"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor. Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed of its rotation—a ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... inheritance—the risk of the taint—of transmitting it. Her father's erratic brilliancy became more than eccentricity before I knew him. I would have told you that had I dreamed that you ever could have thought of marrying Alixe Varian. But how could I know you would meet her out there in the Orient! It was—your cable to ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... been a revolution,[55] properly so called; there never has even been one grand national rebellion. The people, tho often lawless, are never free. Among them we find still preserved that peculiar taint of barbarism which makes men prefer occasional disobedience to systematic liberty. Certain feelings there are of our common nature, which even their slavish loyalty can not eradicate, and which, from time to time, urge them to resist ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... mastery; To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled. Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned Yesterday ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... the taint out of a thief on a cross. And I was never so much of a man as you now make me, and, I gad, I'm going to be worthy of your friendship. Let me remind you of something: That old uncle of mine in Kentucky will leave me his money. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the people in these parts, than I'm like you, and it has allers been a mystery to me why they should stay. But I s'pose they know their own bissiniss best. They're allers givin' to the poor, and they try to make the settlers more decent every way, but 'taint ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... me beyond expression. I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our government. 'Taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and petitions (which ain't petited) ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an obscure doorway, traversed a mean hall with a dirty gas-jet at the turn and came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanish inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,—a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,—that it suffers less than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith; but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,—hardly ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, as also with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, we have to take care for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by hardening into depraved ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... my account With all my imperfections on my head: O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire: Adieu, adieu! ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... wrote, continue to see them a little; Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hote and restaurant Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even: Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected; Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... indeed even things which have been stolen or violently possessed can be acquired by usucapion, as for instance after they have again come under the power of their real owner: for by this they are relieved from the taint which had attached to them, and so ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of training in the Art of Sight Recognition, so as to enfeeble their intellects by depriving them of their pure and colourless homes. Once subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish Circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the Father and the Mother would the Circular infant find problems for the exercise of its understanding—problems ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... "'Taint no manner of use," answered Mason; "with the current runnin' like this, he'd be ten mile away and more, by this time, if it was him, or more likely out at sea, as the tide would have met the river by this time. But you see, sir, it mightn't have been ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that he, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave him, as God gave his kind, Freer than they from fleshly taint: I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim: A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take His crown, ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... responsibilities as agencies in bringing to pass this desirable condition. If the teacher or parent can, somehow, cause the boy of to-day to visualize his own grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in every human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy will wish to achieve that sort of immortality. He will not consider ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... your reply," rejoined Aram; "but note how far more pure and lovely are its waters in these retreats, than when washing the walls of the reeking town, receiving into its breast the taint of a thousand pollutions, vexed by the sound, and stench, and unholy perturbation of men's dwelling-place. Now it glasses only what is high or beautiful in nature—the stars or the leafy banks. The wind that ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pitifully ignorant. I thought that love had come to me. Girls are so eager for love. They snatch at the shadow of it.—That is what I did.—I am not trying to plead for myself.—Some things are not to be forgiven.—Somewhere in my nature there was a taint—a plague-spot.—If life is given me, I shall find it and root it out. I only ask for time to do that. But meanwhile I have done what I could. I have told you the truth. I have set you free. I have given ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... is quick to taint, and never should be kept long before cooking. If you have the slightest doubt about pork, it is best to reject it, for unlike other meat which may be quite wholesome and usable, though not of precisely prime quality, pork must be in really ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... search of whom they sought: Him there they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams; Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, Blown up with high conceits ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Tagliacozzo, were badly beaten at Colle di Val d'Elsa in 1269, and their commander, Provenzano Salvani (whom Dante afterwards met in Purgatory), taken and slain. In the following year this city too was purged of the Ghibeline taint, and a few Florentine citizens who were caught were, after a reference to Charles, duly beheaded. Pisa held out somewhat longer, and was able to expel its Guelfs in 1275, among them the famous Count