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Pollute   Listen
verb
Pollute  v. t.  (past & past part. polluted; pres. part. polluting)  
1.
To make foul, impure, or unclean; to defile; to taint; to soil; to desecrate; used of physical or moral defilement. "The land was polluted with blood." "Wickedness... hath polluted the whole earth."
2.
To violate sexually; to debauch; to dishonor.
3.
(Jewish Law) To render ceremonially unclean; to disqualify or unfit for sacred use or service, or for social intercourse. "Neither shall ye pollute the holy things of the children of Israel, lest ye die." "They have polluted themselves with blood."
Synonyms: To defile; soil; contaminate; corrupt; taint; vitiate; debauch; dishonor; ravish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pollute" Quotes from Famous Books



... shall echo thro' our mountains, Till not one hateful link remains Of slavery's lingering chains; Till not one tyrant tread our plains, Nor traitor lip pollute our fountains. No! never till that glorious day Shall Lusitania's sons be gay, Or hear, oh Peace, thy welcome lay Resounding thro' her ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... say it. Why should I not say it to you, who know all? Of what good will her life be to herself, or to any one else, if she pollute herself and her family by this marriage? It would be better that she should be dead,—much better that she should be dead. She is all that I have, Sir William. It is for her sake that I have been struggling from the first moment in which I knew that I was ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... atmosphere from the poisons that infect it; that he may preserve the bodies of men from the corrupt influences that surround, and the maladies that afflict them; still more, that he may keep their souls pure from the malignant insinuations which pollute, and the gloomy images that obscure them; that he may restore its serenity to the Word, which false words of men fill with mourning and sadness; that he may satisfy the desires of the angels, who await from him the development of the marvels of ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... prayers for her prosperity? I, myself, who was not born within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, that want may never visit her cottages, vice her palaces, and that the abomination of idolatry may never pollute her temples. Ha, idolatry! the reign of idolatry has been over there for many a long year, never more, let us hope, to return; brave hearts in that old town have borne witness against it, and sealed their testimony with their hearts' blood—most precious to the Lord ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... fortunes—though he sympathized with the brave and honourable names that perished in their cause—though he cursed "the butcher, Cumberland," and the bloody spirit which commanded the heads of the good and the heroic to be stuck where they would affright the passer-by, and pollute the air—he had no desire to see the splendid fabric of constitutional freedom, which the united genius of all parties had raised, thrown wantonly down. His Jacobitism influenced, not his head, but his heart, and gave a mournful hue to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... hence, intending European guests find reception only before that early hour. In the State of Travancore, in which Brahmanical influence is great, even the high caste Nair cannot touch, though he may approach, a Namburi Brahman. A member of the artisan castes will pollute his holiness twenty-four feet off; cultivators at forty-eight feet; the beef-eating Pariah at sixty-four feet. Like the Palestinian leper of old, the low-caste man of that part of India was, until recently, expected to leave the road when he saw a Brahman ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... Dr. Bartlett!—I hope that no woman who is not quite given up to dishonour, will pollute the sacred word, by affixing ideas to it, that cannot be connected with it. A friend is one of the highest characters that one human creature can shine in to another. There may be love, that though it has no view but to honour, yet even in wedlock, ripens not into friendship. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... indignation and scorn that I proceed once more to pollute my pen with the chronicles of a mercenary rabble. It had been thought that the remonstrances of the pure and high-minded among your readers would have sufficed to overcome the resolution of an infatuated, but not Criminal Editor. There was a time when ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... never entered one of those fetid slums of a great city in which, too often, murder is done, never sickened with the physical nausea of death in its most revolting aspect, when some unhappy wretch's foul body serves only to further pollute air ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... Pas. Sir, I never Pollute my Productions with Invectives against the Fair. I am to the best of my poor Abilities, their constant Advocate. he, he, he, he. ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... declares that the wisdom from above is "first pure." Had he encountered those who take the precious name of Jesus upon lips defiled by tobacco, those whose breath and person are contaminated by its foul odor, and who pollute the air of heaven, and force all about them to inhale the poison,—had the apostle come in contact with a practice so opposed to the purity of the gospel, would he not have denounced it as "earthly, sensual, devilish"? Slaves of tobacco, claiming the blessing of entire sanctification, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... scourge of the Delta, the epizootie, had done its dread work. Annually this plague among the beasts plays havoc with the Nile, its surroundings and inhabitants. As the animals die of the disease, they are either left lying about on the banks to rot, decay, and pollute the air with devastating microbes, or are thrown into the water. It is then the hot sun does its work, and both the atmosphere and water ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... sojers. Take way from white people and give horses colored people! Didn't kill none the horses. (On Sunnyside on Waccamaw) Cheraw Yankee kill horses! (Indeed—YES! It is history in Marlboro, near Cheraw they were killed and thrown in the wells to pollute the water.)" ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... sympathies on behalf of the slave. Let him inspire them with abhorrence of the man-stealer—the slaveholder. No slaveholding American shall ever my cross my door. No slaveholding or slavery-supporting minister shall ever pollute my pulpit. While I have a tongue to speak, or a hand to write, I will, to the utmost of my power, oppose these slaveholding men. We must have Douglass amongst us to aid in ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... treason on the seas of fate, When heaven shall bid the swelling billows rage, And point vindictive lightnings at rebellion, Will not the patriot share the traitor's danger? Oh! could thy hand, unaided, free thy country, Nor mingled guilt pollute the sacred cause! ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... like my husband; yet who can it be that dares pollute by the pressure of his hand my child, whose amulet should protect him from ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... retain you in office. A man who has violated the peace and every principle of honest duty, a man who every day merits the worst criminal punishment, kept in the favor of the municipal department, to pollute its very name. If there is a spark of honesty left in the police department, I will use my influence to stop your conduct. The gallows will be your doom yet. You must not think because you are ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... to its core; yet even this does less dishonor to Shakspeare's memory than the sequel attached to it. A sort of scurrilous rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so loathsome in its brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its expression, that we shall not pollute our pages by transcribing it, has been imputed to Shakspeare ever since the days of the credulous Rowe. The total point of this idiot's drivel consists in calling Sir Thomas "an asse;" and well it justifies the poet's own remark, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... mean?" said Licorice, fiercely. "Perhaps we might shed tears first. But they must not pollute the sacrifice. Do not the holy Rabbins say that a tear dropped upon a devoted lamb washeth out all the merit ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... thou of my plighted lord? If guilt pollute him, as unless mine ear Deceive me in the purport of thy word, Thou mean'st t' imply—kind spirit rest ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... Wit, knowledge, and imagination illuminate its pages—but the infinite inequality of the style!