"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said were sure marks of high blood, and never found in the lower ranks! With a scornful expression on her face, old Hagar would listen to these remarks, and then, when sure that no one heard her, she would mutter: "Marks of blood! What nonsense! I'm almost glad I've solved the riddle, and know 'taint blood that makes the difference. Just tell her the truth once, and she'd quickly change her mind. Hester's blue, pinched nose, which makes one think of fits, would be the very essence of aristocracy, while Maggie's ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... cannon-ball on the battle-field, an infernal machine in the street, an illness at home, may carry off the guarantor and the guarantees.[3190] On the other hand, confiscated goods preserve their original taint. Rarely is the purchaser regarded favorably in his commune; the bargain he has made excites envy; he is not alone in his enjoyment of it, but the rest suffer from it. Formerly, this or that field of which he reaps the produce, this or that domain ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the end for tearing flesh, and long, strong, broad wings upon which they float in the air for hours at a time without any visible flapping. They are scavengers and do great service to mankind by devouring dead animal matter, that, if allowed to remain, would soon taint the atmosphere. Their eyesight and sense of smell is very acute. They do not, except in very unusual cases, capture their prey, but feed upon that which has been ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... and futile too, Which have to him and him such dire disgrace and trouble bred?' And as a neighbour's death appals the sick, and, by the dread Of dying, forces them to put upon their lusts restraint, So tender minds are oft deterred from vices by the taint They see them bring on others' names; 'tis thus that I from those Am all exempt, which bring with them a train of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... while to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. For instance, it can be shown ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... worshipped, and as far as evidence goes never were worshipped, because there is no evidence of the existence at any time of such chiefs. The American highest gods may then be equally free from the taint ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... turned and looked at him; he stood pale and strengthless, his eyes fixed on the corner—at the same moment something dark and shapeless seemed to slip past the group, and there came to the nostrils of Father Thomas a strange sharp smell, as of the sea, only that there was a taint within it, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gods, which was sure to lead to their destruction, there was a taint of mortality which they could not throw off. They all derived their being from the life of nature. The god who represented the sun was liable, in the mythological language of antiquity, to all the accidents which threatened the solar luminary. Though he might rise in immortal ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... between them. Cyril seemed to shrink from the materialising of his love by any thought of marriage. To him she was an ideal of womanhood rather than a flesh-and-blood woman. His love for her was a religion; it had no taint of earthly passion ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... kept their garments tight about them, as Jem passed, for about him there still hung the taint of the murderer. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... comin'," said a voice from behind the golden-rose bushes, and out stepped Aunt Lucy in a new turban, making a curtsey to me. "La, Marse Richard!" said she, "to think you'se growed to be a fine gemman! 'Taint but t'other day you was kissin' Miss Dolly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mean, Bobolink?" asked Joe; "you're just trying to scare us, and you know it. 'Taint fair either. I felt a draught of air, and that was what puffed your light out. There ain't any wild animals in here, are ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... predominating or crowning virtue that Shakespeare demands in rulers. But the Shakespearean code is innocent of any taint of sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to eschew self-glorification or self-indulgence. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... his head. "That cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny, but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine for ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of lust, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change her high bright spirit and clear, For all its mortal stains, from taint ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... meed was gone. And I was all distraught and conquered. Of ending his base life I never thought, never at my wildest, though I had thought to end my own; but when Fate struck the blow for me, then I swore that carrion should not taint my whole life through. It should not—should not—for 'twas Fate's self had doomed me to my ruin. And there it lay until the night; for this I planned, that being of such great strength for a woman, I could bear his ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 as ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Social influence ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... sufficiently free from all taint of the pedagogue or the preacher to have dispelled the sophisms of licence, less by argument than by the gracious attraction of virtue in his own character. The stock moralist, like the commonplace orator of the pulpit, fails to touch the hearts of men or to affect their lives, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... police agents—they are the same everywhere," she exclaimed. "They deal so much with crime that their minds get the taint, and between the false and true they cannot tell the difference. Que voulez-vous? They are but small in brains. With you, the case is different. You have it here—and there." She touched her temples lightly with a finger of each hand. "Proceed, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Their voices rouse no echo now, their footsteps have no speed; They sleep, and have forgot at last the sabre and the bit— Yon vale, with all the corpses heaped, seems one wide charnel-pit. Long shall the evil omen rest upon this plain of dread— To-night, the taint of solemn blood; to-morrow, of the dead. Alas! 