Ugolino de' Gherardeschi, a member of the house of Donoratico, one of ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... commentary, but it is somewhat surprising to find an accurate scholar like Tennyson guilty of the absurdity of representing Cleopatra as of gipsy complexion. The daughter of Ptolemy Aulates and a lady of Pontus, she was of Greek descent, and had no taint at all of African intermixtures. See Peacock's remarks in 'Gryll Grange', p. 206, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... own account. And in an examination of this sort we find that Schopenhauer stands the test pretty well, if not with complete success. It strikes us that he suffers perhaps a little from a hereditary taint, for we know that there is an unmistakable predisposition to hypochondria in his family; we know, for instance, that his paternal grandmother became practically insane towards the end of her life, that two of her children suffered from some sort of mental incapacity, and that a third, Schopenhauer's ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... beyond possibility of misconception. The records he declared saturated with fable and absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical superstition at its worst, and the Church was the arch-curse and infamy. Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... rich men in it, you may depend. Great folks! Well, come, that's a good joke, that bangs the bush. No, my friend,' says I, 'the meat that's at the top of the barrel, is sometimes not so good as that that's a little further down; the upper and lower eends are plaguy apt to have a little taint in 'em, but the middle is ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... ceremonies of the order forbid the presence of women;" and "the law proclaiming her exclusion is as unrepealable as that of the Medes and Persians." (P. 145.) Again: "Masonry requires candidates for its honors to have been free by birth; no taint of slavery or dishonor must rest upon their origin." (P. 143.) Once more this author remarks: "A candidate for Masonry must be physically perfect. As under the Jewish economy no person who was maimed or defective ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... was in little danger of injury, much less death. Kapolski, reckless, a despiser of all things American, eagerly consented to the plan, and Ugo saw a way to rid himself of a dangerous rival without the taint of suspicion besmirching his cloak. Sallaconi was an accomplished swordsman, but it would have been unwise to send him against Quentin. Ugo himself was a splendid shot and an expert with the blade, and it was not cowardice ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Money, properly speaking, has no more character than axes of stone, bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves any mark on it. The Solomon Islanders are expert merchants and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... to decay, comes to be infested with vermin, so the spirit, if allowed to remain idle and inactive, will become infested by spiritual vermin which will taint and destroy it; and the savage idea that disease is caused by spiritual ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... fathers court he graced, When social mirth unbent his serious soul, O'er the full banquet, and the sprightly bowl); He then from Ephyre, the fair domain Of Ilus, sprung from Jason's royal strain, Measured a length of seas, a toilsome length, in vain. For, voyaging to learn the direful art To taint with deadly drugs the barbed dart; Observant of the gods, and sternly just, Ilus refused to impart the baneful trust; With friendlier zeal my father's soul was fired, The drugs he knew, and gave the boon desired. Appear'd he now with such heroic port, As then conspicuous ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... feel ashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I am ashamed of my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. To tell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness in my blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myself irresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry, and that of this afternoon was ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the Papacy is contact with death, carrying the taint of its corruption over rising Italy, and educating her masses in falsehood,—not because cardinals, bishops, and monks traded in indulgences three centuries ago,—not because this or that Pope trafficked in cowardly concessions to princes, or in the matrimony ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to Mrs. Scott, until the sedate colonel's wife admitted to herself that no such pleasant voyage had fallen to her lot since the days when she had started for India on her wedding journey. Weldon had the consummate tact to keep the taint of the filial from his chivalry. His attentions to Mrs. Scott and Ethel differed in degree, but not in kind, and Mrs. Scott adored him accordingly. One by one, the languid days dropped into the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Scyros.'—Thus reviled, With such an evil echo in mine ear, I voyage homeward, robbed of mine own right By that vile offset of an evil tree[4]. Yet less I blame him than the men in power. For every multitude, be it army or state, Takes tone from those who rule it, and all taint Of disobedience from bad counsel springs. I have spoken. May the Atridae's enemy Be dear to Heaven, as he is ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... see why you laugh," Mrs. Burke responded, chuckling to herself. "'Taint polite to look surprised when a woman says she's a-goin' to get married. Every woman under ninety-eight has expectations. While there's life there's hope that some man will make a fool of himself. But unless I miss my guess, you don't catch me surrenderin' my independence. As long as I have ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... spirit sweetly mix'd. Her modesty, her chiefest grace, The cestus clasping Venus' side, How potent to deject the face Of him who would affront its pride! Wrong dares not in her presence speak, Nor spotted thought its taint disclose Under the protest of a cheek Outbragging Nature's boast the rose. In mind and manners how discreet; How artless in her very art; How candid in discourse; how sweet The concord of her lips and heart; How simple and how circumspect; How subtle ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... liar all the time. I shall never quit liquor; I can't and I tell you," he whispered this fiercely, "they know that I can't, and they know why I can't. Oh! you need not recoil; we are not the first family that has inherited a taint; and I am the one unfortunate in whom that taint has broken forth. Let me tell you a secret; since my first potation, my mother has never once remonstrated with me; never once upbraided; my proud, high tempered ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... not," rejoined Edith, emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... only wealth of life. The emphasis in education is on the wrong things. So with much ado the innocent child is "corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of the world," which he must again unlearn and become a little child once more in the Kingdom of God.