—Permit me to acknowledge to you what I have acknowledged to others, that it excites my exhaustless wonder, that Mrs. Piozzi, the child of genius, the pupil of Johnson, should pollute, with the vulgarisms of unpolished conversation, her animated pages!—that, while she frequently displays her power of commanding the most chaste and beautiful style imaginable, she should generally use those inelegant, those strange ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... she? Can you eat her? can you drink her? Who has ever seen her? Your birds were real: all could hear them sing! Oh, fool! vile reptile! atheist!" they cried, "you pollute the air." ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner

... somehow, it touched her—emblem of stifled beauty, emblem of all that the girl had tried to pour out to her that August afternoon in her garden nearly a year ago. Thin Eastern china, good and really beautiful! A wonder they allowed it to pollute this room! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in the hall. The literary ambition which leads old men of 60 and 70 to enter not unfrequently destroys them. Should any fatal case occur, the coffin may on no account be carried out through the gates; it must be lifted over or sometimes through a breach in the wall. Death must not pollute the great entrance. At the end of the third trial, the first batch of those who have completed their essays is honored with the firing of guns, the bows of the officials, and the ministry of a band of music. Three weeks of anxious ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... who meant the quiet of the country. But a more doubtful title was preferred, as better adapted to the purposes of extortion and peculation. This miserable succession was sold, and the eldest of the issue of Munny Begum, an harlot, brought in to pollute the harem of the seraglio, of whom you will hear much hereafter, was chosen. He soon succeeded to the grave. Another son of the same prostitute succeeded to the same unhappy throne, and followed to the same untimely grave. Every succession was sold; and between venal successions ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... find it full of leaves, twigs and earth. He bore this affront for some time but at last his patience was exhausted. There-after he did his drinking at the spring, approaching it always by a round-about way lest the raccoon discover it and pollute its clear water. The Hermit watched the two animals with amusement, but he did not interfere. Gradually the feud was forgotten. Indeed, before many weeks had passed, the two had become firm friends, though Ringtail still delighted ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... would have saved his father if death hadn't tricked her. And I'm rather a radical about heredity, anyway, Carter. It's gruesomely overrated, I think. What is it?—Clammy hands reaching out from the grave to clutch at warm young flesh—and pollute it? Not while there are living hands to beat them off!" He began to get vehement and warm. There was to be a chapter on heredity in that book of his, one day. "It's a bogy. It goes down before environment as the dark before the dawn. Why, environment's a vital, flesh and ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... swart Cyclops ever-clanging forge Din in thy dells;—permits the dark-red gleams, From umber'd fires on all thy hills, the beams, Solar and pure, to shroud with columns large Of black sulphureous smoke, that spread their veils Like funeral crape upon the sylvan robe Of thy romantic rocks, pollute thy gales, And stain thy glassy floods;—while o'er the globe To spread thy stores metallic, this rude yell Drowns the wild woodland song, and breaks ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... field In panic, proved that not with warring Rome Barbarians may grapple. Then arose Immeasurable carnage: here the sword, There stood the victim, and the victor's arm Wearied of slaughter. Oh, that to thy plains, Pharsalia, might suffice the crimson stream From hosts barbarian, nor other blood Pollute thy fountains' sources! these alone Shall clothe thy pastures with the bones of men! Or if thy fields must run with Roman blood Then spare the nations who in times to come Must ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... been unscrupulously established in Syria and Mesopotamia and a British nominee has been set up in Hedjaj under the protection of British guns. This is a position that is intolerable and unjust. Apart therefore from the questions of Armenia and Arabia, the dishonesty and hypocrisy that pollute the peace terms require to be instantaneously removed. It paves the way to an equitable solution of the question of Armenian and Arabian independence which in theory no one denies and which in practice may be easily guaranteed if only the wishes of the people concerned could with ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... Joseph, staggering with the shock, and trembling at the sound of his submerged name. Then, recovering himself, he said angrily, "Pollute not my Daniel ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... riparian architecture. The busy towns along the streams I have known have turned their faces from these streams toward the railroads. They have left the riverside to the thriftless men and the truant boys. Stables and outhouses look upon their waters, and the sewers pollute them. And if on some especially eligible bluff better buildings do stand, their owners or builders show no appreciation of what the bluff or river cares for, but reproduce the lines of some pretentious edifice that has no relation, historic or otherwise, to it or to the site. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... and of charity, but a sincere pleasure and serenity of mind, in him who performs an action of mercy, which cannot suffer the misfortunes of another without redress, lest they should bring a kind of contagion along with them, and pollute the happiness which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... for the carcass of the beast to rise. He felt now that his problem was to get rid of it so that it would not pollute the water, but it did ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... "Don't pollute the Holy Mother by calling on her," she cried in a cutting voice. "Rather blaspheme her, that she sends you the sooner to hell, where you belong. I shall not shed a single tear for you, ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... dare to pollute me with your touch!" exclaimed Emily, shaking off his hand as though it ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... deepens; the bleared lamps blare in the dirty mist; the hoarse roar from the public-house comes forth accompanied by choking wafts of reek; the abominable tramps move towards the lodging-house and pollute the polluted air further with the foulness of their language; the drink mounts into unstable heads; and presently—especially on Saturday nights—there are hoarse growls as from rough-throated beasts, shrill shrieks, and a running chorus ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... of attention is given to sanitation. Sewage is carried off by public sewers. Householders are required to place garbage in sanitary cans, whence it is collected and disposed of in such a way as not to pollute the soil. Ashes and refuse are carried away from homes and shops, and the streets are cleaned daily. In rural communities such matters are left almost entirely to ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... free, what is to be done with them? Few of them will return to their countries; they know too well the greater hardships they must there be subject to; they will not embrace our holy religion; they