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... went to her bed, in the cold, gray dawn of a winter's day, with the tears still running down her face. When she woke again the day was already waning, a dripping, wasting thaw, when smoking and soot-defiled snow added sadness to the sad sky. Esther, on opening her eyes, saw Catherine sitting quietly before the fire, reading, or pretending to read. She was keeping guard ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... land of hate, Where are the things that made you great? Child-hearted once—oh, deep defiled, Dare you ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... to put a stop to all such nonsense. The newspapers told us what it had done abroad; and what better could we expect from it at home? Weeds will not grow into flowers anywhere, and no man can handle tar without being defiled; the first of which comparisons is I daresay true, and the latter must be—for we read of it in Scripture. Well, as I was saying, it was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of his land to the test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the clanjamphrey might ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... Emperor Alexander, and Prince Schwartzenberg on his left. There was a long parade, during which the Russian, Prussian and Austrian military bands vied with each other in playing the air, 'Vive Henri IV.!' The cavalry defiled past, and then withdrew into the Champs Elysees; but the infantry ranged themselves round an altar which was raised in the middle of the Place, and which was elevated on a platform having twelve or fifteen steps. The Emperor of Russia alighted from his horse, and, followed by the King ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... previous life may have been profanity of speech, as it was evidently a crying sin of his time. This suggestion gives a shock to the ideas which we associate with Isaiah, and it is hard to think that the lips which afterwards spoke like angels can ever have defiled themselves with such a sin. But this is the most natural meaning of the words, and it is not against the analogy of other lives. Great saints, and even great preachers, are made out of great sinners; and the memory of an odious and conspicuous sin like this may ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... talk that had stimulated him to this point. The story of the Long Trail, with its desert and mountain, its cliff-dwellers, its Aztec ruins, its colour, movement, and romance, filled his mind with picture after picture. The epic defiled before his vision like a pageant. Once more, he shot a glance about him, as if in search of the inspiration, and this time he all but found it. He rose to his feet, looking out and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... Vashpa, the fourth Asvagit, the fifth called Bhadra, practising austerities as hermits, seeing from far Tathagata approaching, sitting together all engaged in conversation, said: "This Gautama, defiled by worldly indulgence, leaving the practice of austerities, now comes again to find us here, let us be careful not to rise in salutation, nor let us greet him when he comes, nor offer him the customary refreshments. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... I say let him not come near my doors. I say, he is a wanton young Levite, and pampereth himself up with dainties, that he may look lovely in the eyes of women. Sincerely, I am afraid he hath already defiled the tabernacle of our sister Comfort; while her good husband is deluded by his godly appearance. I say that even lust doth sparkle in his eyes and glow upon his cheeks, and that I would as soon trust my wife with a ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... troubling itself with no doubts or criticisms. Especially does it believe in the dual nature of the Saviour, in Christ as God, and in Christ as man, and in the possibility of forgiveness and redemption for even the most degraded and defiled of human beings. Love is its watchword, the spirit of love is its spirit, love arrayed in the ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... streamed by, trampling the ruddy buckwheat-fields, and through ravaged orchards and broken gardens. Overhead, in a great cloud high in air, the fine dust was blown down the line by the east wind. It was thick and oppressive, choking man and horse with an exacting thirst, mocked by empty wells and defiled brooks. No one knew where any one else was, and in all my life, save on one memorable evening, I never heard as great a ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... and seized the inner court of the Temple, so that there was war between him and Simon, son of Gioras. Thus Eleazar, John, and Simon each led a band in constant fightings, and the Temple was everywhere defiled ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... had not permitted himself to inquire; for him it had been sufficient that she was a woman, and that he loved her, and that he was unworthy of her love. After she had seen him shoot at Spurling he had avoided her, lest by contact with him she should be defiled. He had vaguely hoped at the time of leaving that the day might come, after he had cleansed himself and proved himself a man, when he might seek her out and ask her to be his wife. Through the last three years he had lived ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... sudden revulsion filled his heart. She was wise and beautiful, and she seemed innocent, but Issachar was right; this girl was the minister of an abominable creed; nay, for aught he knew, she was herself defiled with its abominations, and her wisdom but an evil gift from the evil powers she served. Could he, a prince of the royal blood of the House of Israel and of the ancient Pharaohs of Khem, desire to have anything to do with such an one, he a child of the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... the vessels that had been used in Baal worship, the idolatrous priests were put down, the "houses of the sodomites," that were in the house of Jehovah, were broken down, the high places erected by Solomon were defiled, and a ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... lose them, quickly return to them. If thou maintainest thyself in possession of these names without desiring that others should call thee by them, thou wilt be another being, and wilt enter on another life. For to continue to be such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be torn in pieces and defiled in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and like those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though covered with wounds and gore still entreat to be kept to the following day, though they will be exposed ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... current report the assassins, drunk with wine and blood, fell on the bodies and defiled them most filthily, even cutting portions of Draga's skin, which they dried and preserved as trophies. An officer later showed a friend of mine a bit which he kept ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... crescent shall wane before the steady light of the Sun of Righteousness. The words are carven deep over the portals of the temple which Christ rears; and though men may not be able to read them, and may not believe them if they do, though for centuries traffickers have defiled its courts, and base-born usurpers have set up their petty thrones, yet the writing stands sure, a dumb witness against the transient lies, a patient prophet of the eternal truth. And when all false faiths, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... next to godliness. Without cleanliness the human body is more or less defiled and repulsive. A hint to the wise is sufficient. The vagina should be cleansed with the same faithfulness as any other portion of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... only at Verona may you see it in the simplicity of its youthful power, and the tenderness of its accomplished beauty. And Verona possesses, in the last place, the loveliest Renaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenity of effortless grace, and modesty of home seclusion; its richest work given to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most silent gardens. All this she possesses, in the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... and attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly when a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... under a heavy fire of artillery from the French batteries; and the firm ground on the slope being reached, the first line advanced in the finest order to the attack—the cavalry in front having now defiled to a side, so as to let the English infantry take the lead. The attack must be given in the words ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... having for the motioners and ministers of the mind only such young men as have showed they think evil contentment a ground of any rebellion; who have seen no commonwealth but in faction, and divers of which have defiled their hands in odious murders. With such fancies and favorites what is to be hoped for? or that he will contain himself within ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... said he, preparing to pass on; 'it has been my misfortune to know you, and one cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. But, thank God, you'll come by your deserts now. If you will take my advice you'll hang ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... floor of the passage into which it opened, a confused heap of men's apparel. Examination showed it to consist of two hats, and the same number of coats, waistcoats, and scarves all in a remarkably good state of preservation, albeit somewhat defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. Brewer was equally astonished, but Mr. King's emotion is not of record. With a new and lively interest in his own actions the sheriff now unlatched and pushed open a door on the right, and the three entered. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... it does to those which cause the egg to spoil or rot. When the infected egg is eaten raw the microorganisms, if present, are communicated to man and may cause disease. If an egg remains in a dirty nest, defiled with the micro-organisms which cause typhoid fever, carried there on the hen's feet or feathers, it is not strange if some of these bacteria occasionally penetrate the shell and the egg thus becomes a possible source of infection. Perhaps one of the most common ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... circumspecte would they bee too doo anye thynge ||F.iiii|| vnaduisedly that shoulde grudge their mindes afterward? What thinge is it that thei would not doo too haue suche a godly treasure in store against their latter daies? that is a minde knowyng it selfe cleane & honest and a name that hath not been defiled at any time. But what thyng now is more miserable then is agee? Whan it beholdeth, and loketh backward on thinges that be past seeth plainly with great grudg of conscience howe fayre thynges he hathe despiced and sette lyght by, (that ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus

... name upon the roll of honor. We give money prizes for work in our schools and thus strive to commercialize the things of the mind and of the spirit. We have laid waste our forests, impoverished our fields, and defiled our landscapes to stimulate increased activity in our clearing-houses. Like Jason of old, we have wandered far in quest of the golden fleece. We welcome the rainbow, not for its beauty but for the bag of gold at ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... more strangely when by some extraordinary chance it strayed into the home of a poor man. Immediately it defiled the clean, debauched the chaste, and, acting simultaneously on the body and the soul, it insinuated into its possessor a base selfishness, an ignoble pride; it suggested that he spend for himself alone; it made the humble man a boor, the generous ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... temples of the gods, became the first object of pillage. Nothing was respected. The cupboards containing sacred vestments were broken open; so were the tombs of the archbishops, in which were interred reliquaries adorned with precious stones; and the altar itself was defiled with the blood of ruffians who fought for ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... (V. iii. and iv. note); at any rate, it causes them to occupy a very small part of the mind (V. xiv.). Further, it begets a love towards a thing immutable and eternal (V. xv.), whereof we may really enter into possession (II. xlv.); neither can it be defiled with those faults which are inherent in ordinary love; but it may grow from strength to strength, and may engross the greater part of the mind, and deeply ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... (Such women sin more when they take marriage ties Than the love-maddened creature who lawlessly lies In the arms of the man whom she worships. The child Not conceived in true love leaves the mother defiled. Though an army of clergymen sanction her vows, God sees "illegitimate" stamped on the brows Of her offspring. Love only can legalize birth In His eyes—all the rest is but spawn of ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... mysterious Nature could draw the shining disc of the moon to herself, and somehow hold in some high, indefinite place the pale-blue sky, and be everywhere around me, and fill of herself the infinity of space, while I was but a lowly worm, already defiled with the poor, petty passions of humanity—always it seemed to me that, nevertheless, both Nature and the moon and I ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... last glance at the vast, melancholy plains. "Le Paradou is no more. They have sacked it, defiled it, destroyed it; but what does that matter! Vines will be planted, corn will spring up, a whole growth of new crops; and people will still fall in love in vintages and harvests yet to come. Life is eternal; it is a perpetual renewal ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... and to-day his subject was the perfection and searching character of the divine law. He showed how God could make no terms with sin—that he hated it with a terrible and vindictive hatred, because in all respects it was opposite and antagonistic to His nature—because it defiled, degraded, and destroyed. He traced all human wretchedness to this poisonous root, and Gregory trembled and his face grew dark with despair as he realized how it was inwoven with every fibre of his heart. Then in simple ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... than allow this sin to continue," he replied. "Anything, I tell you. Leave him. Flee from this house which has been defiled." ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to my vishun. There on a littel knoll, of the fether bed, stood the commander-in-chief, surrounded by his staff, issuin orders. Grouped all round, in regyments, divishuns, & briggades, were comanys of privats in their full dress parade unyform of scarlet. As each regyment defiled passed the Commander, the band struck up the Nashunal ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... d'Aubigny left Rome with the French troops, accompanied by the bulk of the considerable army with which Cesare supported his French ally, besides 1,000 foot raised by the Pope and a condotta of 100 lances under Morgante Baglioni. As the troops defiled before the Castle of Sant' Angelo they received the apostolic benediction from the Pope, who stood on the lower ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... she was twelve years of age, the priests met in a council, and said, Behold, Mary is twelve years of age, what shall we do with her, for fear lest the holy place of the Lord our God should be defiled? ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... are debarred from the privilege. All fire, he adds, is of the same nature, but fire taken from the house of a Brahman is pure, whereas fire taken from a cremation ground is impure. Even so the soul is defiled by being ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... rebuked him sharply for his ungovernable conduct, Keshav wandered to a neighbouring hamlet, and hid himself in the tall fig-tree which shadowed a celebrated image of Panchanan.[FN117] Presently an evil thought arose in his head: he defiled the god, and threw him into ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... Church its creature down, and hell Yawns, heaves, and yearns to clasp its loathliest child Close to the breasts that bore it. All the spell Whence darkness saw the dawn in heaven defiled Is dumb as death: the lips that lied and smiled Wax white for fear as ashes. She that bore The banner up of darkness now no more Sheds night and fear and ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... involves the greater or less sin? Whether by some dark veil my mind be clouded, Or this designing woman speak untruly, I know not. Tell me, must I rather be The base disowner of my wedded wife, Or the defiling and defiled adulterer? ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... hated this lovely and delightful boy; on the contrary, earth contained not an object, except his money, which he loved so well. His affection for him, however, was only such as could proceed from the dregs of a defiled and perverted heart. This is not saying much, but it is saying all. What in him was parental attachment, would in another man, to such a son, be unfeeling and detestable indifference. His heart sank on contemplating the pittance ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... tongue—unchanged for centuries—stuffed with the strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms and odd solemn words, full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and familiar, homely and graceful—the language which I write in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy litterateurs.'" The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing from every pore in his body—so rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and more as he went ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... in praise of fire. And the fire Nischyavana praises the earth only; he never suffers in reputation, splendour and prosperity. The sinless fire Satya blazing with pure flame is his son. He is free from all taint and is not defiled by sin, and is the regulator of time. That fire has another name Nishkriti, because he accomplished the Nishkriti (relief) of all blatant creatures here. When properly worshipped he vouchsafes good fortune. His son is called Swana, who is the generator of all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... penances to be enjoined, did not confess their crimes. He calls them shamefully timorous and bashful to do good, after having been bold and impudent to sin, and says, "And you do not tremble to touch the holy mysteries, and to thrust your defiled soul into the holy place, in the sight of the angels, and before God himself, as if you were innocent." He mentions Oza lain for touching the ark, (2 Kings vi.,) and the words of the apostle, (1 Cor. xi.,) adding, "Do not you tremble when you hear, he shall be guilty of the body and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... and La Fayette soon appeared, and was barely able to protect the king and queen from massacre. He had no power to effectually resist the tempest of human passion which was raging, but was swept along by its violence. Nearly all of the interior of the palace was ransacked and defiled by the mob. The bloody heads of the massacred guards, stuck upon pikes, were raised up to the windows of the king, to insult and to terrify the royal family with these hideous trophies of the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... hush-money, of threatening the memory of the woman he had killed. Quarrier hoped more earnestly than ever that the secret would not be betrayed; he scorned vulgar opinion, so far as it affected himself, but could not bear the thought of Lilian's grave being defiled by curiosity and reprobation. The public proceedings had brought to light nothing whatever that seemed in conflict with medical evidence and the finding of the coroner's jury. One dangerous witness had necessarily come forward—Mrs. Wade's ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... offence at and stumble over the pebbles washed across their path by the glacier streams? I will tell you. We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments, instead of up at the snows of purity, whither the soul of Christ clomb. Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbour's footprint corresponds with that which ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... be sought after. Fame appeared on the horizon. Critics rose and thundered. Balzac defied all rules, walked over the grammar, defiled the well of classic French. He invented phrases, paraphrased greatness, coined words. He worked the slide, glide, the ellipse—any way to express the thought. He forged a strange and wondrous style—a language made up of all the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... night in Meaux: night of unrest and sleeplessness, or of cruel dreaming; night of bloody visions, tortured by the apprehension of a lacerated body driven through the city streets, and of the hooting shouts of Devildom; night haunted by a gory image,—the defiled ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... who was assisted by two younger priests, kindly invited me to take part in a Shinto service. First, I ceremonially washed my hands and rinsed my mouth. Then, having ascended the steps, my shoes were removed for me so that my hands should not be defiled. On entering the shrine I knelt opposite the young priests, one of whom brought me the usual evergreen bough with paper streamers. On receiving it I rose to my feet, passed through the beautiful building and advanced ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... features crumbled away, altars and inscriptions defaced her breast and hieroglyphed her ponderous sides, men worshipped and wondered there, and travellers from lands beyond the sun pitched their tents before her face and defiled her feet with barbaric orgies; but she knew it no more,—her children were gone out into the world. And the world had need of them. Its rank and miasmatic civilization,—its hotbeds of sin and misery,—its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... the judge should sentence him, finding him guilty by witnesses. The Lord also directs his command to all the people, as it were collectively, to put out of the camp "every one that was a leper, and had an issue, or was defiled by the dead," Numb. v. 2; but intended that the