[35] The taint, however, is not in the native structure of the soul, it is not through a biological transmission, it is due to false training—it is from the parents' lives rather than their loins. Let parents, he says, who desire holy children ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... had a wife and two children to take care of and I never cleared forty dollars a month. I've been a lifetime working myself up to what I am and you jump into the game, inexperienced, green as a cucumber, and want to hog the persimmons at the start. 'Taint fair, 'taint right; I'm an honest man; I want to treat everybody right. You're taking advantage of me. It's the principle of ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the children of Adam, the soul of Mary was never subject to sin, even in the first moment of its infusion into the body. She alone was exempt from the original taint. This immunity of Mary from original sin is exclusively due to the merits of Christ, as the Church expressly declares. She needed a Redeemer as well as the rest of the human race and therefore was "redeemed, but in a more sublime manner."(235) Mary is as much indebted to the precious ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... in high and holy dream Of a white Love that hath no earthly taint, So rapt within his vision he did seem Less like a ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... she cultivated and sermonized, and there was a vast amount of merriment, wit, and gaiety, and a corresponding bill to pay. That supper led to others. And through it all Victurnien worshiped her as an angel. Mme. de Maufrigneuse for him was still an angel, untouched by any taint of earth; an angel at the Varietes, where she sat out the half-obscene, vulgar farces, which made her laugh; an angel through the cross-fire of highly-flavored jests and scandalous anecdotes, which enlivened a stolen frolic; a languishing angel in the latticed ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... inly indignant at the fate of my innocent friend. Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing tale, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... revealed the articulations of form as no artist before him had ever dared. His women are never young, foolish, timid girls—they are Amazons; and his men are the kind that lead nations out of captivity. The soft, the pretty, the yielding, were far from him. There is never a suggestion of taint or double meaning; all is frank, open, generous, honest and fearless. His figures ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... ascendency that waited on their efforts. In truth, Mr Brooke belongs not to the present generation. His energy, his perseverance, which nothing can subdue, his courage which no dangers can appal, his simplicity which no possession of power and authority can taint, his integrity and honest mind, all belong to a more masculine and primitive age, and constitute a rare exception for our respect and gratitude in this. We take the earliest opportunity afforded us to pay our humble tribute to worth that ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and other such rich qualities, I need not decipher; only it rests for me to conclude in one word, that she is innocent. If then, fortune, who triumphs in a variety of miseries, hath presented some envious person (as minister of her intended stratagem) to taint Rosalynde with any surmise of treason, let him be brought to her face, and confirm his accusation by witnesses; which proved, let her die, and Alinda will execute the massacre. If none can avouch any confirmed relation of ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... 'Why, yes, I have just died, as they call it, and 'taint so bad a change after all; only I suppose there'll be dry times here for the want of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... sufficiently repaid his brethren's hatred with love, it was no good being sorry, for sorrow was an evil, a passing to lesser perfection, diminished vitality. Let him rather rejoice that the real work of his life—his Ethica, which he was working out on pure geometrical principles—would have no taint of personality, would be without his name, and would not even be published till death had removed the last possibility of personal interest in its fortunes. "For," as he was teaching in the book itself, "those who desire to aid others by counsel or deed to the common enjoyment of the chief ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... for this approval of the people; but, while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... place. Her first impression was thankfulness that her lot had been cast in such a spot. But it was largely because of the surroundings, essentially primitive, the clean air, guiltless of smoke taint, the aromatic odors from the forest that ranged for unending miles on every hand. For the first time in her life, she was beyond hearing of the clang of street cars, the roar of traffic, the dirt and smells of a city. It seemed good. She had ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... dat de way you feel 'bout um, 'taint no use fer ter pester wid um. It done got so now dat folks don't b'lieve nothin' but what dey kin see, an' mo' dan half un um won't b'lieve what dey see less'n dey kin feel un it too. But dat ain't de way wid dem what's ol' 'nough fer ter know. Ef I'd 'a' tol' you 'bout de fishes swimmin' ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Plains and Waters—the roving, scattered children of the trade—Bourgeois and voyageur alike heading their lithe and dusky broods. Here touched and fused all habitudes of life, the blended races, knit by ties conserving every divergence of pursuit, all forms of faith and thought, free from assail or taint begotten of contact with aught other than themselves. A people whose unchecked primal freedom was afterward strengthened by the light hand of laws that conserved what they most desired; whose personal relations with their rulers were of such primitive ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Pike County from denying the fact and fighting any one who asserted it. The great preacher, Peter Cartwright, used to denounce Eastern men roundly in his sermons, calling them "imps who lived on oysters" instead of honest corn-bread and bacon. The taint of slavery, the contagion of a plague they had not quite escaped, was on the people of Illinois. They