will not adopt our manners; our people will not pollute themselves by intermarrying with them. Must we maintain them as beggars in our streets, or suffer our properties to be the prey of their pillage? For men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled. And what is there so pitiable in their present ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... harvest of discoveries, and to the philosophical observer of mankind, a vast field for research and observation. May the detestable commerce in human flesh, which the Negroes abhor, and the Moors desire, cease to pollute these shores! It is the only means which the Europeans have left to become acquainted with the interior of this vast continent, and to make this great portion of the family of mankind, by which it is inhabited participate in the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... fountains, and rose into clouds; and in every ravine was a newly awakened voice of waters,—soft increase of whisper among its sacred stones; and on every crag its forming and fading veil of radiant cloud; temple above temple, of the divine marble that no tool can pollute, nor ruin undermine. And, therefore, beyond this central valley, this great Greek vase of Arcadia, on the "hollow" mountain, Cyllene, or "pregnant" mountain, called also "cold," because there the vapors rest,* and born of the eldest of those stars of spring, that Maia, from whom ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... God to shelter and save this little, wild hare, I, on my part, herewith present thee with this land, to be for the service of God and an asylum for all men and women, who seek thy protection. So long as they do not pollute this sanctuary, let none, not even prince or chieftain, ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis

... the great railway bridge spanning the river. By it old India, self-centred, exclusive, introspective, was brought into the modern world; compelled, one might say, by these great spans to admit the modern world and its conveniences, in spite of protest that the railway bridge would pollute the sacred stream. Crossing the bridge, our eyes are fixed on the outstanding feature of Benares—city of hundreds of Hindu temples. What is it? Not a Hindu temple, but a splendid Mahomedan mosque whose minarets overlook the Hindu ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... my misery is too deep for irritation, or excitement. I am an Oxford man, sir, a prize man, an Ireland scholar. But, unfortunately for me, my mother left me ten thousand pounds, and a heart. I love a lady whose name I will not pollute by mentioning it in this den of thieves. My father is the well-known banker, bankrupt, and cheat, of Barkington. He has wasted his own money, and now covets his neighbour's and his son's. He had ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... her ladyship, shutting her teeth with a snap. "The Person may insult me by addressing a letter to my care. But the Person's name shall not pollute my lips. Not even in your house, Sir Patrick. Not even ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... be qualified also with a blameless conversation. Their conversation must be as becometh the gospel, otherwise they are not meet for communion with the gospel church. Carnal walking will not suit spiritual temples: for they will greatly pollute and defile them, and stain and obscure their beauty and glory. Therefore they must not be brawlers and contentious persons, covetous and worldly-minded, vain and frothy. They must not be froward and peevish, nor defraud others of their right. Nor must they neglect ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... govern my passion. "Ungrateful wretch!" I cried. "Begone, and no longer pollute my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... monasteries. The well was connected with the miracles of some saint, and the last prior that guarded it was something like a saint himself; certainly he was something very like a martyr. He defied the new owner and dared him to pollute the place, till the noble, in a fury, stabbed him and flung his body into the well, whither, after four hundred years, it has been followed by an heir of the usurper, clad in the same purple and walking the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... soldier, "I wold not pollute my honest hands with such unnatural blood. Neither, though thy hand has been lifted against my life, would I willingly take thine. It is not rebellion against my commander that actuates me, but hatred of the vilest of murderers. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... green, to gratify a guilty sensuality. It is surely enough that the stately heifer affords me copious streams of pure and wholesome food; I will not arm my hand against her innocent existence; I will not pollute myself with her blood, nor tear her warm and panting flesh with a cruelty that we abhor even in savage beasts. More wholesome, more adapted to human life, are the spontaneous fruits which liberal nature produces for the sustenance of man, or ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... but mechanically, into the street where he had first seen Helen. He paused a few moments under the colonnade which faced Beck's old deserted crossing. His pause attracted the notice of one of the unhappy beings whom we suffer to pollute our streets and rot in our hospitals. She approached and spoke to him,—to him whose heart was so full of Helen! He shuddered, and strode on. At length he paused before the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... vice; like thriftlesse heires Lusts champians are, which kill their dearest Sires For their possessions, to giue both life and growth To helborne riot. So lasciuious youth, Courting our beauties, cares not to pollute Our soules for that, though left heauens substitute To bridle passion. Gentle boy refraine, And quench vnlawfull heat till Hymens flame With sacred fire hath warmd vs, and her rites Fully performd do warrant those delites. By this the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... result from disregarding them; the vile Egyptian rule, by which the divine king, in order to keep up the so-called purity of his royal and god-descended blood, must marry his own sister, and so foully pollute with monstrous abortions the very stock he believed himself to be preserving intact from common or unclean influences. His mind ran back to the strange and complicated forbidden degrees of the Australian ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... fixed upon her in deadly admiration, which never admire but they pollute the object ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... with speeches fair She woos the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent snow, And on her naked shame Pollute with sinful blame The saintly veil of maiden white to throw; Confounded that her Maker's eyes Should look so near upon ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... granting them opportunity for repentance. But some who had so deeply involved themselves that no remedy could assist them have been subjected to the laws, in accordance with the constitutions of our Christian princes, and lest they should pollute the holy flock by their contagion, have been banished into perpetual exile by the public judges. And all the profane and disgraceful things which are found, as well in their writings as in their secret traditions, we have disclosed and clearly proved to the eyes of Christian laity, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... baptism into death, that we should walk in newness of life. And so our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, Rom. vi. 3, 4, 6. And for our daily infirmities and escapes, whereby we pollute ourselves, his blood "is a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness," Zech. xiii. 1; and to this fountain he bringeth by the spirit of repentance, which he, as an exalted ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... the rival winds their quarrel try, Contending for the kingdom of the sky, South, east, and west, on airy coursers borne; The whirlwind gathers, and the woods are torn: Then Nereus strikes the deep; the billows rise, And, mix'd with ooze and sand, pollute the skies. The troops we squander'd first again appear From several quarters, and enclose the rear. They first observe, and to the rest betray, Our diff'rent speech; our borrow'd arms survey. Oppress'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... and a convert from paganism, whom they seem also to have known, [134:1] they immediately concluded that he had now some Gentile companions along with him, and that he was encouraging the uncircumcised to pollute with their presence the sacred court of the Israelites. A tumult forthwith ensued; the report of the defilement of the holy place quickly circulated through the crowd; "all the city was moved;" [134:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... which were related not for the purpose of creating increased reverence, but frequently experienced by ourselves and our ancestors, through the special interposition of the goddess, they had, nevertheless, the audacity to apply their sacrilegious hands to those hallowed treasures, and pollute themselves, their own families, and your soldiers, with the impious booty. Through whom we implore you, conscript fathers, by your honour, not to perform any thing in Italy or in Africa, until you have expiated their guilty deed, lest they should atone for the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... a bank account. Men who have despoiled the widow of her mite and the orphan of his patrimony are hailed with the acclaim due to conquering heroes. Our most successful books and periodicals would pollute a Parisian sewer or disgrace a Portuguese bagnio. The suffrages of the people are bought and sold like sheep. The national policy is dictated by Dives. Men are sent to Congress whom God intended ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... not to offend those with whom he converses by his superiority; and whatever be the native spirit of a mind, it is evident that this perpetual adaptation of itself to others, this watchfulness against its own rising feelings, this studied sympathy with mediocrity, must pollute and impoverish ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... gathered all confusedly together, headed by their chiefs and countenanced by the marabouts, to destroy the Infidels who were come to pollute their country; but, undoubtedly, the major part were excited against us by ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... desire to speak it) against the apostacy of some and indifferency of others, who should have been to us as the he-goats before the flock in paving our way to Zion, but are rather making to themselves captains to carry us back to Babylon, and pollute our land with idolatry and superstition; and, as a pledge to posterity that the Lord has not yet utterly deserted the land, though we rather wish,(if so it may consist with his holy purpose, who is wonderful ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... Although you are a woman, and are the image of your father, what more can I say to you than has already been said?... My dear daughter, whom I tenderly love, see that you live in the world in peace, tranquillity, and contentment—see that you disgrace not yourself, that you stain not your honor, nor pollute the luster and fame of your ancestors.... May God prosper you, my first-born, and may you come to God, who ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... their own sins will be the reward of their transgressions against their neighbour. Would it not be better to be an inhabitant of Soldania in Africa, where never yet form of worship entered, or the name of God resounded, than thus to pollute the land with superstitious castigation—with the enmity ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow,—the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... his character, taken for the occasion, and he retained the mouth of the bottle at his lips long enough to answer the requirement of the moment; but he did not open them, or permit a drop of the nauseous and fiery liquor to pollute his tongue. It was necessary for him to consider that he was struggling for the salvation of his beloved country to enable him even to go through the form ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... abroad. There are papers in New York that long ago came to perfection of shamelessness, and there is no more power in venom and mud and slime to pollute them. They have dashed their iniquities into the face of everything decent and holy. And their work will be seen in the crime and debauchery and the hell of innumerable victims. Their columns are not long and broad enough to record ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... Hassan when we visited it, except the Moslemitish beadle, who was on the look-out for backsheesh, just like his brother officer in an English cathedral; and who, making us put on straw slippers, so as not to pollute the sacred pavement of the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ridicule, has unhinged the moral feelings of another, or has been the means of leading him astray from the paths of virtue. Of equal, or even greater malignity, is the aspect of the writer, whose works have contributed to violate the principles of truth and rectitude,—to pollute the imagination, or corrupt the heart. Inferior offenders are promptly seized by public authority, and suffer the award of public justice; but the destroyer of the moral being often walks securely ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... defense I would put forth for mine own children, that shall these poor, despised, persecuted creatures have at my hands and on the road. The man that would do otherwise, that would obey this law to the peril of his soul and the loss of his manhood, were he brother, son, or father, shall never pollute my hand with grasp of hideous friendship, nor cast his ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... works to the farm and the farmer. But that the accumulation of the manure in the stable is a hurt to the horse, no sensibly reasoning person can doubt. Its fermentation gives off obnoxious gases which pollute and poison the air the horse is compelled to breathe, and thus in turn poison the animal's blood. This is a more fruitful cause of disease than is generally supposed. The gases prove injurious to the eye, and when we consider the accumulation of manure and the exclusion of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... very useful and even necessary. One valuable purpose which they serve is, to destroy decayed trees and other substances which, if left on the surface of the ground in hot climates, would in a short time pollute the air. In this respect they resemble very much the common flies, which are regarded by mankind in general as noxious and, albeit, as useless beings in creation. But this is certainly for want of consideration. ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... between the Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs is an instance. An English epitaph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for commemorating ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or Mussulman would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself by beating ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... constantly in progress. The ballet-dancers (-mimae-) were quite a match for those of the present day in the variety of their pursuits and the skill with which they followed them out; their primadonnas, Cytheris and the like, pollute even the pages of history. But their, as it were, licensed trade was very materially injured by the free art of the ladies of aristocratic circles. Liaisons in the first houses had become so frequent, that only a scandal ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... pleasant reunion of two kindred peoples one of the principal events was the Feast of Virgins, given by Makatah. All young maidens of virtue and good repute were invited to be present; but woe to her who should dare to pollute the sacred feast! If her right to be there were challenged by any it meant a public disgrace. The two arrows and the red stone upon which the virgins took their oath of chastity were especially prepared for the occasion. Every girl was beautifully dressed, for at that time ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... freedom in the shepherd tribes finds an ally against aggression in the trackless sands, meager water and food supply of their wilderness. Pursuit of the retreating tribesmen is dangerous and often futile. They need only to burn off the pasture and fill up or pollute the water-holes to cripple the transportation and commissariat of the invading army. This is the way the Damaras have fought the German subjugation of Southwest Africa.[1109] Moreover, the paucity ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... were practised by the Canaanites, and are referred to in the Bible. Ahaz "made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen".[61] Ezekiel declared that "when ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols".[62] In Leviticus it is laid down: "Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch".[63] It may be that in Babylonia the fire-cleansing ceremony resembled that which ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... shabbily. And it is strange that, even now, when I remember it I want to feel pleased and to approve of myself for having acted honourably, but I always repent as if I had committed a sin! But in the case of Msha, on the contrary, I am always pleased—pleased that I did not pollute that feeling of mine.... I may fall lower still, sell all I have on me, be covered with lice and sores—but this jewel ... no, not jewel, but ray of sunshine, is still with me ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy

... "My accusers saw that the charge 'of desiring the safety of the Senate' was no crime but rather a merit; and therefore, in order to darken it by the mixture of some kind of wickedness, they falsely declared that ambition for office had led me to pollute my conscience with sacrilege. But Philosophy had chased from my breast all desire of worldly greatness, and under the eyes of her who had daily instilled into my mind the Pythagorean maxim 'Follow God,' there was no place for ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... and removed the fear of death? But Philosophy is so far from being praised as much as she has deserved by mankind, that she is wholly neglected by most men, and actually evil spoken of by many. Can any person speak ill of the parent of life, and dare to pollute himself thus with parricide, and be so impiously ungrateful as to accuse her whom he ought to reverence, even were he less able to appreciate the advantages which he might derive from her? But this error, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... in my mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary's silent lake; Thou know'st it well,—nor fen, nor sedge, Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver sand Marks where ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... and whenever she submits it will be because she is forced to submit, and whenever she is forced to do so, these monasteries and convents will be closed up, as Protestant America will not allow nor permit these plague spots to exist to pollute the fair name of America when she learns ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... encounters are of yearly occurrence in the colony, and are justly held in abhorrence by the pious and thinking portion of the population of either denomination. The government has for many years vainly endeavoured to put them down, but they still pollute with their moral leprosy the free institutions of the country, and effectually prevent any friendly feeling which might grow up between the members of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... commander of the Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... said, "you can play the part of Creon in the tragedy as soon as you like, and cast forth my body unburied. But I, O gracious Poseidon, quit thy temple while I yet live. Antipater and his Macedonians have done what they could to pollute it." ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... book, Fanny," said Alba quickly, after having read the title of the work, and again speaking in English; "it is one of those books with which one should not even pollute ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... "I guess not! You'll not show your face there again—though I've no doubt you'd be brazen enough to brass it out. No—you can't pollute ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... come here if I had known what an atrocious humbug you are? Do you imagine for a moment that my relatives, if I had any, would have subjected my innocence to such insidious guardianship? Have you brought me here to destroy my faith, and pollute my morals, and poison my young life with the spectacle ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... the family the best and the most advanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from the rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and legalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it among us to-day. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... apertures, congested with hellish, heaven-scaling barracks, reeking with refuse and evil odours, inhabited promiscuously by poverty and prostitution, worse than the worst slums of London itself—how could they have been left so long to pollute the fairest and well-nigh the wealthiest city in the kingdom? "Do you wonder Edinburgh is renowned for its medical schools?" asked the Professor grimly, as he darted in and out among those foul alleys, explaining how he was demolishing this and reconstructing ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... understand not, as applying to a deity. Neither must our government any longer wink at such monstrous practices as that of children ejecting their dying parents, in their last struggles, from the shelter of their own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... rest (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour; The world has meddled with them. They have broacht The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows. Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, When they should have no fortune but themselves And the God in them, and be sealed therein. Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, Where only love may drink, and only—alas!— The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, For him and God, and for my sacred ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... you do again," he remarked, "make allusions to the words going to school, you'll make even me blush to death with shame! My advice to you is that you should after all go your own way and play; that's the best thing for you; and mind you don't pollute with dirt this floor by standing here, and soil this door of mine ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... citizens, were thus destroyed; and now Don Frederic issued peremptory orders that no one, on pain of death, should give lodging or food to any fugitive. He likewise forbade to the dead all that could now be forbidden them—a grave. Three weeks long did these unburied bodies pollute the streets, nor could the few wretched women who still cowered within such houses as had escaped the flames ever move from their lurking-places without treading upon the festering remains of what had been their husbands, their fathers, or their brethren. Such ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... gross desires, shine like the constellation of thy intellectual powers. As for thee, thy thoughts are pure and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed breath of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness, pollute the sacred flame of thy sky-descended and heaven-bound desires: never did the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene of thy cerulean imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my life, like thine the tenor of my conversation! ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... brave forefathers' honest fame, We swear—no foe shall sever Her children from their parent's side; Though parted by the wave, In weal or woe, whate'er betide, We swear to die, or save Her honour from the rebel band Whose crimes pollute ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... many Circumstances it is not the Thing, but the Mind that distinguishes us from Jews; they held their Hands from certain Meats, as from unclean Things, that would pollute the Mind; but we, understanding that to the Pure, all Things are pure, yet take away Food from the wanton Flesh, as we do Hay from a pamper'd Horse, that it may be more ready to hearken to the Spirit. We sometimes chastise the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... from your sight To Allah therefore rather I impute, In sign that he will let no foreign rite Of superstition his pure place pollute: Spells and enchantments may Ismeno suit, Leave him to use such weapons at his will; But shall we warriors by a wand dispute? No! no! our talisman, our hope, our skill, Lie in our swords alone, and they shall ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... fair She wooes the gentle air, To hide her guilty front with innocent snow; And on her naked shame, Pollute with sinful blame, The saintly veil of maiden-white to throw; Confounded, that her Maker's eyes Should look so near upon ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... inalienable birth-stain of human life. His poem was no pretty imagining, but the eternal, implacable truth. It were better that human life should cease. Until this moment he had only half understood its awful, its terrifying truth.... It were better that man ceased to pollute the earth. His history is but the record of crime; his existence is but a disgraceful episode in the life of one of ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... precisely as the Israelites thought that Jehovah had commanded them to destroy the Canaanites. But they were too numerous, and hence they were regarded as impure and made to live apart, so that they should not pollute the places of sacrifice, which among the Aryans included their dwelling-houses. It does not seem to have been the case that the Aryans had any regard for the preservation of the purity of their blood or colour. From an early period men of the three higher ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... heights of Zion have undertaken to defend the institution of slavery. We speak not now of those, who amidst the monuments of oppression are engaged in the sacred vocation; who, as ministers of the Gospel, can "prophesy smooth things" to such as pollute the altar of Jehovah with human sacrifices; nay, who themselves bind the victim and kindle the sacrifice. That they should put their Savior to the torture, to wring from his lips something in favor of slavery, is not to be wondered at. They consent to the murder ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... with wrong may find Its touch pollute, its darkness blind; And learn, as latent fraud is shown In others' faith, to doubt ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... speak in the language of commendation. It is one of the most virtuous cities in the state, according to its population; and from the interest two of the principal organs took in behalf of the anti-gambling cause, I am certain that no filthy sheet can ever pollute its moral principles. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... out beyond philosophy. Without speculating on the why, they felt that indulgence of animal passion did, in fact, pollute them, and so much the more, the more it was deliberate. Philosophy, gliding into Manicheism, divided the forces of the universe, giving the spirit to God, but declaring matter to be eternally and incurably evil; and looking forward to the time when the spirit should be emancipated ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... actually believe in your own supposition, why are you so anxious to pollute your ears with the recital of circumstances that you assume to be degrading, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... around His throne—and thus He spoke; "Shall we make man?" Then stern Justice replied: "Create him not, for he will trample on Thy holy law;" and Truth, too, answering, said, "Create him not, O God! he will pollute Thy sanctuary!" When forth Mercy came, And dropping on her knees, exclaimed: "O God! Create him! I will watch his wandering steps, And tender guide thro' all the darksome paths That he may tread." Then forthwith God made man, And said: "Thou art the child ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... is entirely unique, so far as known, and but from the well-known probity of the relator might well be questioned, especially when it is remembered that in the country spoken of water is quite scarce and Indians are careful not to pollute the streams or springs near which they live. Conjecture seems useless to establish a reason for this disposition of the dead, unless we are inclined to attribute it to the natural indolence of the savage, or a desire to poison the springs for ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... free from evil to be in the enjoyment of the chief good, while the other is conversant with the most trifling part of our nature, is rather the conduct of a man who would obscure the whole brilliancy of honourableness—I might almost say, who would pollute it. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... great scoundrel. He was in the habit of flinging his victims off a high cliff into the sea; and, in order to give him exactly his deserts, Theseus tossed him off the very same place. But if you will believe me, the sea would not pollute itself by receiving such a bad person into its bosom; neither would the earth, having once got rid of him, consent to take him back; so that, between the cliff and the sea, Scinis stuck fast in the air, which was forced to bear the burden ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... who were alarmed at the possibility of hearing the piper in church, for as old Willie Henderson said, "Even though the lad did a great deed, that was no reason why the people of the village should pollute the House o' God." ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... iron grasp the horns and a portion of the skull of the dying beef. Several of us rode out to the victim, whose brain lay bare, still throbbing and twitching with life. Rather than allow his remains to pollute the river, we made a last pull at an angle, and the dead ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... and illiberal minds infect that high situation,—when theft, bribery, and peculation, attended with fraud, prevarication, falsehood, misrepresentation, and forgery—when all these follow in one train,—when these vices, which gender and spawn in dirt, and are nursed in dunghills, come and pollute with their slime that throne which ought to be a seat of dignity and purity, the evil is much greater; it may operate daily and hourly; it is not only imitable, but improvable, and it will be imitated, and will be improved, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... cliff," answered the Viceroy; "throw the bodies of all the carrion over, living or dead. They pollute the air. Form up, gentlemen! We have fully twenty-five miles between us and the town which we must reach at ten of the clock. 'Twill be hard riding. Alvarado, assemble your men and you and de Tobar lead ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... December. Thus exuding its insipid humours it becomes much sweeter. Then in December, when everything else is bound by the frost of winter, the chilly blood of these grapes is allowed to flow forth. It is not insultingly trodden down by the feet, nor is any foul admixture suffered to pollute it; its stream of gem-like clearness is drawn forth from it by a noble provocation. It seems to shed tears of joy, and delights the eye by its beauty as much as the palate by its flavour. Collect this wine as speedily as possible, pay a sufficient price ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... reeking from that place—yes, reeking from it—and takes my boy into his lap without shame, and sits down by me, yes, by me. He may have killed Frank for what I know—killed our child. Why was he brought in to disgrace our house? Why is he here? Let him go—let him go, I say, to-night, and pollute the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... prayers; giving him to understand, that sancte, in the Japonian language, signified something too dishonest to be spoken. The Father declared, that the word in Latin had only a pure and pious meaning. Nevertheless, that it might not give scandal, nor pollute the imagination of the Japonians by an equivocal sound, he ordered the new Christians, from thenceforward, to use the word beate instead of it; and to say, Beate Petre, Beate Pauls, in the room of Sancte Petre, Sancte Paule. Concerning the name of God, the Bonzas would also have ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... confidence, forever to establish credit with your highness, I will first of all reveal the name of that murderer who this night dared to pollute your palace with an old man's blood. Prince, bend your ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... was despatched to Bellerstown to offer this high behest to the poor parson, whose ready compliance was expected, as a matter of course. But he calmly and peremptorily refused the proffered vote, and intimated that he held it derogatory to the sacred nature of his office to pollute himself with such politics, and inconsistent with every principle of honour, morality, and religion, to take an oath, as required by law, that he was possessed of a landed estate, while, in truth, he had no earthly title to an inch of it. This scrupulosity gave ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... noblemen can wait on the Emperor at table. They have cloths of silk and gold wound over their mouths and noses that their breath may not pollute the dishes and cups presented to His Majesty. And every time the Emperor drinks, a powerful band of music strikes up, and all who are ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... redressed. The cat, half-famished, lean and weak, Demands the privilege to speak. 'Well, puss,' says man, 'and what can you To benefit the public do?' The cat replies: 'These teeth, these claws, With vigilance shall serve the cause. 80 The mouse destroyed by my pursuit, No longer shall your feasts pollute; Nor rats, from nightly ambuscade, With wasteful teeth your stores invade.' 'I grant,' says man, 'to general use Your parts and talents may conduce; For rats and mice purloin our grain, And threshers whirl the flail in vain: Thus shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... descended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and you will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my poverty and misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is in a heart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in mine. Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart, this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it —and will you not dwell in it for ever? Did you not enchant me by the words, 'Now and for ever?' Nunc et semper! And I have ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... such an one is not worthy to bear that name any longer. We may say to such as the Prophet spake to their like, to wit, to the rebellious that were in the house of Israel. Goe ye, serve every man his Idols:- If ye will not hearken to the Law and Testament of God, to lead your lives thereafter: but pollute Gods holy name no more with your Gifts, and with your ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... you know the rules by which a man of blood should guide his life, and the things it were a shame for him to do, even to the man he may have to meet on the battle ground. Is it fitting, Scourie, to slander a fellow-officer to his commander, and so to pollute his fountain of influence that he shall not receive his just place? You have asked what I have against you; now I tell you, and I am ashamed to bring so foul an accusation against a ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... superstitious as to imagine that there can be any evil in cards, considered abstractedly as cards, or in some of the other amusements, that have been mentioned. The red or the black images on their surfaces can neither pollute the fingers, nor the minds, of those who handle them. They may be moved about, and dealt in various ways, and no objectionable consequences may follow. They nay be used, and this innocently, to construct the similitudes of things. They may be arranged, so as to exhibit ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... home and not to drink any more. We parted, after we'd said goodnight. A few days later I heard she'd left me only to go to a large party, where she drank till morning. Well, I said, as in those days I looked for all that was good in women, she meant well by me, but had to pollute herself for business reasons. ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... wing-bone of a white-headed eagle. The time of her seclusion was afterwards reduced in some places to six or three months or even less. She had to wear a sort of hat with long flaps, that her gaze might not pollute the sky; for she was thought unfit for the sun to shine upon, and it was imagined that her look would destroy the luck of a hunter, fisher, or gambler, turn things to stone, and do other mischief. At the end of her confinement ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... willinge, answered in the blast of the second trumpet. For this present, I say, that the erecting of a woman to that honor, is not onely to inuert the ordre, which God hath established: but also it is to defile, pollute and prophane (so farre as in man lieth) the throne and seat of God, whiche he hath sanctified and apointed for man onely[89], in the course of this wretched life, to occupie and possesse as his ministre and lieutenant: secluding from the same ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... to those who committed suicide. Moses commanded them[370] to give sepulture the same day and before sunset to any who were executed and hanged on a tree; "because," says he, "he who is hung upon the tree is accursed of God; you will take care not to pollute the land which the Lord your God has given you." That was practiced in regard to our Saviour, who was taken down from the cross the same day that he had been crucified, and a few ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... brotherhood, do solemnly protest against the system of slavery as unchristian, and inhuman," "because it is a violation of right, being the sum of all unrighteousness which man can do to man," "violates the law of love," "degrades man, the image of God, into a thing," "necessarily tends to pollute the soul of the slave," "to defile the soul of the master," "restricts education, keeps the Bible from the slave, makes life insecure, deprives female innocence of protection, sanctions adultery, tears children from parents and husbands from wives, violates the divine institutions ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... microbes. Thus dogs and even the cleanly cat are frequently carriers of disease. But more especially those creatures which visit man's food stores and food ready for consumption (such as bread, fruits, cold meat, etc.) are active carriers. Rats and mice run over such stores and pollute them. But the most widely active in this way ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... London." Thither it was agreed we should adjourn; for Crony's description of Madame and Messieurs the Conducteurs was quite sufficient to produce excitement in the young and ardent minds by which he was then surrounded. I shall not pollute this work by a repetition of the circumstances connected with this place, as detailed by old Crony, lest humanity should start back with horror and disgust at the bare mention, and charity endeavour to throw discredit ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... castle, Baldwin? Melancholy Displays her sable banner from the donjon, Darkening the foam of the whole surge beneath. Were I a habitant, to see this gloom Pollute the face of nature, and to hear The ceaseless sound of wave, and seabird's scream, I'd wish me in the hut that poorest peasant E'er framed, to give him ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are little beholden to them, for they mis-call them worse than one another. Though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs. Upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly with streamings of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... his oration, then Apollyon did begin. 