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Taint   Listen
noun
Taint  n.  
1.
A thrust with a lance, which fails of its intended effect. (Obs.) "This taint he followed with his sword drawn from a silver sheath."
2.
An injury done to a lance in an encounter, without its being broken; also, a breaking of a lance in an encounter in a dishonorable or unscientific manner. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books



... seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid and a probable curate in mufti, demanded an order of courage to which Henrietta ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same, and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein' done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature she be! Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin. And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible as would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful o' men—unpertected. And it's a young marriage—but there's no fear for her, as far ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... vaingloriously that the shafts of the enemy had fallen harmlessly from his breastplate of faith. For he was not in the least charmed by Susanna's person. He had detected the paint on her cheeks, and had noted with aversion a certain unhealthy bloat in her face, and an alcoholic taint in her breath. He exulted in the consciousness that he had been genuinely disgusted, not as a matter of duty, but unaffectedly, as a matter of simple nature. What interested him in her was her novel and bold moral attitude, her self-respect in the midst of her sin, her striking arguments ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... excellent discretion by failing to be on hand and eager when Lanyard strolled into the Ritz on the minute of their appointment. To the contrary she was all of twenty-five minutes late; a circumstance so consistently feminine as to rob their meeting of any taint of the extraordinary; they might have been simple sweethearts meeting to dine remote from jealous or censorious eyes, rather than one of the most useful Parisian agents of the British Secret Service under orders to put her talents at the disposition of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... "No, 'taint, sir," replied Jarwin, reddening, "it's a truth. I was nigh starved on that raft, but was cast on an island where I've bin till a few days ago ever since, when I put to sea on the raft that ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne

... back, an' feelin' like a whipped houn' dog, sir, 'taint in Jim Hasty tuh do thet aways. Fact is," the guide went on, with a stubborn ring in his voice, "meetin' up with Ole Cale jest kinder makes me more sot in my mind than ever. I stays with yuh right through, ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... idealise either his life, his character, or his works. The three are inseparably connected, and to understand one we must understand all. The reason is that Shelley is one of the most subjective of writers. It would be hard to name a poet who has kept his art more free from all taint of representation of the real, making it nor an instrument for creating something life-like, but a more and more intimate echo or emanation of his own spirit. In studying his writings we shall see how they flow from his dominating emotion ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... once as a crime. This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe; the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always accepted by the people as the expression of an omnipotence derived ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... the probable effect of this exploit. It raised him high in the estimation of the Anglo-Irish of the Pale. 'The taint of the country was upon him; he had made himself no better than themselves, and was the hero of the hour.' The effect of such conduct and such a spirit in the rulers, may be imagined. A few weeks later, Sir Edward Fitton wrote: 'I may say of Ireland, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... and the total want of appreciation which he must have endured there. And yet all this had not soured him; in spite of it he had produced a great book, strong, yet refined and tender, and free from any taint of narrowness or cynicism. As she thought of this and glanced at Mark's handsome face, so bright and animated in general, but clouded now with the melancholy which his fine eyes could express at times, she longed to say something to relieve it, and yet shrank from ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... 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 Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... of milk in the absorption of taint from the atmosphere, or any substance with which it comes in contact, ought to be thoroughly understood by all persons engaged in handling it, but, we believe, that but few comparatively are alive to the true facts of the case. I herewith present several paragraphs ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards spiritualization. The English ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... alliance between the Tories and malcontent Whigs for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation, moreover, of the Craftsman—the first official journal of a political party in England—showed his appreciation of the technique of political controversy. Most of it is ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... hope not to be made partial, cold, or ignorant, by this isolation. I have no child; but now, as I look on these lovely children of a human birth, what low and neutralizing cares they bring with them to the mother! The children of the muse come quicker, and have not on them the taint ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... now, by successive 'scrutinies or epurations,' from all taint of Girondism, has become a great Authority: what we can call shield-bearer, or bottle-holder, nay call it fugleman, to the purged National Convention itself. The Jacobins Debates are reported in the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the stern rigidity and cynicism of her guardian. She shrank from the calm, steadfast gaze of his eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning some of the philosophic phases of the age. Had he escaped the upas taint of skepticism? An opportunity soon occurred to favor her wishes, for, chancing to allude to his visit to Rydal Mount, while in the lake region of England, the transition to a discussion of the metaphysical tone of the "Excursion" was ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... centre, where we meet. Groan with the weight of my approaching feet. I'll make the inspired threshold of his court Sweat with the weather of my horrid steps, Before I enter; yet, I will appear Like calm securitie, befor a ruin. A politician must, like lightning, melt The very marrow, and not taint the skin; His wayes must not be seen through, the superficies Of the green centre must not taste his feet, When hell is plowed up with the wounding tracts, And all his harvest ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... 