were strong enough to rise once in their might and say they would not have slavery among them. But in the petty details of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... into the womb of the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of a new organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creative energy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when it passed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thus wonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost power of mankind. He came to redeem man; and, therefore, He took ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... and whirling and pirouetting of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those odious tunes, which ram themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing to ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... said the visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me out ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... commenced without sufficient reason, and good Frenchmen, who do not know why the thing is done, disapprove. But presently blood is spilled. Good sense and justice dictate that this spilled blood should taint those responsible for an unjust enterprise. But jingoism says "French blood has been spilled: Honor is at stake!" And millions of gold, which is the unit of labor, millions of men, are sacrificed to ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... of those harsh penances called prajapatya the twice-born man must perform annually, to purify him from the unknown taint of illicit food; but he must do particular penance ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... said a word of blame to me on the subject; and for why? I'll tell you—it's just because he knows and feels down in his heart of hearts as I were not to blame. But he must be angry with somebody—'taint pleasant to be angry with one's own self; he's never been used to be angry with Master Walter; 'tain't no use being angry with Miss Huntingdon, 'cos she'd look the fiercest man as ever lived into a good temper—the mere sight of her face is enough for that, let alone her words. So ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... right here. I know I got for die some day. He keep me distance,[B] but when I look an see my flesh, I tenk de Lord for ebbery year what pass on my head. Taint my goodness, tis His goodness. Nothing but the pureness of heart will ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... —at a little village in a twilight full of the petrol of many cars and the wholesome flavour of healthy troops. There is no better guide to camp than one's own thoughtful nose; and though I poked mine everywhere, in no place then or later did it strike that vile betraying taint of underfed, unclean men. And the same ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... that pullet on his conscience yet, unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my train ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying of every power from the taint of sin He ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... ill parted, by a paltry screen Of paper'd lath, or curtain dropt between; Daughters and sons to yon compartments creep, And parents here beside their children sleep: Ye who have power, these thoughtless people part, Nor let the ear be first to taint the heart. Come! search within, nor sight nor smell regard; The true physician walks the foulest ward. See on the floor, where frousy patches rest! What nauseous fragments on yon fractured chest! What downy dust beneath yon window-seat! ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... the steps, is left open, but for what reason I never could make out. The further end of this vault opens into another great vault, which I shall presently describe. The passage is very dry, but the air has a cold "gravey" taint, very unpleasant to inhale. At the second landing there is a sort of recess, into which rubbish from the garden above is shot down through a spout or funnel. At the top of the passage is a doorway opening upon the back of a house in Mason-street. This passage or tunnel was evidently intended ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... hearing through the senses, to the Being in whom all things are and have life! Ere two years old, she, whose dream is now with us, all over the small silvan world, that beheld the revelation, how evanescent! of her pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of sin—inherited from those who disobeyed in Paradise—seemed from her fair clay to have been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. So pious people almost believed, looking on her so unlike all other children, in the serenity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... separated, even in a small degree, her civil from her military power. All states of the world, however great, fall at once when they use mercenary armies; and although it is a less instant form of error (because involving no national taint of cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal—it is the error especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet know all the calamitous consequences—to take away the best blood and strength of the nation, all the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was added an adorable friendliness and confidence, free from the slightest taint of self-consciousness or the least blemish of coquetry. Intelligent, yet modest to the verge of shyness, eager yet reserved, warm hearted yet charmingly impersonal with him, he realized that she was finding, with ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... Reformation. They met with severe critics in the merciless Inquisition, and sad was the fate of a luckless author who found himself opposed to the opinions of that dread tribunal. There was no appeal from its decisions, and if a taint of heresy, or of what it was pleased to call heresy, was detected in any book, the doom of its author was sealed, and the ingenuity of the age was well-nigh exhausted in devising methods for administering the largest amount of torture ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... a faith to which we all were born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope! She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities—very much like poor Decoud—or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... and extremely bullied by her mother, had yielded, invidiously as it might have struck me, to Ray Limbert's suit, which Mrs. Stannace was not the woman to stomach. Mrs. Stannace was seldom the woman to do anything: she had been shocked at the way her children, with the grubby taint of their father's blood (he had published pale Remains or flat Conversations of his father) breathed the alien air of authorship. If not the daughter, nor even the niece, she