'tis but a shadow now, that noble armament! How terribly they strove, and struck from morn to eve unspent, Amid the fatal fiery ring, enamoured of the fight! Now o'er the dim horizon sinks the peaceful pall of night: The brave have nobly done their work, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... outcome of ambition and greed, rendered all the more odious by the cloak of philanthropy which she had hitherto worn. The time has not come when an exhaustive and decisive verdict can be given on this charge. Few movements have been free from all taint of meanness; but it is clearly unjust to rail against a great Power, because, at the end of a war which entailed frightful losses and a serious though temporary loss of prestige, it determined to exact from the enemy the only form of indemnity which ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... into her intellectuals and abilities, the wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and necessitated. She was learned, her sex and time considered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem and in fashion, the former ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... was very ready to do, for this reason—he hated to smell the decaying carcases of the poor creatures the weasel killed, and left to rot and to taint the air, so that it quite spoilt his morning ramble over the fields. With a puff the wind came along and blew a dead leaf, one of last year's leaves, over the trap, and so hid ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... which Douglas was now working. Every one knew what the law of God was. Every one appealed to the Bible as God's word. For much of this Douglas had perfect contempt; and he was quick to sense a taint of it in Seward, or any one whom it had infected. Such men as Stephens of the South were insisting now that the real intellect-of the North cared nothing about slavery, and only used it to masquerade their centralizing plots. If local self-government could be extinguished ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... be kept from the taint of idolatry, Jacob left Laban; yet Rachel had stolen her father's images—and there is then great significance in that act by which Jacob renewed his covenant with God, when called upon to build the ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... which have been stolen or violently possessed can be acquired by usucapion, as for instance after they have again come under the power of their real owner: for by this they are relieved from the taint which had attached to them, and so become ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... observe now apparently slight a fault it was for which Moses suffered; for this shows us the infinite difference between the best of a sinful race and Him who was sinless,—the least taint of human corruption having in it an unspeakable evil. Moses was the meekest of men, yet it was for one sudden transgression of the rule of meekness that he suffered, all his former gentleness, all his habitual humbleness of mind, availed him nothing. It was unprofitable, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... himself confessed. The necessity for secrecy, you, my dear Marquis, will appreciate. The publicity of the affair now would work incalculable injury to the nation. It is imperative to preserve the army from the taint of scandal. The nation hangs on a thread. God knows there is iniquity abroad. I, who have labored for the honor of France and planted her flag in distant lands, look for defeat, not through want of bravery, but from internal causes. A matter like this might lead to a popular uprising ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... some other translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment were not appreciated in Trevisa's days, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint. ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... amongst men; seeing 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 than by having it printed in ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... rest of the children of Adam, the soul of Mary was never subject to sin, even in the first moment of its infusion into the body. She alone was exempt from the original taint. This immunity of Mary from original sin is exclusively due to the merits of Christ, as the Church expressly declares. She needed a Redeemer as well as the rest of the human race and therefore was "redeemed, but in a more ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... long-armed, flat-skulled, of a yellowish clay color, with protruding jaws, and gaping, pit-like, upturned nostrils to their wide, bridgeless noses. Grom's own nose wrinkled in disgust as the sour taint of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... interests of forty million people, disgusted and depressed Madeleine's mind. Ratclife spared her nothing except the exposure of his own moral sores. He carefully called her attention to every leprous taint upon his neighbours' persons, to every rag in their foul clothing, to every slimy and fetid pool that lay beside their path. It was his way of bringing his own qualities into relief. He meant that she should go hand in hand with him through the brimstone lake, and the more repulsive it ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... was, and had display'd the port Through which his life was martching vp to heauen, Albe the mortall taint all cuers retort, Yet was his Surgion not of hope bereuen, But giues him valiant speech of lifes resort, Saves, longer dayes his longer fame shall euen, And for the meanes of his recouerie, He finds both ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... jars In her creation whose meek wraith we know. The more that he, turned man of mere traditions, Now profits naught. For the large potencies Instilled into his idiosyncrasy— To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room— Are taking taint, and sink to common plots For ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the Spanish of all nations became the most gloomily jealous of a Jewish cross in the pedigree, was because, until the vigilance of the Church rose into ferocity, in no nation was such a cross so common. The hatred of fear is ever the deepest. And men hated the Jewish taint, as once in Jerusalem they hated the leprosy, because even whilst they raved against it, the secret proofs of it might be detected amongst their own kindred, even as in the Temple, whilst once a king rose in mutiny against the priesthood, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier—have we not the very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it necessary to warn her simplicity, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother—a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal Rougon, his ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... denominations might have been during slavery to maintain a strict discipline, they found it exceedingly difficult to do so. It seems impossible to elevate a body of slaves, remaining such, to honesty and purity. The reekings of slavery will almost inevitably taint the institutions of religion, and degrade the standard of piety. Accordingly the ministers of every denomination in Antigua, feel that in the abolition of slavery their greatest enemy has been vanquished, and they now evince a determination to assume higher ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise the ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... She says it is hopeless, that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her grandfather—about what I knew of the—the taint in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... undoubtedly experiencing a certain mild satisfaction. But somehow his ointment was not without taint. He detected a fly in it. And he hated flies—even ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... mire of human blood, the casting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work, broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him again. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, the next occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate of Adrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber or falling tackles should put an end to his dreary life, welcome as such ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing tale, or why ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... us ool. 'Taint we as wants no new-fangled tunes; them as we sings be aal owld ones as ha' been used in our church ever since I can mind. But you only choose thaay as you likes out o' the book? and we be ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... had kindled. There they were, chuckling over her misery, and hiding—so Rosalind feared—a worse question than any, keeping it back for a final stroke to bring her mental fever to its height—how could Sally be the daughter of a devil and her soul be free from the taint ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... respect, And modest pride of her own excellence,— A shrinking nature, that is so adverse To aught unseemly, that I could as soon Forget the sacred love I owe to heav'n, As dare, with impure thoughts, to taint the air Inhal'd by such a being: than whom, my liege, Heaven cannot look on anything more holy, Or earth be proud of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... I believe thee, and rely on thee. Do not too long absent thee from the doctor: Go in, carouse, and taint his Spanish brain; I'll follow, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... was added an adorable friendliness and confidence, free from the slightest taint of self-consciousness or the least blemish of coquetry. Intelligent, yet modest to the verge of shyness, eager yet reserved, warm hearted yet charmingly impersonal with him, he realized that she was finding, with him, only the happiness of speech with mankind ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... was his home, his refuge, his sanctuary. Mrs. Lovell was perdition and its scorching fires to a man with a taint of cowardice in him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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
... words to imply that her station in life was even lower than it seemed, or that there was some taint upon herself or her family. Wishing to assure her that such a fact could not ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... exile. Misfortune appeals not to woman's heart unalleviated. He threw himself on my protection; and where the feelings own no taint, their purity is not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is not known where her husband had her body concealed. He died without revealing the secret. Do you mean that the taint, the devil's taint, may recur—Oh, my God! do you want to ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... we must recognize 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 the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... world of God's. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint To muse upon eternity's constraint Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope Must widen early, is it well to droop For a few days consumed in loss and taint? O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,— And like a cheerful traveler, take the road, Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod To meet the flints?—At least it may be said, "Because the way is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with me to the mountain—away, clean away, from the trail and taint of men. You cant' think what that means for me. But ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... firebrand dropped into a pond, which hisses for a moment and then is extinguished. Men and women sit in pews listening contentedly and quietly, who, if they saw themselves, I do not say even as God sees them, but as others see them, would know that the leprosy is deep in them, and the taint patent to every eye. I do not charge you, my brother, with gross transgressions of plain moralities; I know nothing about that. I know this: 'As face answereth to face in a glass,' so doth the heart of man to man, and I bring this message, verified to me by my own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... he said to himself, as he recalled the many times when Tom Tracy, a boy of his own age, had laughed at him for his poverty and coarse clothes. 