priest should peculiarly take and apply this command to himself, who was to judge in these cases. See Lev. xiii. and elsewhere. So in the New Testament the apostle praised the Corinthians indefinitely, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... "the water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... glad if the child be glad, and heavy, if the child be sorry, and taketh the child up if it fall, and giveth it suck: if it weep she kisseth and lulleth it still, and gathereth the limbs, and bindeth them together, and doth cleanse and wash it when it is defiled. And for it cannot speak, the nurse lispeth and soundeth the same words to teach more easily the child that cannot speak. And she useth medicines to bring the child to convenable estate if it be sick, and lifteth it up now on her ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... wild Before them stretched bare, comfortless, and vast, With gibbets, bones, and carcasses defiled." THOMPSON'S Castle ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in European influence, and planted with every circumstance of apparent advantage upon the shores of a fertile and luxurious continent given by the immortal Genoese to the crown of Spain. We had found them distracted by internal commotions, disgraced by ignorance, debased by superstition, and defiled by slavery. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... little entrance to the sanctuary had been opened to evil thoughts, and they, when once admitted, soon flung back wider and wider the golden gates, till the revelling band of worse wickednesses rushed in and defiled the altar, and trampled on the virgin floors, and defaced the cedarn walls with images of idolatry and picturings of sin. Because he had sunk into the slough of despond, he would be heedless of the mud that gathered on his garments. Was he not ruined already? Could ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... furious Indian. "Dogs! The fiery totem has been defiled. Revenge, my brothers! Revenge! lest the names Dacotah and Mighty Hand become things for jeers and ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... his post with zeal and courage; nor was it until all his ammunition was expended, and every support denied him by the general, that he reluctantly abandoned the important pass.[A] When his party were drawn back, the duke's army, slowly, and with their cannon in front, defiled along the bridge, and formed in line of battle, as they came over the river; the duke commanded the foot, and Claverhouse the cavalry. It would seem, that these movements could not have been performed without at least some loss, had the enemy been serious in opposing them. But the insurgents ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... also of the people and of the priests did many things against the laws, and passed all the pollutions of all nations, and defiled the temple of the Lord, which was sanctified ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... practised by the proper and owne members of a mans bodye, ought to be cutt of, and banished from among christians. [Sidenote: Jud. 23.] And S. Jude exhorteth us, to haue, yea and that in hatred the garment which is defiled by the flesh, meaning under this figure & manner of speech, all inticementes & allurements which might draw us to any pollution, uncleannes, and fylthynes: what ought we to iudge in the excellency (as a man woulde say) value and estimation of the flesh itselfe, which is so polluted ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous

... Allen thundered on the portal of all earthly kings at Ticonderoga; but we also remember that his hatred for the great state of New York brought him and his men of Vermont perilously close to the mire which defiled Charles Lee and Conway, and which ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... trespassed. He has stolen his way into the harem. The infidel dog has defiled the house of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... woman Becky Sharp, and the other the troubles and ultimate success of our noble hero Captain Dobbin. Though it be true that readers prefer, or pretend to prefer, the romantic to the common in their novels, and complain of pages which are defiled with that which is low, yet I find that the absurd, the ludicrous, and even the evil, leave more impression behind them than the grand, the beautiful, or even the good. Dominie Sampson, Dugald Dalgetty, and Bothwell are, I think, more remembered than Fergus MacIvor, than Ivanhoe himself, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... Christ," But all this labor I have spent in vain upon thee; and those sweet toils have ended in a bitter disappointment; and now I must again groan over her of whom I ought to have joy. For lo, thou hast been beguiled by the serpent more bitterly than Eve; for not only has thy mind become defiled, but with it thy very body also, and what is still more horrible—I dread to say it, but I cannot suppress it; for it is as fire burning and blazing in my bones, and I am dissolving in every part and cannot endure it—thou hast taken the members of Christ, and made them the members of a harlot. This ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... spilt upon a table, which with your finger you may drain as you will. Such controversies or disputations (carried with more labour than profit) are odious; where most times the truth is lost in the midst or left untouched. And the fruit of their fight is, that they spit one upon another, and are both defiled. These fencers in religion I ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... he exclaimed, the tone of his voice betraying that which defiled the crisp glory of the night for as far ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... their instruments, too, for throwing up and carrying earth, and their tools for cutting turf, were almost all lost. No tents for the soldiers; no remedies for the wounded. While dividing among them their food, defiled with mire or blood, they lamented that mournful night; they lamented the approaching day, to so many ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... of St. John, we have this picture of blessing only to those that endure, and to those who have not defiled their garments, and those who have come through ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... church bells, and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march through it. A Cossack is inclined to hate less the dzhigit hillsman who maybe has killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his village, but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects his enemy the hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an alien and an oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack's point of view a Russian peasant is ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... change in religion. Let no one suspect us capable of prejudicing the rights of any man. We have long since taken up arms to maintain a legal and constitutional freedom, founded upon law. God forbid that we should now attempt to introduce novelties, by which the face of liberty should be defiled." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... narrow and badly-arranged streets, having few handsome public buildings, but bristling with countless tall chimneys belching forth clouds of heavy smoke that hang like a pall over the place. The Don and its tributaries have their beds defiled, and altogether the smoky city is in unpleasant contrast with the beauty of the surrounding country. But, unfortunately, an omelette cannot be made without breaking eggs, nor can Sheffield make cutlery without smoke and bad odors, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... consul. Through their ardour and impetuosity the perception of so heavy a blow did not reach the soldiers; they conquered before they perceived that they conquered without a leader. Many of the exiles defiled the temple with their blood; many were taken alive; Herdonius was slain. Thus the Capitol was recovered. With respect to the prisoners,[124] punishment was inflicted on each according to his station, whether he was a freeman or a slave. The commons are stated to have thrown farthings into the consul's ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... of every home should be carefully guarded. If the water is defiled or contaminated by germs of typhoid fever, diphtheria, or other diseases, whose bacteria may be carried by water, the disease may be spread ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... death, and thou hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.

... with her savagery and her wit. But, if Shelley may be trusted, there was a limit to his candour. There is abundant humour, but there is an economy of detail in his pornographic chronicle. He could not touch pitch without being defiled. But to do him justice he was never idle. He kept his brains at work, and for this reason, perhaps, he seems for a time to have recovered his spirits and sinned with a good courage. His song of carnival, "So we'll ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... several points of resemblance in the story of Sextus and that of Paris, son of Priam. (1) Paris was the guest of Menel[a]os, when he eloped with his wife, Helen; and Sextus was the guest of Lucretia when he defiled her. (2) The elopement of Helen was the cause of a national war between the Greek cities and the allied cities of Troy; and the defilement of Lucretia was the cause of a national war between Rome and the allied cities under Por'sena. (3) The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... liberation from the 'Law' was one of the first conditions of spiritual freedom. From this came the teaching, subsequently held by numerous other sects, that those born of the Spirit could not be defiled by any acts of the flesh, and that so-called vicious actions were rather to be encouraged as providing experience useful to spiritual welfare. Some branches of the gnostics had 'spiritual marriages,' similar to what existed in India in the Sakti rites already described. Thus the Adamites, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... following morning the whole army, with the exception of the men left with Foret, defiled out of Doue, and crossed over to the Montreuil road, dragging with them their cannons, baggage-waggons, and ammunition; their movements were not made with very great order, nor with much celerity; but, about six o'clock in ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... dare you speak in that way to me? Who are you, that you order me what to do, where to stay? Am I your cowboy, to be defiled with your curses?" ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... her defiled and loathsome body," cried the old man—"thrust her from the door, and let her find a grave where she may. Boy! wilt thou dare disobey me?" and he raised his clenched hand, while anger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... thing, cast down, defiled, dragged in the mud, and ignored because of its defilement, that Charlotte Bronte took and lifted up. She washed it clean; she bathed it in the dew of the morning; she baptized it in tears; she clothed it in light and flame; she showed ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... who prepared me a year ago for my confirmation. Now tell me, I beseech you tell me, is mine really the desperate state I have been taught to think it is? May my body be likened to the temple of the Holy Ghost defiled? or do I owe it no more reverence than I owe the Alhambra Theatre? Am I guilty, and must I seek repentance? or am I not guilty, and may I go on just as I please?' 'My dear girl,' Dr. Tyndall replies to her, 'I must shake ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... what it was all about. He got on very well until he came nearly to the end of the first book, and then getting among the parallelogram "props," as we used to call them (may their fathers' graves be defiled!), he stuck dead. For a whole evening did he pore patiently over one of them till A B, setting to C D, crossed hands, poussetted, and whirled round "in Sahara waltz" through his throbbing head. Bed-time, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... back the ring, after it has passed through the hands of that infamous creature? Never; that ring is defiled, d'Artagnan." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... for the little Friend of the Flag was not that of any glorious death by combat, but that of a life (unless no bullet early cut its silver cord in twain) when youth should have fled, and have carried forever with it her numberless graces, and left in its stead that ribaldry-stained, drink-defiled, hardened, battered, joyless, cruel, terrible thing which is unsightly and repugnant to even the lowest among men; which is as the lees of the drunk wine, as the ashes of the burned-out fires, as the discord of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... transmitted funds to the hospice of the Great St. Bernard. The good fathers had procured from the two valleys a considerable supply of cheese, bread, and wine. Tables were laid out in front of the hospice, and each soldier as he defiled past took a glass of wine and a piece of bread and cheese, and then resigned his place to the next. The fathers served, and renewed the portions with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... live persons, whom the reader may like or dislike. In the first three Rousseau would seem to have incorporated himself, and the result is interesting, but repulsive. In Julie we have Jean Jacques' ideal woman, a being of a noble nature, tinged and defiled with something low and morbid; but Claire and Sophie seem taken only from observation, not introspection, and although far ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... into a high mountain has a little the effect of getting out of the world. One has left perplexities and uncertainties behind; the calm and the strength of the everlasting hills is about one; the air is not defiled with contentions or rivalries or jealousies up there; and the glory of creation reminds one of other glory, and power, and wisdom and might; and one breathes hope and rest. So I used to do. Of all our excursions, I liked best to go up the mountains. ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... I may never be in danger of mixing up God and the devil. You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. Remember that, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... having been relieved, and every thing ready for their departure, the American army, leaving their arms piled in the area, commenced their evacuation of the Fort, the artillery and troops of the line taking the lead. Scarcely had these defiled across the draw-bridge into the road that conducted to a large esplanade in front, to which their baggage had previously been transported, when—amid a roar of artillery from the opposite batteries, the flotilla, and ramparts themselves—the flag of America was lowered, and that of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... butter, yet very swords: that this quidam had 'exceeded the bounds of his commission—launched out into wanton and lawless cruelty—burnt noble ladies unheard, of whose innocence the Holy See had proof—defiled the Catholic faith in the eyes of the weaker sort—and alienated the minds of many nobles and gentlemen'—and finally, that he who thinketh he standeth, were wise to take heed lest ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... to gaze anxiously around, and to address some words of consolation in broken phrases to the young lady, until the general shout of the Welsh, ringing from the bank of the river to the battlements of the castle, warned him, in a note of exultation, that the very last of the British had defiled through the pass, and that their whole formidable array stood prompt for action upon the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... triumph for eight hundred and twenty years; and Quirinus, Father of our Rome, if it be not your pleasure that under my command this camp be kept clean from the stain of dishonour, grant at the least, I humbly beseech ye, that it never be defiled with the pollution of a Tutor or a Classicus; and to these soldiers of Rome give either innocence of heart or a speedy repentance before the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... days when people went to the opera for lack of the music-hall, not yet invented; when Costa still lorded it not over living musical London merely, but over all the deceased masters, and without compunction added trombones to Mozart's scores, and defiled every masterwork he touched with his unspeakable Costamongery; when Wagner was either unheard of or regarded as a dangerous lunatic and immoral person; and it shows every sign of having been written to please the opera-goers of those days. Curiously, the critics of the time, in the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman



Words linked to "Defiled" :   impure



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com