was, if I am not mistaken, the second cousin of a hundred earls and a great ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... er howdy-do— Jes' the same to me and you; 'Taint worth while to make no fuss, 'Cause the job's put up on us! Some One's runnin' this concern That's got nothin' else to learn: Ef He's willin', we'll pull through— Say good-by ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... The taint of alcoholism was in his blood, and matrimony and parentage were not for him. In the morning he would go straight to Enid's father and admit that, although ties reaching back into her childhood and his had to be broken, yet it was impossible for the ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... of laugh and those words of mine just used, are not Martian, they don't belong to these rarefied beings here. They have a human or earthly taint, and they frighten me. I seem so lonely sometimes. My stray fun which I once enjoyed on earth must somehow be forgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play, but I must keep up the high key and act like the rest. Indeed for the most of the time I feel ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... overmantel, columned and bemirrored, upon the shelves of which reposed sorrowful examples of Doulton ware and a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. It was a room divorced from all sense of youth and live beings, sunless, grave, unlovely; an arid room that bore to the nostrils the taint and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... the commission found that in their daily operations, military installations were "generally free from the taint of racial discrimination."[20-79] It confirmed the general assessments of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Veterans Committee among others, pointing out that black and white servicemen not only worked side by side, but also mingled in off-duty hours.[20-80] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the last degree of actual crime in each case by the good taste of the author, feeling that such chapters had better not be written voluntarily in fiction, or perchance by his love for his proud maidens, whom he cannot taint with degradation in act, even if the sin upon their souls be wellnigh as black in the eyes of a strict judge, arbiter alike of the seen and the unseen. Such are hardly the conceptions wherewith the brain of a cultivated woman would teem. It were too glaring treason to her sex and to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there What long-enduring hearts could do In that world-earthquake, Waterloo! Mighty seaman, tender and true, And pure as he from taint of craven guile, O savior of the silver-coasted isle, O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine, If love of country move thee there at all, Be glad ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... you are to remember, as of course you do, for Reason forgets nothing, that you are to think neither of brothers or of sisters. You are entirely to drop your feelings as Agatha, and to be pure Reason undefiled by mortal taint. You are to say, whether, were you, Reason, placed as I am now, you would marry this unreasonable young man as soon as he gets to Chatillon, which means tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that at the very latest. Now, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... is not their education which is to blame, but the inborn sinfulness of their corrupt and fallen natures. Such an education is regarded by those who advocate it as pre-eminently useful. There is no nonsense about it, no cant of idealism, no taint of socialism. It keeps the "lower orders" in their places, and forbids them to dream of rising above "that state of life unto which it" has pleased "God to call them." As it is a reductio ad absurdum ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... duty of protection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven. And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification, and that the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh, but men say, Shri Krishna counselled the telling of a lie! My brothers, can you not see beneath the illusion? What is there in this world that the Supreme does not do? There is no life but His, no Self but His, nothing ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... float and stones that fall, we deduce the great law of moral gravitation, which binds spirit to spirit, and all souls to the best. Recognition of that law is worship. We rejoice in it without a taint of selfishness. We adore it with entire satisfaction. Worship is neither belief nor hope, but this certainty of repose upon Perfection. We explore over our heads and under our feet a harmony that is only enriched by dissolving discords. The drag of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... I s'pose we must call a gentleman 'mister' who speaks so fine an' looks so fine, tho' he be's an Injun—it's mighty easy to settle who hut the bird. That thing's a fifty or tharabouts; Killbar's a ninety. 'Taint hard to tell which has plugged the varmint. We'll soon see;" and, so saying, the hunter stepped off towards the tree on which hung the gruya, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... with the political leaders of the Democratic Party in or out of this Hall—the Seymours, the Woods, the Vallandighams, the Woodwards, and their indorsers, who hold and control the Democratic Party here, and taint it with Treason, till it is a stench in the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... But a stain on it stands of the life-blood offered for thine. What thanks shall we give that are mixed not and marred with dread For the price that has ransomed thine own with thine own child's head? For a taint there cleaves to the people redeemed with blood, [Str. 2. And a plague to the blood-red hand. The rain shall not cleanse it, the dew nor the sacred flood That blesses the glad live land. In the darkness of earth beneath, in the ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... drive away a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of a somewhat grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the surface, a taint of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had first come out the change in her had been a shock to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since then, however, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... a germ with innumerable progeny throughout the system, the enlargement out of all reason of an existing organ—means disease. In the mind, disease begins when any passion asserts itself as an independent centre of thought and action.... What is a taint in the mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has started the original idea of becoming itself the centre of the human system. The sexual organs may start a similar idea. Here are distinct threats, menaces made against the ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... white asses laden with the freight Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold and balm, To bribe my will: I'll bid them chase him forth, Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise On my secure resolve. Ay, 'tis secure: And therefore let him come to spread his freight. For firmness hath its appetite and craves The stronger lure, more strongly to resist; Would know the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... name of you both, that whoever enters these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man, and that he may suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched." Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... extraordinary degree "unspotted from the world." His tendency was to think—or at any rate to speak and act—as if everyone were as simply good as himself, as transparent, as conscientious, as free from all taint of self-seeking. This habit, it has been truly said, "disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life, which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice"; but it is pre-eminently characteristic of those ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... tone of a man whose mind is settled, "'tain't 'cos the youngster looked like lively comp'ny, fur he didn't. 'Taint 'cos Grump wanted to do him a good turn, fur 'tain't his style. Cons'kently, thar's sumthin' wrong. Tom, I ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... phase in her life. She had something to love and respect which had no taint of this present world and the worldliness reigning therein. She had entered humbly and heartily into the simple life at the curate's home, where she had been so ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... wines. And quite undeservedly so, for as a matter of fact these lighter wines are most unfairly neglected. They simply require to be properly fined and carefully attended to. The casks in which they are shipped should be thoroughly cleansed and treated before being filled, in order to take out any taint of spirits they may contain; or any excess of tannin, which is always present in Dew wood. If these different matters be looked to they will improve to a wonderful extent on the voyage, and after being allowed a week or fortnight's ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This new soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... time? Eternity, to which the duration of ages is but as an atom to a world! Shall I not, when this momentary separation is past, again meet ALMEIDA to part no more? and shall not a purer flame than burns upon the earth, unite us? Even at this moment, her mind, which not the frauds of sorcery can taint or alienate, is mine: that pleasure which she reserved for me, cannot be taken by force; it is in the consent alone that it subsists; and from the joy that she feels, and from that only, proceeds the joy she ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... hooked at the end for tearing flesh, and long, strong, broad wings upon which they float in the air for hours at a time without any visible flapping. They are scavengers and do great service to mankind by devouring dead animal matter, that, if allowed to remain, would soon taint the atmosphere. Their eyesight and sense of smell is very acute. They do not, except in very unusual cases, capture their prey, but feed upon that which has been killed ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... association between prostitution and feeble-mindedness is intimate. Everywhere, there can be no doubt, the ranks of prostitution contain a considerable proportion of women who were, at the very outset, in some slight degree feeble-minded, mentally and morally a little blunted through some taint of inheritance.[34] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... subsequently to Horace, is represented by Persius and Juvenal. Persius (34-62 A.D.) early attached himself to the Stoic philosophy. He was pure in mind, and free from the corrupt taint of an immoral age. Although Lucilius was, to a certain extent, his model, he does not attack vice with the biting severity of the old satirist, nor do we find in his writings the enthusiastic indignation which burns in the verses of Juvenal. His purity of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... as well as lobbyist and boss in a real sense long before that term was coined. His capacity for politics amounted to genius. He never sought office; and his memory has been left singularly free from taint. He became the editor of the Albany Journal and made it the leading Whig "up-state" paper. His friend Seward, whom he had lifted into the Governor's chair, passed on to the United States Senate; and when Horace Greeley ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... with Aunty Boone till you come back. Girls can be trusted anywhere, but it may take the whole Army of the West, yet, to follow up and look after two little runty boys. And let me tell you something, Bev, something I heard Aunty Boone say this morning." She said: "Taint goin' to be more 'n a minnit now till them boys grows up an' grows together, same size, same age. They been little and big, long as they goin' to be. Now you know what ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... the lower classes it soon becomes degraded to, or amalgamated with, some form of polytheism more or less pronounced, and either secret or declared. Even the Jews, the nation the most conspicuous for its supposed uncompromising adherence to a monotheistic creed, cannot claim absolute freedom from taint in this respect; for in the country places, far from the centre of worship, the people were constantly following after strange gods; and even some of their most notable worthies were ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... executed on that ram. Elhannon killed and et one of his sheep, then he paid me up and took his ram back. If I had a thousand boys I wouldn't name narry dang one of them Elhannon. I got another little case what comes up next fall in the Bell Circit Court, 'taint much. I low ter pay a good young lawyer about twenty five bucks to git me off. 'Bout a month ago I shot Caleb Spencer as dead as a kit mackrel. I was going over Salt Trace to the mill on the river. When I got on top of the divide he ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... their men safe off and out o' way—iss, and wasn't thought none the wus of, neither. You'm growed mighty fancikul all to wance 'bout what us is to do and what us dussn't think o'. I'm sick o' such talk. 'Taint nawthin' else fra' mornin' to night but Adam this and Adam that. I'm darned if 'tis to be wondered at if the maid plays 'ee false: by gosh! I'd do the trick, if I was she, 'fore I'd put up with such fantads from you or either man like 'ee. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... reason of their vileness, they were guilty of many barbarous usages. "These wretches," says Dr. Hodges, "out of greediness to plunder the dead, would strangle their patients, and charge it to the distemper in their throats. Others would secretly convey the pestilential taint from sores of the infected to those who were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned miscreants from prosecuting their avaricious purposes by all methods their wickedness could invent; who, although they were without witnesses to accuse them, yet ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... was soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... awful cold. Its so cold that the tooth past rolls right offen your brush in the morning. The Captin has a cold in his nose. He says he wont take the men out in such bad wether as today. Taint nothin gainst him Mable but I hope he has a ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... in a man, Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, Or any taint of vice. Twelfth Night, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... such an onnateral screech, that the chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now you all know you can't larn seamanship to a parson or passenger—and the bloody fool knelt down with his face to wind'ard. 'Hillo!' says the skipper, 'you'd better fill away, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... these things in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife, from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... abroad, while all naked and shameful at home.' p. 536. 'He looked for a house full of virtue, and behold nothing but spider-webs; fair and plausible abroad, but like the sow in the mire at home.' The immoral taint infected the young. '0! it is horrible to behold how irreverently, how easily, and malapertly, children, yea, professing children, at this day, carry it to their parents; snapping and checking, curbing and rebuking of them, as if they had received a dispensation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... French at heart: ready to co-operate in all the views of France, to recognise all her usurpations, and obey all her injunctions. Sweden, under a king whose principles were right, and whose feelings were generous, but who had a taint of hereditary insanity, acted in acquiescence with the dictates of two powers whom it feared to offend. The Danish navy, at this time, consisted of 23 ships of the line, with about 31 frigates and smaller vessels, exclusive of guard-ships. The Swedes had 18 ships of the line, 14 ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... be the lady of my choice, and I shall revenge myself on you, through her, in the way best calculated to pierce your thick British hide. The future Countess of Fairholme should be superior to Caesar's wife in being not only above suspicion, but altogether removed from its taint. I am afraid that it will be my task to tarnish ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... during that long vigil. Her mind for the first time dwelt with kindness, almost with softness, on the memory of her husband. Beside this awful Dane his shadow was god-like. He had been high-minded and a gentleman in his worst tantrums, and there was no taint of viciousness in him. A doubt grew in her brain, grew to such disquieting proportions that she sometimes deserted Rachael abruptly and went out to fatigue herself in the avenue. Had she done wrong ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... apparent honesty, I raised him to my favor, and gave him a post, which he has but now most basely betrayed. Fool, that I was, to think he could have served with such a master, and not bring with him the taint of treachery!" ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... there He has won his share, All cleansed from taint of sin; For on earth prepared, No toil he spared That holy place to win. That he hath won Near God's dear Son Fast by the holy river— Oh, such as thine May the end be mine; Be glory to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which I longest resided, and with ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... There an't none o' them to see what we do down here. 'Taint likely there's any listener. Gie a knock or two ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... small quantity of water from the almost empty cask, crept in under the deck, where I found the four women lying, each by herself, as far apart from the others as possible, all of them apparently dead. Yet although the place smelt close and stuffy enough, I could detect no trace of the taint which, in a hot climate, so quickly betrays the presence of death, and with renewed hope I proceeded ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... in the critic's chair, And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise, Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays— A judge of genius, though, confest, With not one spark of genius blest: Among the first of critics placed, Though free from every taint of taste. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was saying, "the facts about this church of Santa Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these frescoes—now, unhappily, ruined by restoration—is untroubled by the snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more pathetic, beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge and technical cleverness ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... a clear heaven. The air was not oppressive, and it was scented with the perfume of the lilacs and apple-blossoms, so that Gorham was fain every now and then to draw a deep breath in order to inhale their fragrance. There was no dust, and nature looked spruce and trig, without a taint of the frowziness which is observable in the foliage ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of negro blood. Could it be proved, I was free; that taint I could not pardon. [And here, even as the surgeon spoke, I noticed this as the peculiarity of the New England Abolitionist. Theoretically he believed in the equality of the enslaved race, and stood ready ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... that they are doing it in a mean way, sir; but of course soldiers hate thieves, and so the merest taint of a suspicion serves to make some of the men feel rather shy about having anything unnecessary to do ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... judges:—such things are in their line of business. Romescos must needs turn the conversation. "Well, taking it how I can entertain ye to most anything, I'll give ye a story on the secrets of how I used to run off Ingin remnants of the old tribes. 