'My opinion,' said he, 'concerning this matter, is, that we go on fair and softly, not doing things in a hurry. Let our friends in Mansoul go on still to pollute and defile it, by seeking to draw it yet more into sin (for there is nothing like sin to devour Mansoul). If this be done, and it takes effect, Mansoul, of itself, will leave off to watch, to petition, or anything else that should tend to her security and safety; for she will forget ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... "smut" in their wheat, how an otherwise good crop will be lowered in value, because the black grain will, when ground, darken the flour. Is it not so with these men of unclean lips? The filthy allusions and improper stories which pollute their conversation make their life infectious, and their companionship dangerous. Let us reprove them, or at least avoid them, as we ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... the pucca house wherein my look-out is, I watch with interest the frequent eddies occasioned by the clear-steerings of caste,—Brahmin, Warrior, and Merchant keeping severely to the Parsee side, so that the foul shadow of Soodra or Pariah may not pollute their sacred persons. It is as though my window were a tower of Allahabad, and below me, in Cossitollah, were the shy meeting of the waters. Thus, looking up or down, I mark how the limpid Jumna of high caste holds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... were such refuges built in the open streets, they would become mere nests of filthy vagrants, I reply that I do not despair of such a change in the administration of the poor laws of this country, as shall no longer leave any of our fellow creatures in a state in which they would pollute the steps of our houses by resting upon them for a night. But if not, the command to all of us is strict and straight, "When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house."[13] Not to the work-house, observe, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... high-caste man you may not only refuse to eat with or touch a low-caste man, your equal perhaps in {229} intelligence and in morals, but in some cases you may even demand that the low-caste man shall not pollute you by coming too near you on the road. On page 540 of the 1901 "Census of India Report" will be found a table showing at what distances the presence of certain inferior classes become contaminating to a Brahmin! Moreover, the low-caste man, offensive to men, is taught that he is equally offensive ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... chief work of education thus consists in teaching each one the rights and duties of his caste so that he shall act only exactly within their limits, and not pollute himself by passing beyond them. As the family-state concerns itself with fortifying the natural distinction by a far-reaching and vigorous ceremonial, so the caste-state must do the same with the distinction of class. A painful ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... swoln Niobe, comparing more Than he presumed, was trophaeed into stone. But are we therefore judged too extreme? Seems it no crime to enter sacred bowers, And hallowed places, with impure aspect, Most lewdly to pollute? Seems it no crime To brave a deity? Let mortals learn To make religion of offending heaven. And not at all to censure powers divine. To men this argument should stand for firm, A goddess did it, therefore it was good: We are not cruel, nor delight in blood.— But what have serious ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... which we are familiar, Miss Grace Danver and Miss Clara Vale. The present evening would be the third and last in a certain town of Lancashire, one of those remarkable centres of industry which pollute heaven and earth, and on that account are spoken of with somewhat more of pride than stirred the Athenian when he named ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... of majesty. We wonder at the wisdom of Providence, which even in the world of spirits maintains its staff of venomous reptiles for the dissemination of poison. (Relapsing into rage.) But such vermin shall not pollute my rose; sooner will I crush it to atoms (seizing the MARSHAL and shaking him ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... with horror while I talk with you. Hence, on the dread career you have begun! Cease to pollute the home of innocence! ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... things and of forests as among the first of forbidden sins. In his own words, "All the works of Nature, animate or inanimate, should be invested with a certain sanctity, to be used by us but not abused, and never to be recklessly destroyed or defaced. To pollute a spring or a river, to exterminate a bird or a beast, should be treated as moral offences and as social crimes. Never before has there been such widespread ravage of the earth's surface by the destruction of vegetation, and with it, animal life, and such wholesale defacement of ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... Wretch whom no sojourner, no citizen May harbor or address, whom all are bound To harry from their homes. And this same curse Was laid on me, and laid by none but me. Yea with these hands all gory I pollute The bed of him I slew. Say, am I vile? Am I not utterly unclean, a wretch Doomed to be banished, and in banishment Forgo the sight of all my dearest ones, And never tread again my native earth; Or else to wed my mother and slay my ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... children were given to the Kurds, who formed bands of irregular troops in conjunction with the Turkish army, and these were outraged before they were slaughtered. A price was put on every Christian head, and in the Turkish retreat the corpses were thrust into the wells in order to pollute them. The excuse for this, as given by German apologists (not apologists, perhaps, so much as supporters and adherents of the policy), was that since behind the Turkish lines the country was populated by a race of the same blood as that through ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... no rank or age in society. I have heard the youth who was barely in his teens indulge in this sin, as though it had been a part of his parental or day-school education. I have heard the young gentleman, so-called, recently returned from the walks of a University, pollute his lips and character with this shameful vice. I have heard the man who laid claim to wealth, to intelligence, to respectability, and to honour, pour forth his swearing words. I have heard the man who has stood in official relation to the state, and who considered ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... the past twenty years has been making apparent their phenomenal value in a natural condition. Vulnerable, attractive to diverse interests that work their beds for sand and gravel and fill in their marshes for development and casually pollute them, they have recently been called America's most endangered natural habitat. They are almost unbelievably fertile places, with involved biological cycles that can convert the fertility into usable food at rates per acre far exceeding those of the finest farm land; ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... because I see that my father loves revenge far more than his only child; and that he is willing to peril her soul by defiling it with wicked coquetry. Now I understand why it is that such a profligate as Count Podstadsky has been suffered to pollute our ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... tasteless, and reminded the monk of his disorder in the reins, to which a similar potation might possibly be efficacious. To this suggestion the monk answered that he would certainly try the water some other time; but that at present the wine he had drunk might pollute its divine properties. So saying, he turned off the conversation by inviting me to follow ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... what have I done that, since thou broughtest thy possessions into this country among us, Abraham, thou hast thus bitterly contrived a plot against me? Thou, a foreigner, wouldst deceive us in this country 2680 with evil and pollute us with sin: thou saidest in plain words that Sarra was thy sister, thy blood relation; through that woman thou wouldst have foully put upon me sin, measureless evil! We received thee honorably, 2685 and in friendship gave thee ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... "that I shall bestow the last, the most precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of their sex, but not all have the man's soul which ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Pollute" :   dirty, bemire, foul, infect, grime, pollution, begrime, pollutant, polluter, taint



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