'Darn him! he ain't any better than I am, if he does wear velvet trousers and live in a big house. 'Taint his'n; it's Mr. Arthur's, and I'm glad he is coming home. I wonder if he will bring grandma anything. I wish he'd I bring me a pyramid. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... stigma of mental incompetency put upon them. Of course, an insane man is an insane man and while insane should be placed in an institution for treatment, but when that man comes out he should be as free from all taint as the man is who recovers from a contagious disease and again takes his place in society." In conclusion, I said, "From a scientific point of view there is a great field for research.... Cannot some ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... silently looked me over. At last he arose, and, stepping up to me, lifted my hat with one hand, and laid the other upon my head. I understood very well what his movements meant. He was looking for outward evidences of negro blood. So far as my complexion went a suspicion of African taint might very well have been entertained. I had been assisting my father in harvesting his wheat crop, and my face and hands had a heavy coating of tan, but my hair was straight and stiff. I could see that the old gentleman was ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... the dim silver thou dost look, I do behold thy face, though blurred and faint. Oh joy! no flaw in me thy grace will brook, But still refine: slow shall the silver pass From bright to brighter, till, sans spot or taint, Love, well content, shall see no speck of brass, And I his perfect face shall hold as ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... Evolution tell us, that in the genealogical ages during which man has struggled upward, from the lower stages of vertebrate and mammal to the genus of catarrhine apes, he has gradually thrown off bestial instincts, and that the tiger taint will ultimately be totally eliminated; that "original sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance which every man carries with him, and that Evolution is an advance toward true salvation." Meanwhile what becomes of the "Survival of the Fittest", which is only ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... he, with great earnestness. "Nay, but you must; I will take no denial. I am not prone to feel ashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I am ashamed of my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. To tell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness in my blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myself irresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry, and that of this afternoon was ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... was soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness of him who brought sin and death into the world. The horror seemed to grow on Ambrose, as his boyish ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... doubt, and which though thus absolute do not fetter his intellect but first give it the use of all its powers to the extent of those truths; so he can conceive of an Intelligence in which all truth is thus without taint of error. Not only is such an Intelligence conceivable, it is necessary to conceive it, in order to complete the scientific induction of "a sphere of thought from which all limits are withdrawn," forced upon us by the demonstrations ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... every step would be attended by danger. But for the present at least he was free. Free! The word had never appealed to him so strongly before. He drew in great draughts of the mountain air. They seemed in a way to cleanse his lungs from the prison taint. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... with fortitude, and still had a 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
... just go ahead. That ain't the only way you're different from us, though," she continued, looking at Mr. Howitt, with that wide questioning gaze. "You're different in a heap o' ways. 'Tain't that you wear different clothes, for you don't, no more. Nor, 'taint that you act like you were any better'n us. I don't know what it is, but it's somethin'. Take your stayin' here in Mutton Hollow, now; honest, Dad, ain't you afear'd to stay here all alone ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time; And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labour as a wise man's art: For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... on her hands, together prest, 220 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. ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... interlude of love, of passion, in her life could neither tint nor taint the cool, normal sequence of her days. All that life held for a woman of her caste—all save that—was hers when she stretched out her hand for it—hers by right of succession, of descent; hers by warrant unquestioned, by the unuttered text of the ukase to be launched, if necessary, by that very, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... in places that try men's souls to the extreme, hath always comported himself as a Spanish gentleman should. This may be a lie. But if it is true, his old association with you and yours, and some humor of courage and fidelity and gentleness that I doubt not his mother gave him, have washed out the taint. Will you not reconsider your words? Give the maiden to the man. I am an old soldier, sir, and have done you some service. I would cheerfully stake my life to maintain his honor and his gentleness at the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... would shrink from aught beyond a snigger, Such as is stirred by screeds of far-fetched whim. Ay! that's the humour o't, sententious Nym. Let's hail a dying century's latest birth,— The Newest Humour—purged from taint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... recite it on examination exhibition. I didn't know Hanford could talk like that. His words were real pretty, kind of sorrowful you know. And it all come over me that you ought to know about it. You're married of course, and can't help it now, but 'taint every girl that has a boy care for her like that from the time she's a baby with a red hood on, and you ought to know 'bout it, fer it wasn't Hanford's fault he didn't have time to tell you. He's just been living fer you fer a number ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... with some whether idiots should live Rarely exacted obedience, and she was spontaneously obeyed She thought that friendship was sweeter than love She was sick of personal freedom Simple obstinacy of will sustained her Speech was a scourge to her sense of hearing Taint of the hypocrisy which comes with shame The devil trusts nobody The divine afflatus of enthusiasm buoyed her no longer They take fever for strength, and calmness for submission Too weak to resist, to submit to an outrage quietly Too well used to defeat to believe readily in victory ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... protection. Take no ordinary standard as the rule of your courtship, but determine from the very beginning that it shall be so conducted, that when as man and wife you look back upon it, it may be with feelings free from any taint of sorrow or shame; that when you stand before God to be married it may be as honest man and maiden, seeking for God's full blessing upon your married life, as it has rested upon your unmarried days. One thing ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... instinctive suspicion that he was to inherit from her the seeds of the primal sin, the fall from grace, the curse of Abel, that he was not of pure New England stock, but half exotic. As a child of Quincy he was not a true Bostonian, but even as a child of Quincy he inherited a quarter taint of Maryland blood. Charles Francis, half Marylander by birth, had hardly seen Boston till he was ten years old, when his parents left him there at school in 1817, and he never forgot the experience. He was to be nearly as old as his mother ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the day I praised, not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that he, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave him, as God gave his kind, Freer than they from fleshly taint: I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim: A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake— Though some objected—"Had we seen The heart ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... world," he tells us, "and everywhere have I mixed freely with the inhabitants. I have gathered something in each corner; I have gleaned an ear from every harvest." A deep insight into the secret springs of human actions; an extensive knowledge of mankind; fervent piety, without a taint of bigotry; a poet's keen appreciation of the beauties of nature; together with a ready wit and a lively sense of humour, are among the characteristics of Saadi's masterly compositions. No writer, ancient or modern, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... was one Controller who neither looked nor acted like a megalomaniac. That wouldn't make much difference to the PD Police; as far as the officials were concerned, the ability to project telepathically and the taint of delusions of grandeur went hand in hand. Controllers were power-mad and criminal ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... replied the King, half jestingly, half earnestly. "Do not look so grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... severest punishment." From which representation (if the said Warren Hastings did not falsely and unjustly accuse and slander the Company's service) it appeared that the peculation which infected the whole army, derived from the taint which it had in Oude, and so fatal to the discipline of the troops, would be dangerously increased by his treaty and agreement aforesaid with the Nabob, and by his own said evil counsel to the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I'll greet thee with such fire That thou wilt throb thereat, as throbs a lyre, And give thine answer, too, without restraint, And neither frown at me nor fear a taint In my much zeal, that knows not any pause But, night and day, is constant to the laws Of its own making, and is fain to prove How leagued it ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... breathing of an atmosphere containing too little oxygen, which practically amounts to the same thing, has a very powerful tendency in the same direction, in persons who are apparently as free from scrofulous taint as any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... pullet on his conscience yet, unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not cease to be one because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the less wrong because it is uttered by one to whom all spiritual things have become indifferent. Filial affection is a motive which would, if any motive could, remove some of the taint of meanness with which pious lying, like every other kind of lying, tends to infect character. The motive may no doubt ennoble the act, though the act remains in the category of forbidden things. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... hail-storms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people ... do languish. The earth also is defiled ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... addicted to drugs or alcohol in excess, those habitually criminal or vicious, and the mentally defective, should be rendered sterile by operation, for such as these cannot or will not use control, and their children tend to inherit their parents' taint and to lead maimed and vicious lives."—Vol. I, No. 4, p. 3. ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... "'Taint nashty' tuff—it's byead an' 'lasses, an' its nice, an' Budge an' me hazh little tea-parties in de kicken-coop, an' we eats it, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in the heroic age ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the words, to which he had listened intently, re-perused, throughout, this record of the stone; and finding that the general purport consisted of nought else than a treatise on love, and likewise of an accurate transcription of facts, without the least taint of profligacy injurious to the times, he thereupon copied the contents, from beginning to end, to the intent of charging the world to hand them down as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... contempt of life is carried as far amongst us, as it could be in those memorable people; and we want only a proper application of the qualities which are frequent among us, to be as worthy as they. There is hardly a man to be found who will not fight upon any occasion, which he thinks may taint his own honor. Were this motive as strong in everything that regards the public, as it is in this our private case, no man would pass his life away without having distinguished himself by some gallant instance of his zeal towards it in the respective incidents of his life ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... from all envy and jealousy. Therefore all pictures of Elizabeth should exhibit her as an elderly, but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even as her conduct had been ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... has, are founded more in pride than in virtue: that allowing, as he does, the excellency of moral precepts, and believing the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, he can live as if he despised the one, and defied the other: the probability that the taint arising from such free principles, may go down into the manners of posterity: that I knowing these things, and the importance of them, should be more inexcusable than one who knows them not; since an error against judgment ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... life, and nothing but life, and so with death, free will, necessity, design, and everything else. This, at least, is how philosophers must think concerning them in theory; in practice, however, not even John Stuart Mill himself could eliminate all taint of its opposite from any one of these things, any more than Lady Macbeth could clear her hand of blood; indeed, the more nearly we think we have succeeded the more certain are we to find ourselves ere long ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... colonies. The felons were, however, too limited in numbers to make any serious inroad upon the morals or tranquillity of the settlers. Many of the convicts were men sentenced for political crimes, but free from any social taint; the laboring population, therefore, did not regard them with contempt, nor shrink from their society. It may be held, therefore, that this partial and peculiar system of transportation introduced no distinct element into the constitution of the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... relic—taken in all seriousness by everyone, including the author. It seems almost inconceivable that Mr. VACHELL's play deals with conditions that still survived only a few years ago. Yet the Squire's devotion to the science of eugenics establishes its date as quite recent. It was his sole taint of modernity; and indeed where his own son's marriage was concerned he omitted to apply his scientific principles, and made a choice for him in which no regard was paid to eugenics, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... 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 ennui secretly nestling ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... thou hast taken the common clay, And thy hands be not free From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil The greater shame to ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... of his wild note Of truthful in a tuneful throat, The song seraphically free Of taint of personality, So pure that it salutes the suns The voice of one for millions, In whom the millions rejoice For giving their one ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... rob—I wasn't clever enough. There was no way I could earn money, honestly or dishonestly. And for her, buried in that Derbyshire village amongst the collieries, where there was scarcely a person who hadn't the taint of the place upon them—what chance was there for her? There was nothing she could do, either. I knew in my heart that we were both ready for evil things, if by evil things we could make our escape. And we couldn't. So we tried to lose ourselves in the only fields left ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... behind. Twice he dragged him around the tomb of Patroclus, leaving him at length stretched in the dust. But Apollo would not permit the body to be torn or disfigured with all this abuse, but preserved it free from all taint ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... watch a jack as deer do," he said. "Twill only scare 'em off. They're a heap too cute to be taken in by an onnatural big star floating over the water. But 'taint the lucky side of the moon for us. She'll rise late, and her light'll be so feeble that it wouldn't show us an elephant clearly if he was under our noses. So if I succeed in coaxing a bull to the brink of the water, I'll open the jack, and flash our light ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... 