'Taint but a few years ago, ye know, when ther was a lot of Ingin and white, mixed stuff-some called it beautiful-down in Beaufort district. It was temptin' though, I reckon, and made a feller feel just as if he was runnin' it off to sell, every time it come in his way. Ye see, most on't was gal ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... close and earthy kind, and, besides being frequently impregnated with strong whiffs of the second-hand wearing apparel exposed for sale in Duke's Place and Houndsditch, had a decided flavour of rats and mice, and a taint of mouldiness. Perhaps some doubts of its pure delight presented themselves to Mr Swiveller, as he gave vent to one or two short abrupt sniffs, and looked ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... broke up since I came out of the bastile," said the old man. "'Taint jest the place for a gentleman, I can tell you that. It's mighty down-settin' on one's pride, which I had a heap of afore I was sent to ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... men's virtues and their spirits most certainly, naturally and rightly proceed from mankind to the heroes, and from them to the genii, and from thence, if they be raised above and purified from all mortal and earthly taint, even as is done in the holy mysteries, then, not by any empty vote of the senate, but in very truth and likelihood they are received among the gods, and meet with the most ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Jewish population of that city alone is almost exclusively the inexhaustible source for the supply of hysterical males for the clinics of the whole Continent (L'Etude des Maladies du Systeme Nerveux en Russie). As regards Austria and Germany, the same neurotic taint of the Jews has been emphasized by Krafft, Ebbing, etc.... In New York it has been shown by Collins that among 333 cases of neurasthenia which came under his observation, more than 40 per cent, were ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... will cry aloud for the stranger men. Simply to keep in power, and out of no love of mischief, the government or the party machine will have to insist upon dangers and national differences, to keep the voter to the poll by alarms, seeking ever to taint the possible nucleus of any competing organization with the scandal of external influence. The party press will play the watch-dog and allay all internal dissensions with its warning bay at some adjacent people, and the adjacent ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... son, inherited his natural bent, but not his behaviour; avoiding his inborn perversity by great discretion in his tender years, and thus escaping all traces of his father's taint. So he appropriated what was alike the more excellent and the earlier share of the family character; for he wisely departed from his father's sins, and became a happy counterpart of his grandsire's virtues. This man was famous ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... get skeered, Miss," he said, kindly; "'taint nothin' in the world but a rabbit. Mamie can't never get used to rabbits, someways." He indicated one of the horses—a high, raw-boned animal, sketched on a generous plan, whose ribs and joints protruded, and whose rough white coat had been ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... he came to wait on me, and took an opportunity when handing a muffin to say in a low tone, "I 'ope, sir, you reconize as my feelings towards your relative is not actuated by any taint of what you may call melignity—you can leave the room, Eliza, I will see the gentleman 'as all he requires with my own hands—I ask your pardon, sir, but you must be well aware a man is not always master of himself: and when that man has been 'urt in his mind by the application ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... and immunity from any taint of it was so fine a characteristic of public social life at Tilling, the expected passage of this distinguished visitor through the town on Saturday next became very speedily known, and before the wicker-baskets of the ladies in their morning marketings next day were half full, there was ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... individual. But it is not invariably applicable to every admixture of African blood with the European, nor is one having all the features of a white to be ranked with the degraded class designated by the laws of this state as persons of color, because of some remote taint of the Negro race. The line of distinction, however, is not ascertained by any rule of law.... Juries would probably be justified in holding a person to be white in whom the admixture of African blood did not exceed the proportion of one-eighth. But it is in all cases a question for the jury, to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... and respectful remonstrances of those who had a right to render their advice. In this case, the affliction of the mind must have been reinforced by some peculiarity in the constitution. He inherited a melancholy taint from his father, and this seems to have been dreaded as a family disease; for the infant don Louis, who likewise resided in the palace of Villa-Viciosa, was fain to amuse himself with hunting and other diversions, to prevent his being infected ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and the fault of our first mother furnishes a grand and terrible example of the mischief of thinking of the benefit of another. Satan suggested to her that Adam should partake of the fruit—an idea, having in it the taint of benevolence, so generally mistaken—whence sin and death came into the world. Had Eve been strictly selfish, she would wisely have kept the apples to herself, and the evil would have been avoided. Had Adam helped himself, he would have had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... dat, honey, won't you? I want to know if it's worth savin'. I've burnt up two or three receipts in my life, and had de bills to pay over; and I'se got rale careful, you know. 'Taint pleasant to pay money twice over for de ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us.' That is blessedness. It is the only thing that makes the heart to be at rest. It is the only thing that makes life truly worth living, the only thing that brings sweetness which has no after taint of bitterness and breeds no fear of its passing away. To have that unsetting sunshine streaming down upon my open heart, and to carry about with me whithersoever I go, like some melody from hidden singers sounding in my ears, the Name and the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on my own head, if I perish here," said the figure; and, observing Earnscliff meditating to lay hold on him, he added, "And your blood be upon yours, if you touch but the skirt of my garments, to infect me with the taint ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott |
