"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have to go back to the days of the cave-man to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat, and promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise self-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god might come in the night-time and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... fight against the growing independence of women. Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the recoil ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... were wont to smile! How many flowers of rhetoric have been wasted on me by the irony of fate! How many billets-doux, so perfumed and pretty, lie in my desk addressed to my nether garment! And how many mammas have encouraged Mr. Christopher, who will forever taboo Miss Bloggs! And then the parties and the picnics! Ah, my dear Orphea, what do I not sacrifice on the altar of my sex. But a truce ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world—all TABOO with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up. Nothing ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... neighboring table was enough to cause her father to finish his meal in a hurry and leave the restaurant. They never went to the British Church, and even such cosmopolitan spots as the aquarium or the museum were equally taboo. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the 12th, the ships were put under a taboo, by the chiefs: a solemnity, it seems, that was requisite to be observed, before Kariopoo, the king, paid his first visit to Captain Cook, after his return. He waited upon him the same day, on board the Resolution, attended by a large train, some of which ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... the Drive he alighted and walked slowly toward the Bivens palace. He had never been there before. He had always avoided the spot. He smiled now at the childishness of his attitude toward Nan. It seemed incredible that a sane man should taboo one of the most beautiful spots in the city, merely because a woman lived in the neighbourhood who once professed her ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... woman may say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any more ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Each of them had a roofed habitation, but neither could employ it for the ends of love. No. 8 was barred to George as much by his own dignity as by the invisible sword of the old man; and of course he could not break the immemorial savage taboo of a club by introducing a girl into it. The Duke of Wellington himself, though Candle Court was his purdah, could never have broken the taboo of even so modest a club as Pickering's. Owing to the absence of Agg, who had gone to Wales with part of her family, the studio ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... there are courts of justice for the settlement of controversies. Law and order have become stock phrases, dinned into their ears at every turn. The man who would settle his difficulty by trying the physical metal of his adversary is of the past. By the new order he is taboo as a savage. Individual self-restraint rings out in our vocabulary as nationally descriptive. The babe at the mother's knee learns first the virtue of it; the child at school is tutored to it soundly; the man in life is lectured with it ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... the negroes have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... time too when the hapless English traveller is expected to write like a young lady for young ladies, and never to notice what underlies the most superficial stratum. And I also maintain that the free treatment of topics usually taboo'd and held to be "alekta"—unknown and unfitted for publicity—will be a national benefit to an "Empire of Opinion," whose very basis and buttresses are a thorough knowledge by the rulers of the ruled. Men have been crowned with gold ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... inhibition; veto, disallowance; interdict, interdiction; injunction, estoppel[Law]; embargo, ban, taboo, proscription; index expurgatorius[Lat]; restriction &c. (restraint) 751; hindrance &c.706; forbidden fruit; Maine law [U.S.]. V. prohibit, inhibit; forbid, put one's veto upon, disallow, enjoin, ban, outlaw, taboo, proscribe, estop[Law]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... whispering "only take care. It is taboo there,"—and she made a sign with her hand towards Mrs. Langford, "and don't frighten Aunt Mary about Fred. O it is too late, Carey's doing the deed as ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... learning and eager to share it with youth he could find no one willing to listen to him—not even his children. In the midst of a vast city he was sadly solitary. None of his children appeared interested in his allusions to Hammurabi or Charlemagne, on the contrary, monologues of any kind were taboo in the artistic circles where Lorado reigned. We was too busy, we were all too busy with our small plans and daily struggles, to take any interest in Locke or Gibbon or Hume, therefore the ageing philosopher sat forlornly among his faded, musty books, dreaming ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," and the glances cast in my direction by the other customers indicate plainly enough that they ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the steel embroidery on a gray suede bag which lay on the table. She had got it the other day to serve as understudy for the gold bag which was "taboo" for public use at present. She was glad that the forest creature did not know, and never would know, that she had secretly bought back his gold bag. If he found out, it might be his turn ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... no better way to cultivate taste in words, than by constantly reading the best English. None of the words and expressions which are taboo in good society will be found in books of proved literary standing. But it must not be forgotten that there can be a vast difference between literary standing and popularity, and that many of the "best sellers" have no ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... threatened with destruction by an evil being, who would one day appear on its shores. To avert the fatality the place had been sanctified and set apart, under the protection of the gods and their priest. Here was the reason for the taboo, and for the extraordinary rigor with which it was enforced. Listening to her with the deepest interest, the Captain took her hand and pressed ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... McGuffey, who always drew the colour line, "I'm glad to hear that. But you ain't the only thing that's taboo around this packet. You can jest check that war club with the first mate, pendin' our better acquaintance. Hand it over, you black beggar, or I'll hit you a swat in the ear that'll hurt all your relations. And hereafter, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... all. And thenceforward the subject had been taboo. Even after seven years of intimate relations, Bat was still mystified on the subject, he was ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the fact of monogamy, and the severe prohibition of polygamy, in many times and places, due not to any natural instinct against the practice, but to consideration of the social well-being. We find the same when we study endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, and the control of marriage by taboo. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... effect it had on the natives was known. I was much displeased at this piece of wantonness and ordered the branch to be taken away; but the natives notwithstanding would not come near the place. They said the house was taboo, which I understand to signify interdicted, and that none of them might approach it till the taboo was taken off, which could only be done by Tinah. To take anything away from a Morai is regarded as a kind ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... not one of those who hold that the previous romances of married people should be taboo between them in after life. On the contrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may be derived from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and this is why we, in our old age (or rather in mine), find a still unfailing ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... landscape and sky, and how ugly lead lines look in a pale-blue sky! I get them like shapes of cloud, and still it cuts the sky up till it looks like 'random-rubble' masonry." Therefore large spaces of pale sky are "taboo," they will not do for glass, and you must modify your whole outlook, your whole composition, to suit what will do. If you must have sky, it must be like a Titian sky—deep blue, with well-defined masses of cloud—and you must ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... terror, show that something they dread is about to happen. Arrived before the temple, there is a cry from the multitude, who instantly set on them with their clubs. Taro tells us not to grieve; that some are prisoners taken in war, others guilty persons who have broken a taboo, and others the lowest of the people. While we stand shuddering, a concourse of people arrive bearing fruits of all sorts, and hogs, and dogs. The human victims are stripped of all their garments, and placed in rows on the altars; the priests now offer up some prayers to the hideous idol, and then ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... TABOO or TABU, a solemn prohibition or interdict among the Polynesians under which a particular person or thing is pronounced inviolable, and so sacred, the violation of which entails malediction at the hands ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... all English expressions eschew, And on "gentleman" place an especial taboo; Well, the facts of the case their decision confirm, For they've clearly no more any ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... were patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... saddled upon the country, against the expressed wish of at least two-thirds of the people, by the political chicanery of the same organization, and yet no one, during the long fight, thought to attack it directly; to have done so would have been to violate the taboo described. So when the returning soldiers began to reveal the astounding chicaneries of the Young Men's Christian Association, it was marvelled at for a few weeks, as Americans always marvel at successful pocket-squeezings, but no one sought the cause in the character of the pious ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... fable and romantic tale. Read the old English ballad of "The Marriage of Sir Gawain." So has the magic castle of Klingsor, surrounded by its beautiful garden. It is all the things which I enumerated in the chapter devoted to "Tannhauser." It is also the Underworld, where prevails the law of taboo—"Thou must," or "Thou shalt not;" whither Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily integrity. The sacred lance which ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and myself had a mighty good time in Vienna (I forgot to say that Emperor Francis Joseph agreed with me that Danilo and Alexander were quite impossible and that henceforth Balkan marriages should be taboo). ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... "Under what strange taboo am I placed?" said he, gayly, as he laid his hand on her shrinking arm. "I inquire for Helen,—she is ill, and cannot see me. I come to sun myself in your presence, and you fly me as if gods and men had set their mark on my brow. Child! child! what ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is celebrated after the Bladder Feast during the December moon. By the Yukon tribes it is repeated just before the opening of spring. During the day of the festival a taboo is placed on all work in the village, particularly that done with any sharp pointed tool which might wound some wandering ghost and bring ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... said Aurelle, "that his taboo is still effective. On the platform before he arrived there were three A.P.M.'s bustling about and chasing away the few spectators. As the train came into the station one of them ran up to me and said, 'Are you the ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... austere habit with all her badges of office. They were attended by the other Vestals, who went through traditional pacings, haltings and prayers. The Temple of Vesta was an enclosure from which all men were rigidly excluded. The only exceptions to this immemorial taboo were a few of the more important Pontiffs, and they might only enter on specified festal days, and then must be in their full regalia. Also, in general, the temple was closed against all women except the Vestals and their assistants. It was open, however, from sunrise on the morning of each ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Democritus, Diogenes and others—was conducted on a large scale, but the human body was still taboo. Aristotle confesses that the "inward parts of man are known least of all," and he had never seen the human kidneys or uterus. In his physiology, I can refer to but one point—the pivotal question of the heart and blood vessels. To Aristotle the heart was the central organ controlling the circulation, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding to ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... embroidery done by old women in former days, but now almost a lost art. Tambayang was used for the uppers of sleeves for fiesta, and it formed the scarf worn by mothers to carry the baby. There is a taboo on young women doing this special ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... and variety, what could destroy and taboo both more effectually than the rigid and rigorous demands of a formal set of examinations prepared, as a rule, by pedantic specialists who know practically nothing of the fundamental problems and ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... Amy in, and was making my bow when Miss Leare stopped me. "Come too," she said cordially: "Amy's brother surely need not be taboo. Shall we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... appointed for that service, and it is death to trample over or disturb any part of this consecrated ground. The wisdom and utility of this regulation must be obvious to every one. But, however useful this taboo system is to the natives, it is a great inconvenience to a stranger who is rambling over the country, for if he does not use the greatest caution, and procure a guide, he may get himself into a serious dilemma before his rambles be over, which had nearly been the case with our party this day. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... of previous eras of quasi-religious experience. Totemism not discernible. Taboo, and the means adopted of escaping from it; both survived at Rome into an age of real religion. Examples: impurity (or holiness) of new-born infants; of a corpse; of women in certain worships; of strangers; of criminals. Almost complete absence of blood-taboo. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... arise from the same (more or less unconscious) working of the mind as that caused by some unexpected neglect of those social "taboos" or laws of behaviour which we call modesty, decency, and propriety. They either cause indignation and resentment in the onlooker at the neglect of respect for the taboo, or, on the contrary, the natural man, long oppressed by pomposity or by the fetters of propriety imposed by society, suddenly feels a joyous sense of escape from his bonds, and bursts into laughter—the laughter of a return to vitality and nature—which is enormously encouraged and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... special hate toward that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... he said quietly; "your congratulations are premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo for three years—at ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... sea. "And are there any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?" he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah or so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "is there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up my ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the most dangerous class are confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as a prison for dangerous Confederates; and here later three ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the still-room—drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, hens, and the like, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... of complaint about secrecy, but in the end avarice won over taboo and the door to the holy of holies was opened for Jason while two of the sciuloj, with bared and ready daggers, stood at his sides. At almost the same instant Jason looked in through the ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... people fierce, and reacts upon the political atmosphere. The necessity of inculcating Communism produces a hot-house condition, where every breath of fresh air must be excluded: people are to be taught to think in a certain way, and all free intelligence becomes taboo. The country comes to resemble an immensely magnified Jesuit College. Every kind of liberty is banned as being "bourgeois"; but it remains a fact that intelligence languishes where thought is ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... cannot express themselves, and moreover there is a very strict and peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is nasty and bestial. But it conceals very real if very fitful emotions; ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Taboo among these Good People, although Father could Fletcherize about 10 cents' worth of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... former series" (with the low Baiame myths) "were all such legends as are told to the black picaninnies; among the present are some they would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred things, taboo to the young". The blacks draw the line which I am said ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... discourteous to mention money at table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a number of firms the executives have lunch together, meeting ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... because water had been spilled upon the cloth, and still another leave the dining-car, with the announcement that he would forego his meal because informed by the conductor that men's shirt waists without coats were taboo. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... trunks were taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night studying how little ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... recognized in practice. But in theory it is admitted that an adult person in pursuit of knowledge must not be refused it on the ground that he would be better or happier without it. Parents and priests may forbid knowledge to those who accept their authority; and social taboo may be made effective by acts of legal persecution under cover of repressing blasphemy, obscenity, and sedition; but no government now openly forbids its subjects to pursue knowledge on the ground that knowledge is in itself a bad thing, or that it is possible ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... turned toward the distant flame, and waved his hands round and round three times before him. "Let this be for you all a great taboo," he said, glancing once more toward his awe-struck followers. "Now the mysteries are over. Tu-Kila-Kila will sleep. He has eaten of human flesh. He has drunk of cocoanut rum and of new kava. He has brought back his ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... barrier probably belongs to the historical acquisitions of humanity and like other moral taboos it must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. (Cf. my work, Totem and Taboo, 1913.) Psychoanalytic studies show, however, how intensively the individual struggles with the incest temptations during his development and how frequently he puts them into ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... It is maintained, and with reason, that they are fonder of their own society than women are. Men delight to breakfast together, to take luncheon together, to dine together, to sup together. They rejoice in clubs devoted exclusively to their service, as much taboo to women as a trappist monastery. Women are not quite so clannish. There are not very many women's clubs in the world; it is not certain that those which do exist are very brilliant or very entertaining. Women seldom give ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... means adopted by the lovers to ensure one another's constancy seem very like the methods of taboo. The knot that may not or cannot be untied has many counterparts in ancient lore, and the girdle that no man but the accepted lover may loose is reminiscent of the days when a man placed such a girdle around his wife or sweetheart ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... publicly withdrew her name from the competition. There it was, up on the games notice-board—a girl's name with a black pencil mark drawn through it. All who ran might read, and a good many did run to read. Clearly the April Fool had become the object of the most unanimous taboo ever set in motion on a ship. Her name was mud. Even the men did not rally to her aid, though she had been popular enough with them before. There are few men who will not crumple up before a phalanx of women with daggers in their hands and feathers in their hair; even as the big-game hunter thinks ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ideas, only still further extended, may be detected in the sacredness attached to certain animals by so many nations of antiquity. It is now generally admitted that this 'sacredness' has two sides. A sacred animal may be 'taboo,' that is, so sacred that it must not be touched, much less killed or eaten; and, on the other hand, its original sanctity may lead people to regard it as "unclean," something again to be avoided, because of the power to ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... principles. It is with these general principles that the moralist is concerned. The anthropologist may regard it as his duty to spend much labor in the attempt to discover why this or that act, this or that article of food, happens in a given community to be taboo to certain persons. The student of ethics is not bound to take up the detailed investigation of such matters. Human nature, in its general constitution, is much the same in different races and peoples. The influence of environment is everywhere ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... She had listened to all the talk about the fire, the incendiary, the pursuit, and its dreadful possibilities of lynching, with the keenest of distress. Now the Colonel's calm declaration that, presently, they would be off to the race-track which he had sworn forever to taboo, shifted her mind suddenly from ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... to a sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one to enter upon ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of it," Stranor Sleth told him. "See, the rabbit's sacred to Yat-Zar. Not taboo; just sacred. They have to use a specially consecrated knife to kill them—consecrating rabbit knives has always been an item of temple revenue—and they must say a special prayer before eating them. We could have got around the rest of it, even the Battle of Jorm—punishment ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... had discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins of the Humans. These, ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... exotics of the first period withered and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the word Sex was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly the sex note—(as I will call it for want of a better word)—disappeared from the press. Psychology was pronounced ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... feeling anywhere in England when I arrived here in the year 1846, one would suppose that it existed most strongly at Oxford. And so it did, no doubt, particularly among theologians. With them German meant much the same as unorthodox, and unorthodox was enough at that time to taboo a man at Oxford. In one of the sermons preached in these early days at St. Mary's, German theologians such as Strauss and Neander (sic) were spoken of as fit only to be drowned in the German Ocean, before they reached the shores of England. I do not add what followed: the story is too well ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... palpable that I told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that the people were superstitious—it is false. They have no taboo about days; they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned psychical rubbish, no damned "folk-lore," ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... regard the 'taboo,'" said Browne, "as an arbitrary and oppressive heathen custom. But how ignorant and prejudiced we sometimes are in regard to foreign institutions! We must be very careful when we get there about introducing rash innovations upon the settled order ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... relief, as in nagging, whining, crying, or grumbling, is taboo. If you are tired or irritable, you can rest or exercise for restoration, as in the days before marriage. To pour out troubles or act out annoyance without restraint before the mate is to wear out his or her spontaneity and dry up the source ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... there is a good reason for it and then it should be done with apologies. It is not courteous to ask a great many questions and personal ones are always taboo. One should be careful not to use over and over and over again the same words and phrases and one should not fall in the habit of asking people to repeat their remarks. Argument should be avoided and contradicting is always discourteous. When it seems ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... a very despicable bulletin of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent TIMES article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still TABOO; the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article. 'Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day, with a bad headache, and the mail going out. However, it must ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his wife only till daybreak'—like Cupid—and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a} ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Religieuse, the paradox (he was himself very fond of paradoxes,[379] though not of the wretched things which now disgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of the greatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; and even if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. It originated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of the silly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and early nineteenth century delighted.[380] It is, at ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... fool a duke, in hope With Heaven's taboo to palter; Then told a priest, who told the Pope, Who damned her from ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... by the river. In a short time there was a shifting, wonderful, numbing veil streaming silent from the grey heavens. It was almost a relief when dark came and wrapped the great, lonely, ghostly countryside. This night the men disregarded the taboo and burned every ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of the Knight of the Swan who came to the succour of the youthful Duchess of Brabant is based upon motives more or less common in folklore—the enchantment of human beings into swans, and the taboo whereby, as in the case of Cupid and Psyche, the husband forbids the wife to question him as to his identity or to look upon him. The myth has been treated by both French and German romancers, but the latter attached it loosely ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... the principle of submission, has been the doctrine that the sex life is in itself unclean. It follows, therefore, that all knowledge of the sex physiology or sex functions is also unclean and taboo. Upon this teaching has been founded woman's subjection by the church and, largely through the influence of the church, her subjection by the state to the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... Buck," he said, "take my tip an' don't try no fool stunts around that girl. Which she once belongs to Whistlin' Dan Barry an' therefore she's got the taboo mark on her for any other man. Everything he's ever owned is ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand |