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 ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... influence, new plans for extending the religious power of the Scottish church, and indirectly of extending their secular power, were countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by the upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the temper of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing or modes of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation, therefore, was ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... almost there," the colonel said at last, as they turned off from the highway, and leaning forward Alice caught sight of the roofs and dilapidated chimneys of Spring Bank. "'Taint quite as fixey as Yankee houses, that's a fact, but we that own niggers never do have things so smarted up," the colonel said, guessing how the contrast must affect Alice, who felt so desolate and homesick as she drew up ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... get skeered, Miss," he said, kindly; "'taint nothin' in the world but a rabbit. Mamie can't never get used to rabbits, someways." He indicated one of the horses—a high, raw-boned animal, sketched on a generous plan, whose ribs and joints protruded, and whose rough white coat had been ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... each ankle. Their occupation during the day was only wallowing in a muddy hole, in no respect cleaner than swine. They have no idea of any necessity for washing themselves between their birth and the grave, while groping in mud for worms, with hands that have always an unpleasant fishy taint that clings strangely to whatever they touch. The child of civilization that would stain even a shoe or a stocking with one spot of that mud, would probably be whipt by the nurse: savage children are not subject to that sort of restraint. Whether school discipline may ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... From the taint of this evil, and all its sorrowful consequences I am tempted to exempt Guy Elersley, so handsome, so young, so winning; but I cannot give the lie to obstinate reality. Of course, Guy Elersley was not a bad man, he was exactly what most young men of to-day are—what you, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Democratic creed. The nomination of Allen G. Thurman for Vice-President brought to the ticket what its head seemed to lack—popularity among the people of the West—and did much to hearten all such Democrats as insisted upon voting a ticket free from all taint of mugwumpery. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to the past, its good and ill, and we all have a touch of superstition, like a syphilitic taint. To eradicate this tyranny of fear and get the cringe and crawl out of our natures, seems the one desirable thing to lofty minds. But the revivalist, knowing human nature, as all confidence men do, banks on our superstitious fears and makes his appeal to ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... you've 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 I ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with no taint of personal concern in the African trade, in a Christian community of white Anglo-Americans, holding control over his black fellow-man, who is so unlike himself in complexion, in form, in other peculiarities, and so unequal to himself in attributes of body and mind, that it is impossible, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... "'Taint alive," said Dick, the bolder of the two, quickly recovering himself; "horrid thing! I reckon I know what 'tis," and he whispered a few words ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... coming to himself, he prostrated himself at my feet in acceptance of the relationship and did me reverence. When he rose his eyes were full of tears ... O little brother mine! I am fast going to my death—let me take all your sin away with me. May no taint from me ever ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... to huh question is yais swing towards huh and ifn taint be still. (The bottle slowly swung toward me.) Now missy see hit have done answered yo question and yo done seed hit say yes. Yes'm hit sho am yes and yo' jes wait and see ifn ole Uncle Marion aint right. Now yo ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... dead carcase might not taint the valley, I had it buried deep in the ground, about a score of yards from the encampment. From such a slight cause ensued a tremendous uproar from Kingaru—chief of the village—who, with his brother-chiefs of neighbouring villages, numbering in the aggregate ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... but there is somewhat of the vulture-nostril in man, tickled with a vague taint? But, even then, the sense is fleeting, more or less as the natures of men vary. A man hath his better moments, and how shall they be entirely pure in the presence of shame? Nay, I would not mate and live for ever with mine ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... between Mrs. Whitford and her son Ellis, the accepted lover of Blanche Birtwell, and will remember with what earnestness the mother sought to awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger, going so far as to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint in his blood. It will also be remembered how the proud, self-confident young man rejected, her warnings and entreaties, and how ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... below, every bottle of it," answered Tom: "I wouldn't use such rot-gut stuff, no, not for vinegar. 'Taint half so good as that red sherry you had up here oncet; that was poor weak stuff, too, but it did well to make milk punch of; it did well ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... world to himself. With the addition of Eve, human society commenced; and the fault of our first mother furnishes a grand and terrible example of the mischief of thinking of the benefit of another. Satan suggested to her that Adam should partake of the fruit—an idea, having in it the taint of benevolence, so generally mistaken—whence sin and death came into the world. Had Eve been strictly selfish, she would wisely have kept the apples to herself, and the evil would have been avoided. Had Adam helped himself, he would have had no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... again, in fear of losing them. At other times he paused, and wildly clasped his hands upon his eyes, or wildly threw up his arms; and then began to run to and fro again uneasily, while the crowd laughed and jeered. Doubtless a taint of madness afflicted him; but not the less he seemed the type of a blind soul that gropes darkly about through life, to find the doorway of some divine truth or beauty,—touched by the heavenly harmonies from within, and miserably failing, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells |