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 past. Neptune had duly escorted them over the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... that they are now nearly eighteen months past, Mr. Phillips was an anti-Union man. He advocated strongly the disseverance of the Union, so that the country to which he belonged might have hands clean from the taint of slavery. He had probably acknowledged to himself that while the North and South were bound together no hope existed of emancipation, but that if the North stood alone the South would become too weak to foster and keep alive the "social institution." In which, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... healthy state which has 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 Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... remainders till they were expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of an ethical battleground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at his provisions was too sacrilegious ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... won him willing followers whom he knew how to use. He was party manager, 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 with the New York Tribune joined ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... Sylvia's back door in the days which were ended. But he was different from the others. He was a man who was lavish with money—but he expected you to pick it up out of the dust. He was of violent moods; and he had that audacity—that taint of insanity, perhaps—which enables some men to maintain the reputation of bad men, of "killers," in every frontier. When Fectnor had come he had seemed to assume the right of prior possession, and others had yielded to him without question. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... dozen years or so in the successive Whistlers put before the public during that time. First of all we remember pictures of ladies pale and attenuate poring with tender interest over vermilion scarfs. The taint of realism was on them, but even in them were hints of the pensive humour that was to fetch mankind in the well-known 'arrangements' at a later time. A good deal was left to the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... price? Were there only three or four that didn't deceive their husbands? When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for the gossip of a village parlour—a scorn that kept its freshness in a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied, and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond's traditions—it was enough without giving them such a general extension. It was ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... were to gather themselves till she took her place again as a planet of the first magnitude in the European system. In one respect Mr. Lincoln was more fortunate than Henry. However some may think him wanting in zeal, the most fanatical can find no taint of apostasy in any measure of his, nor can the most bitter charge him with being influenced by motives of personal interest. The leading distinction between the policies of the two is one of circumstances. Henry went over to the nation; Mr. Lincoln has steadily drawn the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... girl. It beats all, don't it, that wimmen settle every great question. Everybody does everything to please wimmen, and if they kick on anything that settles it. But I must go and umpire that game between Pa, and the hired girl, and the goat. Say, can't you come over and see the baby? 'Taint bigger than a small satchel," and the boy waited till the grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slipped out and put up a sign written on a shingle ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... sadism, can be readily demonstrable in the normal. The sexuality of most men shows a taint of aggression, it is a propensity to subdue, the biological significance of which lies in the necessity of overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by actions other than mere courting. Sadism would then correspond to ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... of the North Sea converts has turned out badly, for they usually have the stern stuff of good men in them; they have that manly and passionate gratitude which only the true and honest professor, free from taint of humbug or hypocrisy, can maintain, and I say deliberately that every man of them who is brought to lead a pure, sober, religious life, represents a distinct gain to our best national wealth—a wealth that ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... suspicion of being swept and garnished for the dollar-distributing visitor from over the Atlantic, and of being less genuine than they really are. However that may be, the moment you are out of these show-streets of Chester, there is a singular lack of charm in the environment. The taint of commerce and the smoke of the north hangs visibly on the horizon. Its immediate surroundings are modern and garish to a degree that by no means assists in the fiction that Chester is the unadulterated old-country town one would like to think it." Such a feeling I ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... use, I should know myself for a 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, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... serious and able men in the American Army to maintain the high ideals for which all of them have fought, to preserve the soldier comradeship and carry it over into civilian life as an element of broad helpfulness while keeping the record of the army free from the taint of selfish aims. It was also wisely intended to forestall by the creation of one big genuinely representative, nonpartisan and democratic body, the formation of numerous smaller organizations in various places by men intent on exploiting ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... useless. And now, Reason, 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, Reason, speak, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... thus a man who was never in a brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the special features of Italian life. Nothing is more unlike the social jealousy of the Frenchman, or the surly incivility with which a Lancashire operative thinks proper to show the world that he is as good a man as his master. In either case one feels the taint of a mere spirit of envious levelling, and a latent confession that the levelling process has still in reality to be accomplished. But the ordinary Italian has nothing of the leveller about him. The little ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... his will. Now all the Gods had gathered there, Each one for his allotted share— Brahma, the ruler of the sky, Sthanu, Narayan, Lord most high, And holy Indra men might view With Maruts for his retinue; The heavenly chorister, and saint, And spirit pure from earthly taint, With one accord had sought the place The high-souled monarch's rite to grace, Then to the Gods who came to take Their proper share, the hermit spake:— "For you has Dasaratha slain The votive steed, a son to gain; Stern penance-rites the King has tried, And in firm faith on you relied, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... apt to infer, that whatever educational bias the first efforts of genius subjected to influences of the same kind would naturally betray, the faults charged upon the Comedy of Errors, the leaning to the classics, the taint of St. Peter's College, the tone of the Queen's scholars, are hardly the faults that the instructed critic would ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... "'Taint no gal's picture," offered the man at the fire. He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick. "That's a charm; some kind of hoodoo business that one o' them priests gave him to keep him out o' trouble. I know them Cath'lics. That's ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... the groaning ice wrench free, crash on with a hollow din; Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the taint of sin. The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us swift along; The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song. We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; We burnt our boat to save ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... yon little islet They have planted the feet that defile it? Make its sands pure of taint, by the stroke of the sword, And by torrents of blood in red sacrifice pour'd! Doubts are Traitors, if once they persuade you to fear, That the foe, in his foothold, is safe from your spear! When the foot of pollution is set on your ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... small portion of the top of the arch, between it and 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

... support in religious hypocrisy. So that while in former days a man who professed the religion of the Church could take part in all the crimes of the state, and profit by them, and still regard himself as free from any taint of sin, so long as he fulfilled the external observances of his creed, nowadays all who do not believe in the Christianity of the Church, find similar well-founded irrefutable reasons in science for regarding themselves as blameless and even highly moral in spite of their ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... wind is a mighty roamer; He bids me keep me free, Clean from the taint of the gold-lust, Hardy and pure as he; Cling with my love to nature As ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... old officer retired and a young and energetic man succeeded him. A "new broom" is eulogized in proverb; and Mr. Michael Bonar, being new to his district, and a man of youth and determination, boasted that he meant to sweep away the taint of smuggling from the neighborhood of Ardmuirland, which bore a bad name ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... a drove of one thousand or of ten thousand it's all the same; the panic strikes every beast at the same moment. It's somethin' in the air; 'taint my business to know what. But you look like a 'run' yourself, restless and hot, and as ef somethin' was gitting 'the mad' up in you. I noticed Whaley is 'bout the same. I'd keep clear of him, ef ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... eagerly, since, for once, her acumen had been at least as sharp as his, "but suspicion of that horrible crime only shifted its taint from one friend to another, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... that little curl hung down O'er a brow like a holy saint; Her goodness was beyond renown, And yet—there was a taint. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves, With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown, 40 And all their echoes mourn. The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green, Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes. As killing as the Canker to the Rose, Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze, Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear, When first the White thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... be borne humbly and faithfully, to the honour—as he prayed—both of earthly and heavenly love. He loved Katherine, but he loved her husband and that with the fulness of a loyal and equal friendship. And so no taint was upon his love, of this he felt certain. Indeed, he asked nothing better than that things might continue as they were at Brockhurst; and that he might continue to warm his hands a little—only ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... be lying, an almost insupportable blot upon all that was fair and seemly, in the stained and mouldered coffin. Yet there was a place for that difficult horror too in the scheme of things, though the thought seemed almost to taint the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... master he growled and contracted the muscles of his lips, as if half disposed to threaten with the remnants of his teeth. The younger dog, who was resting after the chase of the morning, also made some signs that his nose detected a taint in the air, and then the two resumed their slumbers, as if ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Chateau barked vehemently, as if the very air bore some ominous taint; but La Corriveau knew she was safe: they were shut up in the courtyard, and could not trace her to the tower. A harsh voice or two and the sound of whips presently silenced the barking dogs, and all was ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... depravity, and that the circumstances have just so much weight as this—that put you or me in those same circumstances, in nine cases out of ten, we should be criminals too. In the same circumstances, my friends; and this involves a great deal. It involves an hereditary taint stamped in the very mould of birth; it involves physical misery; it involves intellectual and moral destitution; it involves the worst kind of social influence; it involves the pressure of all the natural appetites, rioting in this need of the body and this darkness ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... words repeated only to expose the vice, taint the reader more than a sermon preached against lewdness should the assembly?—for of necessity it leads the hearer to the thoughts of the fact. But the morality of every action lies in the end; and if the reader by ill-use renders himself guilty ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... of the 'glory' (which here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God). 'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all. 'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... did not shrink from the society of his body, as regards the nature of the body, in fact in this respect he was loth to be deprived thereof, according to 2 Cor. 5:4: "We would not be unclothed, but clothed over." He did, however, wish to escape from the taint of concupiscence, which remains in the body, and from the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul, so as to hinder it from seeing God. Hence he says expressly: "From the body of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... seven centuries of fruitless silver-mining, and of the right (now deservedly lost) of 'sending a talker to the national palaver,' have neither cleansed nor civilized. Turn, turn thy head away, dear Claude, lest even at this distance some foul odour taint the summer airs, and complete the misfortune already presaged by that pale, sad face, sickening in the burning calm! For this great sun-roasted fire-brick of the Exmoor range is fairly burning up the breeze, and we have nothing ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... not whole hearted. It may have been our inherited distrust of the conscript that led us to feel that only by his volunteering something will a precious antidote be administered to the spirit of the drafted man. To protect his individualism from taint, the United States soldier must bear part of the financial burden. Europe, on the other hand, is working on a basis of reciprocity. The nation exacts service from the man and gives complete service to his dependents. In America the man is bound to serve the community, but the ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... Blair blushed for the honor of his country, to find such men among her avowed defenders. Oaths and obscenity made even more hateful the rough narratives in which each strove to prove himself more hardened and abandoned than the last speaker. Blair's soul recoiled with horror from the taint of such companionship; yet for him there was no escape. Among these coarse rovers he was forced to eat and sleep, to live and labor, while ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... "'Taint a question of what we couldn't do. What can we do? He's got money and plenty of it cached somewhere about the old camp, and five hundred dollars of it's mine. That's what I want. I don't care a damn what they do with him so long as they don't send ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... wage war on wrong, And the clash of their swords is sweet as song; Fair are the maids, and so pure from taint The flash of their eyes turns sinner to saint; There reptile is none, nor the ravening beast; There light has no ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... as of roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch grass. But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... for to get 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... original or actual, the former inherited from our parents, the latter, personal transgression of the Divine law. Every man descending from Adam by ordinary generation is born with the taint of original sin. As the representative head of humanity, Adam transmitted to all his descendants the nature that his sin had polluted. The fountain of life was poisoned at its source, and when Adam begat children they were born in his likeness. "By one man ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... unsafe. The horrid emanations might have flavoured the cargo of sugar. They seemed strong enough to taint the very ironwork. In addition Mr. Burns made it a personal matter. He assured me he knew how to treat a cargo of potatoes at sea—had been in the trade as a boy, he said. He meant to make my loss as small as possible. What between his devotion—it must have been devotion—and his vanity, I positively ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... She was intelligently interested in all that related to her husband's business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were twelve persons round the table to be provided for, besides two ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... said, "'Taint youster; 'tis. This here taown is Ridgeboro, Noow York, and so it'll ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... here! and see, where with her comes My serpent gliding in an angel's form, To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, Nor coy it for their pleasures. [He courts ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... 'oman can fix 'em, so's dey won't be so turrible bad," suggested the negro, "'taint fer, so you jes' run down ter my cabin an' tell Sukey ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... concert-bill. First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened by experience. It was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... 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 no stomach for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various

... frame; The noble origin he gave each mortal wight may claim. Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line? If ye behold your being's source, and God's supreme design, None is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin And cherished vice he foully ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... the best humor with the tide of ill fortune that had swept them into these muddy currents. They went immediately to The Tombs, and in the interview that followed Dr. Earl insisted that Leonora should consider herself released from her engagement so long as the least taint was attached to his name in connection with this charge. She protested that this was the hour of his need, and she could not think of such a thing, but he caught the tone of doubt in her voice, and the lack of genuine sympathy in her ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... colonies lost caste who endeavored, in the manner if not in the substance of his thinking, to achieve the polished urbanity of those Englishmen who made a point of being scholars without a touch of pedantry, and men of virtue without the taint of prejudice. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... melted into the general crock, and will now keep for months in cool weather. If you are having frequent joints it is as well to do all your dripping together, once a week; but do not leave it long at any season with water under it, as that would taint it. Fat skimmed from boiled meat, pot-au-feu, before the vegetables, etc., go in, is quite as good as that from roast, treated ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen

... her kings had not been expelled, Rome must very soon have become a weak and inconsiderable State. For seeing to what a pitch of corruption these kings had come, we may conjecture that if two or three more like reigns had followed, and the taint spread from the head to the members, so soon as the latter became infected, cure would have been hopeless. But from the head being removed while the trunk was still sound, it was not difficult for the Romans to return to a free and ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... a sweet, innocent, ladylike, high-spirited, joyous creature. Those struggles of her father to get rid of the last porcine taint, though not quite successful as to himself, had succeeded thoroughly in regard to her. It comes at last with due care, and the due care had here been taken. She was so nice that middle-aged men wished themselves younger that they might make love to her, or ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... 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 ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... slow but sure, drew on a better time, And Statesmen owned the check of public will; And, at the last, light pierced the shadow chill That fouled his honour with the taint of crime. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... 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 not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... retains a sincere and primitive piety, but his belief that he is a member of the chosen people has sometimes tended to antinomianism rather than to strict morality. His contempt and dislike for the Kaffir has preserved the Dutch stock from taint of black blood, and although there is a large Eur-African population, it has sprung partly from the old days of domestic slavery, partly from the laxity induced by the recent influx of low-class Europeans. The Boer has a strong national feeling, and although not ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... witnesses grovelling to the naked truth. "No doubt whatever. I always held, and so did both the physicians, that his lack of balance was a temporary and sporadic thing, brought on by overwork—and certain unhappy conditions of his life. There has never been any such taint in our branch of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... swiftly over the scenes of her life in which the wounded man had played his part. She remembered every look of the now closed eyes, and every expression of his well-loved features. She called to mind his words of hope, and the carefully-laid plans for his advancement. Nor was there any taint of his selfishness in her recollection of these things. Everything about him, to her, was good and true. She loved him with all the passionate intensity of one who had only just attained to perfect womanhood. He had been to her ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... rock. There was still the deep scar in her shoulder which had come, years before, with that same smell of the one enemy she feared. For three summers she had not caught the taint in her nostrils and she had almost forgotten its existence. Now, so suddenly that it paralyzed her, it was warm and terrible in the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... desperate clinging energy at the foot of the cross, where the Divine Sufferer would impart divine strength. She tried to recall those first bitter moments of shame, which were like the shuddering discovery of the leper that the dire taint is upon him; the deeper and deeper lapse; the on-coming of settled despair; the awful moments by the bedside of her self-maddened husband. And then she tried to live through, with a remembrance made more vivid by that contrast, the blessed hours of hope and joy ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... the unfit, we cannot say. Possibly or even probably the ill results would be inappreciable. It must not be forgotten that the marriage of near relatives is only harmful because or if it hands on to the children of the union an hereditary taint in a strengthened form, a result which is likely to follow in civilised life because hereditary taints are allowed to flourish unchecked by prudence and controlled by natural selection only so far as humanitarianism ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... had only died! He was driven to envy such a respectable bereavement, and one so perfectly free from any taint of misfortune that even his best friend or his best enemy would not have felt the slightest thrill of exultation. No one would have cared. He sought comfort in clinging to the contemplation of the only fact of life that the resolute efforts of mankind had never failed to disguise ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... rejoined Edith, emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... who love beauty, are always smiling and follow the Golden Rule far nearer than those who live by trade and are blest by civilization. Ah, that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day! The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease, death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... probity, and national prosperity. The notion that you can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating dens; or that the most generous contributor at his ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse had reached him—in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs. The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain—gain of any sort—filled his heart, and ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her unendurable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her, she had really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say they love, who often think they love best, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... law. Banking employments also carry a suggestion of large ownership, and this fact is doubtless accountable for a share of the prestige that attaches to the business. The profession of the law does not imply large ownership; but since no taint of usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to the lawyer's trade, it grades high in the conventional scheme. The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory fraud, either in achieving or in checkmating chicanery, and success in the profession ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... life into the midst of humanity. All the rest of mankind, knit together by that mysterious bond of natural descent which only now for the first time is beginning to receive its due attention on the part of men of science, by heredity have the taint upon them. And if Jesus Christ is only one of the series, then there is no deliverance in Him, for there is no sinlessness in that life. However fair its record may seem on the surface, there is beneath, somewhere or other, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... Ireland,[134] of a barbarous people, was brought up there, and there received his education. But from the barbarism of his birth he contracted no taint, any more than the fishes of the sea from their native salt. But how delightful to reflect, that uncultured barbarism should have produced for us so worthy[135] a fellow-citizen with the saints and member of the household of God.[136] He who brings honey out of the rock and ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... die and be buried in. She had never supposed such a street to exist outside the imaginations of antiquarians. Smells direct from the sixteenth century hung in the air in all their original integrity and without a modern taint. The faces of the people in the doorways seemed those of individuals who habitually gazed on the great Francis, and spoke of Henry the Eighth as the king ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... it should be so? Can any man pass through such experiences as mine, and not receive a wound which time can never wholly heal? And though great things have of late been done, and the Pope and his Court have swept away all such stain and taint as men sought to fasten upon the pure nature of the wonderful and miraculous Maid, we who lived through those awful days, and heard and saw the things which happened at that time, can never forget them, and (God pardon me if I sin in this) never forgive. There are men, some living still, ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... taint of must— The hand that traced the lines is dust, And silvery hair is on the head Of that same boy since first he read This missive from the sainted one That bore her love to an erring son— More fondly prized than any other— 'Twas written by the ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy

... smelt him," answered Sir Patrick, "ever since I have been in the summer-house. There is a detestable taint of tobacco in the air—suggestive (disagreeably suggestive to my mind) ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... the necessity of studying the aetiology of insanity, including that damnosa haereditas, which is the cause of causes in so large a number of the cases coming under our treatment. But what induced the ancestral taint? It behoves us to pay more and more attention to those laws of inheritance in general to which Mr. Hutchinson has recently directed attention in his suggestive lectures at ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... classes of professional men upon whom not a taint should rest; who ought, in familiar phrase, to keep their hands clean—the parson of the parish, and the family doctor. Other people may dye themselves in Warren's jet if they like; but let as much as a spot get on him who stands in ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... suffers great anxiety. Thinking that the festival might be the attraction this Goemon set out to find you. Deign to hasten at once to Goro[u]beicho[u]." Densuke shifted his burden away from the man. Did it not already somewhat taint the air? His nostrils were wide open in alarmed inquiry. He made excuses. With his heavy pack he would follow after slowly. He was overwhelmed by his neighbour's kindness. Goemon offered to share the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... the world, entered 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 ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... days successively, before they are put in use; and for old Casks, if they stand any time out of use, they are apt to grow musty: unslack'd Lime, about a Gallon to a Hogshead, with about six Gallons of Water put in with it, and the Hogshead presently stopp'd up, will clear it of its Taint, if the same be repeated four or five times; or burning of Linnen dipp'd in Brimstone, to be close stopped in a Cask, three or four times repeated, will do the same: or else put Water in your Vessels, and throw in some burning Coals, and stop them close, ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... strongly impregnated with the dust lodging on the roof, whence it had trickled down into the old wooden cask, which also added its own flavour to that of the original rain water. The milk, too, was often "bingy," to use a country expression for a kind of taint that is far worse than sourness, and suggests the idea that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk pans, rather than by the heat of the weather. On Saturdays, a kind of pie, or mixture of potatoes and meat, was served up, which was ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas Finn and Lady Laura Kennedy had not seen each other for two years, and when they had parted, though they had lived ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... 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 ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... a problem of pathology concerning which specialists have failed to agree, there seems to be sufficient circumstantial as well as direct evidence to warrant the assumption that Lenau's case presents an instance of hereditary taint. Notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Karl Weiler[75] discredits the idea of "erbliche Belastung" and calls heredity "den vielgerittenen Verlegenheitsgaul," the conclusion forces itself upon us that if the theory has ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... execution of M. de Rennepont's will; the latter having declared his desire to the grandfather of the Samuels, that the capital should only be augmented by interest at five per cent.—so that the fortune might come to his descendants free from all taint of usurious speculation. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... fair and frail Marie appears somewhat cautious in direct allusions to her skull, and to her 'earth-life,' it is certainly to her credit that she seems to have retained no taint of mercenary greed. She made no demand or reference to a fee, and a second letter had to be sent to her Medium to learn the amount of my debt. This is her reply:—'Your kind favour came duly to me, and as your message to your Spirit Friend was delivered previously, ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... make the common people talk; Azorin can portray the villages of Castile, set on their arid heights, against backgrounds of blue skies; Blasco Ibanez can paint the life of the Valencians in vivid colours with a prodigality that carries with it the taint of the cheap, but none of them has penetrated into the popular soul. That would require a great poet, and we ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... paint Till all is ordered and matured within, Hand-work and head-work have an earthly taint, But when the soul commands I shall begin; On themes like these I should not dare to dwell With our good Prior—they to him would be Mere nonsense; he must touch and taste and see, And facts, he says, are ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell

... of educated people nor uttered by their lips: it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman's eyes: it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... was soon over, and as the Separatists denied themselves the privilege of a religious service lest some taint of Papistry might lurk therein, Elder Brewster closed his magisterial office with a prayer in which Isaac and Rebecca were not forgotten, and about which hung a curious flavor of the Church of England service so familiar to the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... in his wile, Hath ta'en his mirror and withdrawn; Again the flowers look up and smile, And brightens off from air and lawn The taint ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... any of the wit, whose whole spirit is in the lees, behind. The very life of such characters as Berinthia is their licentiousness, and it is with them, as with objects that are luminous from putrescence,—to remove their taint is to extinguish their light. If Sheridan, indeed, had substituted some of his own wit for that which he took away, the inanition that followed the operation would have been much less sensibly felt. But to be so liberal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... upsetting. Manning had been removing the high pews from a church in Brighton, and putting in open benches in their place. Everyone knew what that meant; everyone knew that a high pew was one of the bulwarks of Protestantism, and that an open bench had upon it the taint of Rome. But Manning hastened to explain: 'My dear friend,' he wrote, 'I did not exchange pews for open benches, but got the pews (the same in number) moved from the nave of the church to the walls of the side aisles, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... traces of external influence. But in what circumstances is such influence exercised? It is not the necessary result of contact, for in the east of Europe the Christian Church has not become mohammedanized nor in Poland and Roumania has it contracted any taint of Judaism. In these cases there is difference of race as well as of religion. In business the Turk and Jew have some common ground with the oriental Christian: in social life but little and in religion none at all. Europe has sometimes shown ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... more moderate believed that the Tsar would soon re-establish Orthodoxy, and the more fanatical imagined that the end of all things was at hand.* In either case they had only to suffer for a little season, keeping themselves free from the taint of heresy and from all contact with the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... finished supper, Lark said, "Don't you think we'd better go right to bed, Prue? We don't want to taint the atmosphere of the parsonage. Of course, Fairy will want to wash the dishes herself to make sure they are ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... hast called me to be holy as Thou art holy, oh, reveal to me somewhat of Thy Holiness! As it shines upon me and strikes death into the creature and the flesh, may even the most involuntary taint of sin, and its slightest movement, become unbearable. As it shines and revives the hope of being partaker of Thy Holiness, may the confidence grow strong that Thou Thyself art making me holy, wilt even make me ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... not taint 'tis not haint are not maint may not wont will not wer'nt were not waunt was not woodent would not mussent must not izzent is not wazzent was not hezzent has not doozzent does not tizzent 'tis not whool who will don't ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... darkness and grief, inly indignant at the fate of my innocent friend. Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... as bloodless, as blameless thy cheek divine; 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, ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... threatened to attack me and finally, as I persisted in offering him the meat, seized it and flung it as far away as possible, then scrubbed his soiled hand with dust and wiped it on the grass to get rid of the taint of the meat. He gave every evidence of feeling deeply insulted. Biology classifies man as a primate along with the great apes and, according to the great Cuvier, assigns to him along with other primates, a diet consisting ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... no terrors. Dangers will be welcomed as the spice of life. My restless energies crave occupation, but there must be no menial taint. Mental and physical toil are not to be shunned, but ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... taint of roseate red, This Cynthia's silver light, This sweet fair Dea spread, These sunbeams in mine eye, These beauties, make ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... styled Reformed, did not understand the nature of this malady, caused partly by heated feelings, which should be passed over unnoticed and allowed to die out insensibly, instead of being inflamed afresh by equally strong contradiction, which, moreover, is always useless, when the taint is not confined to a certain known number, but spread throughout the state. I thought, therefore, that the best way of reducing the Huguenots of my kingdom little by little, was, in the first place, not to put any pressure upon them by any fresh rigor ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... mountain-snows With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished 70 One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! To scatter rage and traitorous guilt Where Peace her jealous home had built; A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 To mix with Kings in the low lust of ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... and dominion sure, They sought alone to hold their fruits secure; When taught by these, Oppression hid the face, To leave Corruption stronger in her place, By silent spells to work the public fate, And taint the vitals of the passive state, Till healing Wisdom should avail no more, And Freedom loathe to tread the poison'd shore: 90 Then, like some guardian god that flies to save The weary pilgrim from an instant grave, Whom, sleeping and secure, the guileful snake Steals ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... clear or very plentiful. At Cape Aden, there was little perceptible difference between the sea water and the land water. At Tajura, the beverage obtainable was far from being improved in quality by the taint of the new skins in which it was transferred from the only well; and now, in the very heart of the scorching Tehama, where a copious draught of pure water seemed absolutely indispensable every five minutes, the mixture was the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... Bring me no more Reports, let them flye all: Till Byrnane wood remoue to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with Feare. What's the Boy Malcolme? Was he not borne of woman? The Spirits that know All mortall Consequences, haue pronounc'd me thus: Feare not Macbeth, no man that's borne of woman Shall ere haue power vpon thee. Then fly false Thanes, And ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Paradise which is promised to the God-fearing! Therein are rivers of water which taint not; and rivers of milk whose taste changeth not; and rivers of wine, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... knelt for heaven's grace and boon Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven: Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. Eve of ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron

... paint, This was her grandmother years ago. Gown and coiffure so strange and quaint, Features just lacking the prim of the saint, From the mischievous dimple that lurks below; High-heeled slippers and satin bow, Red lips mocking the heart's constraint, Free from passion, devoid of taint— This was her ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet

... a heart less native to high Heaven, A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, Nor they in sickest time ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... the father, "I dunno. I t'ink 'taint no real mash-in' [machine] 'cause I dawn't never see nuttin' like dat at Belle Alliance plant-ation, neider at Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one mash-in', any place, for do any t'in' mo' betteh or mo' ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... hitherto seen of "irregular living" bore the stamp of betrayal and disease, a thing more grossly criminal than anything else in the social body. She did not know how that body was permeated, and how no class and no ordinary standard of morality was free from the taint. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... more brass band," said a young girl in a gingham apron and with brick red hair in long tightly woven braids, who stood close by; "he's a melodeon. I don't see what they sent such a big car for with such a little boy. 'Taint no fit, ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... either of the general question of Socialism, or the specific question of Woman. Nevertheless, while respecting the author's private opinion in the matter, and leaving his sentence untouched, the following phrasing would seem preferable, as free from the taint of what may be called the "theologic method," and also more in keeping with the mental posture of positive knowledge: "Whether to be dead means to be ended or not, is a matter on which man awaits the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... hundred years before; and Middleton's knowledge of that incident shall be the means of his salvation. That would be a good idea; in fact, I think it must be done so and no otherwise. It is not to be forgotten that there is a taint of insanity in Eldredge's blood, accounting for much that is wild and absurd, at the same time that it must be subtile, in his conduct; one of those perplexing mad people, whose lunacy you are continually ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... competency ample for him, when there came a torrent of ill-fortune—the loss of his beloved wife, and the failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the blood which had been so prolific of genius. He suffered where he was strongest and weakest—in his love and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... ennemyes, than they had beene able to haue done in your castel, with their thundring ordinaunce." The Countesse somewhat shamefast and abashed, to heare herselfe so greatly praysed of a Prince so greate, began to blushe and taint with roseall colour, the whitenesse of her alablaster face. Then lifting vp her bashfull eyes, somewhat towards the king, she said vnto him: "My soueraigne Lord, your grace may speake your pleasure, but I am well assured, that if you had seen the nomber of shotte, which by the space ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... enough to advocate her excelling virtue and stainless purity as a mere human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that God had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even promulgated in person severe ordinances to preserve its sanctuary ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... never seen, in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,—not to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him as a good hand in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... a premature misanthropy, but too late to eradicate every morbidity of mind. Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. To be unamiable is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if I have but a few objects to love. You ask me my inducement to leave you. 'The World' will be sufficient answer. I cannot share your contempt ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the sages of our modern imaginative literature. An English governess, or even an American governess, if, indeed, there be such a being in nature, may be every thing that is respectable, and prudent, and wise, and good; but the French governess has a sort of ex-officio moral taint about her, that throws her without the pale of literary charities. Nevertheless, one or two of the most excellent women I have ever known, have been French governesses, though I do not choose to reveal what this particular ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... no longer, Fanny; 'taint no place for you, nohow. Jest crawl up to the tree, and keep behind it. Keep both eyes wide open tight, but don't let the redskins ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... hospital, where, under his own eyes, the poor fellow would have the benefit of the latest science and the highest specialists. Physically, he was doing remarkably well; indeed, he must have been a fine young chap, free from blood taint or vicious complication, whose flesh had healed like an infant's. It should be recorded that it was at this juncture that Mrs. Forsyth first learnt that a SILVER PLATE let into the artful stranger's skull was an adjunct of the healing process! ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... of life—that interests Synge, so he escapes ensnarement in any of the questions of the day. So frankly does he accept life that there is in him no note of protest whatsoever, which is again fortunate, for protest, too, will lead a man to morals and leave on his work the taint of a passing system of morality as it did even ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... been expected, camp fevers, choleras, and other corrupt and infectious maladies, broke out with great violence as the army advanced along the northern shores of the AEgean Sea; and as every victim to these dreadful and hopeless disorders helped, by his own dissolution, to taint the air for all the rest, the wretched crowd was, in the end, reduced to the last extreme ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... which were partially successful, and are still adopted; but after all, it must be confessed that the fumes of sulphurous acid, and of numerous other acids alike poisonous in their character, still taint the atmosphere of the Swansea valley, and still leave the indelible traces of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various

... All this is very true. When saw you, sir, When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid Ungenial Britain which we left so lately, A heaven so calm as this—so utterly free From the evil taint ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe



Words linked to "Taint" :   spoil, infect, contaminate, smut, sully, foul, impurity, defile, disinfect, corrupt, impureness, mar, contamination



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