"Taboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her eyes suggested another topic—themselves. "Is that taboo as well!" she said, as Michael's eyes dropped ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... various. When the mood of gloom is off him, he experiments at will, and often with consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even when his Russian prepossessions ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... any way on earth you want it, only in my room. That is taboo, as I told you. What am ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... bringing him rank and connection, the second lands and wealth. I bring him in here because he associated with Forster in one of his most grotesque moods. To Forster, however, this agreeable spirit was taboo. He had offended the great man, and as it had a ludicrous cast, and was, besides, truly Forsterian, I may here recur to it. Forster, as I have stated, had been left by Landor, the copyright of his now ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... rivals, Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... whispering "only take care. It is taboo there,"—and she made a sign with her hand towards Mrs. Langford, "and don't frighten Aunt Mary about Fred. O it is too late, Carey's doing the deed ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... confined first in the Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the most isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as a prison for dangerous Confederates; and here later three conspirators ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... of calculating the year—knew when Hera's festival was due, and walked round the country three days beforehand to announce it. He drank "the milk of the flock" and avoided wine, either from some religious taboo, or because he represented the religion of the milk-drinking ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... at him out of the corner of my eye. I wondered what was passing through his mind. The subject of my relations with papa was one which, without saying anything at all about it, we had consented to taboo. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... said quietly; "your congratulations are premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo for three years—at Mr. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and protect the waterers and other working parties that were to be on shore. The spot chosen was immediately marked off with wands by the friendly native priests, who thus consecrated the ground, or placed it under "taboo"—a sort of religious interdiction, which effectually protected it from the intrusion of the natives—for none ever ventured, during their stay, to enter within ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... fond of paradoxes,[379] though not of the wretched things which now disgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of the greatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; and even if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. It originated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of the silly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and early nineteenth century delighted.[380] It is, at least in appearance, badly tainted with ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... not without hesitation that this book is offered to the reader. Very many people, for very various reasons, would taboo the subjects here discoursed of altogether. These subjects are a certain set of ancient beliefs, for example the belief in clairvoyance, in 'hauntings,' in events transcending ordinary natural laws. The peculiarity of these ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... had listened to all the talk about the fire, the incendiary, the pursuit, and its dreadful possibilities of lynching, with the keenest of distress. Now the Colonel's calm declaration that, presently, they would be off to the race-track which he had sworn forever to taboo, shifted her mind suddenly from ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the still-room—drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... wife only till daybreak'—like Cupid—and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a} ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... to shake his head and mutter under his breath, "By George, I wish I had Fenchurch or von Gottschalk here. They're a shade better than I am on intercultural contracts, especially taboo-breakings and affronts ..." ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... controversies. Law and order have become stock phrases, dinned into their ears at every turn. The man who would settle his difficulty by trying the physical metal of his adversary is of the past. By the new order he is taboo as a savage. Individual self-restraint rings out in our vocabulary as nationally descriptive. The babe at the mother's knee learns first the virtue of it; the child at school is tutored to it soundly; the man in life is lectured with ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... all sorts of marvellous properties. I have in my possession a Dayong's whole outfit of charms which I bought from his relatives after his death; they were afraid to touch it, and for another Dayong to use it is taboo of the worst kind. Such charms are usually buried with the practitioner, but this old fellow evidently did not have a very large practice, and, at his death, he was somewhat neglected. One of the charms is a stone in which an active imagination might trace a resemblance to the hand or foot of an ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... woman began to be circumscribed by new rules, and crystallized in a reaction under the influence of purely social forces; so that this most sensible people made women equal to men in meetings and in religious legislation through a form of sexual taboo. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... dash madly about the pasture from sheer excess of vitality and spirits? Well, there was one fly—the keenest player of them all, by the way—who, when it had alighted three or four times in rapid succession on my taboo wall and succeeded each time in eluding the velvet- careful swoop of my hand, would grow so excited and jubilant that it would dart around and around my head at top speed, wheeling, veering, reversing, and always keeping within the limits of the narrow ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... man, The child of evolution, flings aside His swaddling-bands, the morals of the tribe, He, following his own instincts as his God, Will enter on the larger golden age; No pleasure then taboo'd: for when the tide Of full democracy has overwhelm'd This Old world, from that flood will rise the New, Like the Love-goddess, with no bridal veil, Ring, trinket of the Church, but naked Nature ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... "He is no god—Aole ia he Akua—" they say, "he is a man like us, yet in his nature and appearance godlike. And he was the first-born of us; he was greatly beloved by our parents; to him was given superhuman power—ka mana—which we have not.... Only his taboo rank remains, Therefore fear not; when he comes you will see that he is only a man like us." It is such a character, born of godlike ancestors and inheriting through the favor of this god, or some member of his family group, godlike power or mana, generally in some particular form, ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... discourteous to mention money at table, but in this degenerate age no subject is taboo except those that would be taboo in any decent society. Obviously when men meet to talk over business they cannot leave money out of the discussion. In a number of firms the executives have lunch together, meeting in a group for perhaps the only time during the ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... cause, the deviations from the Word of God, which disturb the unity of the Spirit. And doctrinal discussions, which alone can bring about a real cure, are intentionally omitted and expressly declared taboo, as, e. g., by the Federal Council. The Church, suffering from blood-poisoning, is pronounced cured when the sores have been covered. They put a plaster over the gap in Zion's wall, which may hide, but does not heal, the breach. Universally, sectarian henotics have proved to be spiritual ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... us a lot of information, as far as she could, on the crops and animals. The big things, the size of rhinoceroses, are draft animals and nothing else; they're not eaten," Dorver said. "I don't know whether the meat isn't good, or is taboo, or they are too valuable to eat. They eat all the other three species, and milk two of them. I have an idea they grind their grain in ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... shaky thrones, dogma still opposes itself to curiosity at many points. A great deal of the popular dislike of psychical research is due to hatred of curiosity in a new direction. People who admit the existence of a world of the dead commonly feel that none the less it ought to be taboo to the too-curious intellect of man. They feel there is something uncanny about spirits that makes it unsafe to approach them with an inquisitive mind. I am not concerned either to attack or defend Spiritualism. ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the worst of it," Stranor Sleth told him. "See, the rabbit's sacred to Yat-Zar. Not taboo; just sacred. They have to use a specially consecrated knife to kill them—consecrating rabbit knives has always been an item of temple revenue—and they must say a special prayer before eating them. We could have got around the rest of it, even the Battle of Jorm—punishment ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... once seriously rebuked by an old friend for carrying a book through the streets that was not wrapped up in paper. In Hamburg that is one of the things people don't do. In Mainz and in many other German towns there are certain streets where one side, for reasons no one can explain, is taboo at certain hours of the day; not of the night, but of the day. You may go to a music shop at midday to buy a sonata, and find, if you are a girl, that you have committed a crime. The intercourse between young people outside their homes ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... The rule on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... The conscience of the savage tells him emphatically that there are some things which he must not do; and blind obedience to this "categorical imperative" has produced not only all the complex absurdities of "taboo," but crimes like human sacrifice, and faith in a great many things that are not. "Perhaps we are leaving behind the theological stage, as we have already left behind those superstitions of savagery." Now the study ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... England when I arrived here in the year 1846, one would suppose that it existed most strongly at Oxford. And so it did, no doubt, particularly among theologians. With them German meant much the same as unorthodox, and unorthodox was enough at that time to taboo a man at Oxford. In one of the sermons preached in these early days at St. Mary's, German theologians such as Strauss and Neander (sic) were spoken of as fit only to be drowned in the German Ocean, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... domestic named Mary Ann Took a place with a strict vegetarian; He cautioned her, too, That beer was taboo, But she simply replied, "Ca ne ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... the older men, it was formerly necessary, following the death of an adult, for the men to put on white head-bands and go out on a head-hunt. Until their return it was impossible to hold the ceremony which released the relatives from the taboo. [97] During the first two days that the body is in the house, the friends and relatives gather to do honor to the dead and to partake of the food and drink, which are always freely given at such a time; but there is neither music, singing, or ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... with destruction by an evil being, who would one day appear on its shores. To avert the fatality the place had been sanctified and set apart, under the protection of the gods and their priest. Here was the reason for the taboo, and for the extraordinary rigor with which it was enforced. Listening to her with the deepest interest, the Captain took her ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the 'taboo,'" said Browne, "as an arbitrary and oppressive heathen custom. But how ignorant and prejudiced we sometimes are in regard to foreign institutions! We must be very careful when we get there about introducing rash innovations upon the settled order ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... convention, of observance, of taboo, of folkways, ends. And into the brain of all living beings will be born the perfect comprehension ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... religion, from the point of view of Anthropology and Folk-lore; and is the first attempt that has been made in any language to weave together the results of recent investigations into such topics as Sympathetic Magic, Taboo, Totemism, Fetishism, etc., so as to present a systematic account of the growth of primitive religion and the ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... very despicable bulletin of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent TIMES article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still TABOO; the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article. 'Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day, with a bad headache, and the mail going out. However, it must have ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the change-about complete Since Adam Passed from View. For apples we are urged to eat And all else is taboo. A Million laws hold us in thrall, And we ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... not true." But there was another and more extensive class of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic taboo, or tapui (tapooe), as they call it. Of this there was a great variety, and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... any special hate toward that young man.. If he had been in his power he would probably have left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have raised his hand against anything which Madeline cared for. However great his animosity had been, that fact would have made his rival taboo to him. That Madeline had turned away from him was the great matter. Whither she was turned was of subordinate importance. His trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis loved her. It is only low and narrow natures which can find vent for their love disappointments in rage against their ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... order of ideas, only still further extended, may be detected in the sacredness attached to certain animals by so many nations of antiquity. It is now generally admitted that this 'sacredness' has two sides. A sacred animal may be 'taboo,' that is, so sacred that it must not be touched, much less killed or eaten; and, on the other hand, its original sanctity may lead people to regard it as "unclean," something again to be avoided, because of the power to do evil involved in ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... call upon the Steels, as indeed, they could scarcely fail to do, having called on him already as a bachelor the year before. Nor were the Uniackes and the Invernesses the bell-wethers of the flock. Those august families had returned to London for the season; but the taboo half-suggested by Mrs. Venables had begun and ended in her own mind. Indeed, that potent and diplomatic dame, who was the undoubted leader of society within a four-mile radius of Northborough town hall, was the first to recognize the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... of the young novelist Jonas Lie, who, to his great honor, bought for about L35 the right to publish it as a supplement to a newspaper that he was editing. Then the storm broke out; the press was unanimously adverse, and in private circles abuse amounted almost to a social taboo. In 1862 the second theatre became bankrupt, and Ibsen was thrown on the world, the most unpopular man of his day, and crippled with debts. It is true that he was engaged at the Christiania Theatre at a nominal salary of about a pound a week, but he could not live on that. In August, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... breakfast. And to breakfast with whom but his near neighbours, the Lammles of Sackville Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman, Mr Fledgely. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgely, but the peaceable Twemlow reasons, If he IS my kinsman I didn't make him so, and to meet a man is not to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... reenforcer of social taboo and custom, as well as morality. Just as it fails to keep us from eating the wrong kind of foods, so it may fail to keep us from the wrong conduct. Like every emotion it is only in part adapted to our lives, and in those people where it becomes a prominent emotion it ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... places, due not to any natural instinct against the practice, but to consideration of the social well-being. We find the same when we study endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, and the control of marriage by taboo. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse. Effeminising of the male. We were Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain. All we have done, or wise, or otherwise, Traced to the root, was done for love of you. Let us taboo all vain comparisons, And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand, Companions, mates, and comrades evermore; Two parts ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... trunks were taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night studying how little ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... prohibition, inhibition; veto, disallowance; interdict, interdiction; injunction, estoppel [Law]; embargo, ban, taboo, proscription; index expurgatorius [Lat.]; restriction &c (restraint) 751; hindrance &c 706; forbidden fruit; Maine law [U.S.]. V. prohibit, inhibit; forbid, put one's veto upon, disallow, enjoin, ban, outlaw, taboo, proscribe, estop [Law]; bar; debar &c (hinder) 706, forefend. keep in, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... maturity.[20] Should any one trespass upon the farm, it is imperative that work be discontinued until the following day. This gives a good opportunity to collect the fine imposed on the trespasser. I did not care to violate this taboo, and for this reason can offer only second-hand information as to what takes place from the time of the closing of the trails till ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... of composure but in truth she was badly shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's solvency, was terrifying. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... interest and variety, what could destroy and taboo both more effectually than the rigid and rigorous demands of a formal set of examinations prepared, as a rule, by pedantic specialists who know practically nothing of the fundamental problems and ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I'll ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?" he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah or so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "is there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up my residence in ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... had followed us up from the beach were not permitted to enter the palisaded enclosure, which was strictly taboo to the common herd; our party therefore now consisted solely of those who had brought me up the river, four individuals who had joined us outside the gate—and whom I took to be officials of some sort—and my unworthy self; and, for my own part, I would very willingly have waived the distinction ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... longer two sides to what once was the spring shooting question. Even among savages, the breeding period of the wild creatures is under taboo. Then if ever may the beasts and birds cry "King's excuse!" It has been positively stated in print that high-class fox hounds have been known to refuse to chase a pregnant fox, even ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... make pickle—still there are many things better kept out of the brine. Cabbage and cauliflower for example do not need it—green tomatoes, onions, and Jerusalem artichokes are likewise taboo. The artichokes make good pickle, but it must be made all at once. Cut anything intended for the brine with a bit of stalk, and without bruising the stalk. Cucumbers should be small, and even in size, gherkins about half grown, string beans, three parts grown, crook-neck squash very ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... beach-comber; "perhaps some niggers you've been reading about call it the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off.' 'That's a taboo pig,' says he. 'A black fellow that died six months ago that pig belonged to. When he was dying, and leaving his property to his friends, he was very sorry to part with the pig, so he made him taboo; nobody can touch him. To eat him ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... who held a lighted stub in one hand while they rolled a cigarette with the other. He knew Red Cross saints who could puff a forbidden cigarette like a prayer. He wondered how he or any one had ever made such a fierce taboo of a wisp of aromatic leaves kindled in a tiny parcel. Such strange things people choose for their tests of virtue—tests that have nothing whatever to do with the case, whether savage or civilized folk ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... in, and was making my bow when Miss Leare stopped me. "Come too," she said cordially: "Amy's brother surely need not be taboo. Shall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... taboo, was taken off a different kind of food for boys at each Boorah, until at last they could eat what they pleased except their yunbeai, or individual familiar: their Dhe, or family totem, was never ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... debated with myself whether to go on talking of Langdon. I decided against it because all I knew of him had to do with matters down town—and Monson had impressed it upon me that down town was taboo in the drawing-room. I rummaged my brain in vain for another and ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... yet, and so he did not have to take any steps to avoid them. Now we know that loose, luxuriant whiskers are unsanitary, because they make such fine winter quarters for germs; so, though the doctors still wear whiskers, they do not wear them wild and waving. In the profession bosky whiskers are taboo; they must be landscaped. And since it is a recognized fact that germs abhor orderliness and straight lines they now go elsewhere to reside, and the doctor may still retain his traditional aspect and yet be practically germproof. Doctor X was trimmed ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... bit," she answered lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour the sea by such a discussion in ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... had the same god-parent, were real brothers and sisters, who might not marry either each the other or real children of the said god-parent. The reformed churches have set aside this fiction, but in the Latin and Eastern churches it has created a distinct and very powerful marriage taboo. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Bella,' Uncle John would say. He knew. You have heard always how he was the lover of the Princess Naomi. He was a true lover. He loved but the once. After her death they said he was eccentric. He was. He was the one lover, once and always. Remember that taboo inner room of his at Kilohana that we entered only after his death and found it his shrine to her. 'Dear Bella,' it was all he ever said to me, but I knew ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... wore the ordinary costume of their race—a slip of native cloth about the loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion which would ensue, were the natives—men and women—allowed to come off to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... almost taboo in all Germany these dark days, they tell us," mentioned Jack sagely. "That makes it look as if some sort of military business might be transacted in this isolated place. Gee! I tell you it's getting my curiosity whetted to a fine point, all ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... unless it was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given some other good book that I did like. There were certain books that were taboo. For instance, I was not allowed to read dime novels. I obtained some surreptitiously and did read them, but I do not think that the enjoyment compensated for the feeling of guilt. I was also forbidden to read the only one of Ouida's books which I wished to read—"Under Two Flags." ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... University of Missouri. The Federal Children's Bureau, Publications 42 and 77. Report of the Committee on Status and Protection of Illegitimate Children of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1921. Normal Life, Chapter V, The Home, by Edward T. Devine. Taboo and Genetics, by Knight, Peters, and Blanchard. A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part IV, Chapter, The Family, by ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... for some time. The beard would be gone, to be sure; but there'd be all the rest to tattle—eyes, voice, size, manner, walk—everything; and smoked glasses couldn't cover all that, you know. Besides, glasses would be taboo, anyway. They'd only result in making me look more like John Smith than ever. John Smith, you remember, wore smoked glasses for some time to hide Mr. Stanley G. Fulton from the ubiquitous reporter. No, Mr. Stanley G. Fulton can't come to Hillerton. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any more because you ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... her dark cheeks the blood poured in again. It was as hard for her to talk about love as for him. She felt the same shy, uneasy embarrassment, as though it were some subject taboo, not to be discussed ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... business that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here. The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt 'taboo') has to be declared, and who was to declare it? Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horse-back? He might plant palm branches: it did not in the least follow that the spot was sacred. He ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She shrugged. "Nothing very definite. War has been a taboo subject with him—I mean from the first when you all went in. I know he has strong feelings about it, terribly strong. But he never ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... without making of him an enemy at heart, for he did not know how strong a hold the religion of the Ho-don had upon them, for since the time that he had prevented Ta-den and Om-at from quarreling over a religious difference the subject had been utterly taboo among them. He was therefore quick to note the evident though wordless resentment of Ko-tan at the suggestion that he entirely relinquish his throne to his guest. On the whole, however, the effect had been satisfactory as he could see from the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the office when he appeared the next morning, with her harness over her head. It was the sign in a way that she was strictly business and all personal confidences were taboo, but Rimrock did not take the hint. It annoyed him, some way, that drum over her ear and the transmitter hung on her breast, for when he had seen her the evening before all these things had been ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... screaming and laughing and singing native songs that had been forbidden in the school, and, taking their shawls and Sunday dresses from their trunks, they arrayed themselves in all their finery and began dancing an old heathen dance which is taboo among the better class of natives and only practised in secret by the more degraded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... decided to return to Orofedabe; so we returned to the village, gave the taro we bought to the people, paid our attendants and for the house where our things were, and away we went. Our friends were glad to see us, and rejoiced greatly when the taboo was taken off the salt, and taro was bought. We are having rain and thunderstorms ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... that followed she walked out with him across the causeway into the mountain road, visiting Szolnok farm and climbing the hills adjacent to the castle, but she saw no one except the German farmers, and it seemed indeed as though the gorge was taboo to all human beings. Goritz made love to her, of course, but she laughed him off, gaining a new confidence as the days of their companionship increased. Slowly, with infinite patience, with infinite self-control, she established a relationship which baffled him, a foil for each of his moods, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... a warning given once: No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly, To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes Into this mounded sward and rumple it; All trees stand back: taboo is on this soil.— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... "Tu-Kila-Kila has sent for you," he said, in his grandest aristocratic air, "for your chief is a gentleman. He wishes to receive you. He saw your message-fire on the reef last night, and he knew you had come. He has made you a very great Taboo. He has put you under protection of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Missionaries established themselves in these islands in 1821, and are reported to have met with considerable success. The leading island is that which is called Tongataboo, or the 'consecrated island.' The name is properly two words 'Tonga Taboo,' signifying 'Sacred Island,' the reason of which appellative will appear, when I tell you that the priest of this island, whose name was Diatonga, was reverenced and resorted to by all the surrounding islands. Earthquakes are very frequent ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... a practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore be taboo on Rodney's account, was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Gonzenbach, ii. 222). The formula "youngest best," in which the youngest of three brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk- tales amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... they dread is about to happen. Arrived before the temple, there is a cry from the multitude, who instantly set on them with their clubs. Taro tells us not to grieve; that some are prisoners taken in war, others guilty persons who have broken a taboo, and others the lowest of the people. While we stand shuddering, a concourse of people arrive bearing fruits of all sorts, and hogs, and dogs. The human victims are stripped of all their garments, and placed in rows on the altars; the priests now offer up some prayers ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... orthodox methods of cooking fish and meat and no other is admissible, under penalty of infringing a very important taboo. One method consists of boiling them in water, with a little seasoning of red pepper, ginger, and possibly lemon grass and one or two other ingredients. The second method consists of broiling the pieces of meat and fish in or over the fire. Meat and fish already cooked are thrown ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... any rate only the rich among them had more than one wife, while the poor or otherwise ineligible often had none at all, since inter-marriage with other races and above all with the Black Kendah dwelling beyond the river was so strictly taboo that it was ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Manufacture of Monsters Small and Large Families Children as Nuisances Child Fanciers Childhood as a State of Sin School My Scholastic Acquirements Schoolmasters of Genius What We Do Not Teach, and Why Taboo in Schools Alleged Novelties in Modern Schools What is to be Done? Children's Rights and Duties Should Children Earn their Living? Children's Happiness The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday University Schoolboyishness The New Laziness The Infinite School ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... conveyances are all cumbrous. We must have the huge barouche, the coach, the close-shut coupe. Even the phaeton yields to the high T-cart. But convention is autocratic, and would frown on these vinaigrettes as it frowns on many useful ideas. Another unfortunate victim of its taboo is the sedan-chair, which would be lustily stared at to-day, yet the utility of which might be made positively inestimable. One who reads of the Chinese palanquins, or sees the carrying-chairs of Switzerland, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... hosts. En route to the interior. Native flora and fauna. We arrive at the capital. A lecture on Filbertine architecture. A strange taboo. The serenade. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... and dogs is taboo And I know, 'cause I've fussed with 'em all. There's only one pal that I know is true blue And it's that Thirty U.S. on the wall. She's stood by my shoulder and stopped a brown bear And she keeps the cache full in the ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... generation, such a state of affairs might have been prearranged. Now, if it was prearranged, the awful fact emerges that there must have been an arranger; in other words, a creative power. This explanation is taboo in certain circles. But one may reasonably ask, "What then?" Is it really suggested that these orderly sets of occurrences may occur not once or twice only but thousands and thousands of times, and this may all happen by chance? A very ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... them. Practically every ruin whose walls are still standing contains one or more, some have eight or ten. They are all of Navaho origin and in many of them the remains of Navaho dead may still be seen. Possibly the Navaho taboo of their own dead has brought about the partial taboo of the cliff dwellers' remains which prevails, and which is an element that must be taken into account in any discussion of the ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... evidences of magical beliefs and practices. Cuchullin goes forth knowing that he will meet his doom. His name signifies "hound of Culann." In his youth he slew Culann's ferocious watch-hound which attacked him, and took its place until another was trained. It was "geis" (taboo) for him to partake of the flesh of a hound (his totem), or eat at a cooking hearth; but he must needs accept the hospitality of the witches. The satirists are satirical bards who, it was believed, ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... and negroid, and he was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos were as follows: First, he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman's hand touch him or any of his personal belongings; secondly, he must ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... have demonstrated the possibility and the fact of such control. It should also be remembered that the average "expert alienist" is guided solely by results of such obsession, where it occurs; that he is blind to causes, liable to exclude or taboo obsession, and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... My reasons for this taboo are that even very little children are often made unhappy and anxious, sometimes for days, if they know there is sickness at home, while in the second place boxes are so often delayed that they become the source ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... self-respect, even supposing her to be transiently flustered by a lovely buck, would yield to that madness for an instant, or confess it to her dearest friend. Women know how little such purely superficial values are worth. The voice of their order, the first taboo of their freemasonry, is firmly against making a sentimental debauch of the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... In other words, sacrifice part of your worldly goods to the idol, and he will repay with high interest. He will give in return long life and much riches. The savage was afraid to utter the real name of his god, it was taboo. The modern says, "Take not the name of the Lord in vain." Even today, the followers of Moses consider it taboo to utter the name of Jehovah ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... that was so helpful to work during the day. I contrived to play with him and afterwards to talk with him. I found the one subject to avoid was Fairyland. On everything else he was open and amiable in a commonplace sort of way, but on that he had been worried—it was a manifest taboo. Only once in the room did I hear the slightest allusion to his experience in his presence, and that was by a cross-grained farm hand who was losing to him. Skelmersdale had run a break into double figures, which, by the Bignor standards, was uncommonly good play. "Steady on!" said ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... was prudent to take precautionary measures against unwelcome intrusion. Summoning the maid who had just speeded the departing St. Michael, she gave the order: "I am not at home this afternoon to Lady Caroline Benaresq." On second thoughts she extended the taboo to all possible callers, and sent a telephone message to catch Comus at his club, asking him to come and see her as soon as he could manage before it was time to dress for dinner. Then she sat down to think, and her thinking was beyond the relief ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... footing upon ground properly taboo even to angels caused the man to flush brick-red. His eyes sought Sally's ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... regulations of the place. During the time that Holland was overrun by the armies of the French republic, a French general, surrounded by his whole etat major, who had come from Amsterdam to view the wonders of Broek, applied for admission at one of these taboo'd portals. The reply was that the owner never received any one who did not come introduced by some friend. "Very well," said the general, "take my compliments to your master, and tell him I will return here ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... makes people fierce, and reacts upon the political atmosphere. The necessity of inculcating Communism produces a hot-house condition, where every breath of fresh air must be excluded: people are to be taught to think in a certain way, and all free intelligence becomes taboo. The country comes to resemble an immensely magnified Jesuit College. Every kind of liberty is banned as being "bourgeois"; but it remains a fact that intelligence languishes where thought is ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... is wholly immature and shapeless. They cannot express themselves, and moreover there is a very strict and peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is nasty and ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... once I found I was "queering" myself. For these genial companions of mine had laid a most decided taboo upon all topics of this kind. They did so because to discuss them meant to openly think and feel, and to think or feel intensely, about anything but athletics and other things prescribed by the crowd, was bad form ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... all. And thenceforward the subject had been taboo. Even after seven years of intimate relations, Bat was still mystified on the subject, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... already enjoyed a sip of Thackeray, reading at a venture, in "Vanity Fair," about the Battle of Waterloo. It was not like Lever's accounts of battles, but it was enchanting. However, "Vanity Fair" was under a taboo. It is not easy to say why; but Mr. Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom he found reading "Vanity Fair" under the table, that he had better read something else. What harm can the story do to ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... is now embodied in our modern speech, and the debt of primitive races is still greater. Many a traveller has found, indeed, a child the best available source of linguistic information, when the idling warriors in their pride, and the hard-working women in their shyness, or taboo-caused fear, failed to respond at all to his requests ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... off to the canoe house for a couple of days. Here, Lenerengo was helpless. Into the canoe house of the stags no Mary might venture. Lenerengo had never forgotten the fate of the last Mary who had broken the taboo. It had occurred many years before, when she was a girl, and the recollection was ever vivid of the unfortunate woman hanging up in the sun by one arm for all of a day, and for all of a second day by the other arm. After that she had been ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one to enter upon ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... would, though I did not imagine you would reach me so swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous tribes; they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and the other colonists looking at him defiantly, as if interpreting his silence to be doubt of their veracity about the taboo on tools. Their eyes challenged him to disbelieve them, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... revealed at last. All our sympathies went out to the brave men who had tried to fell the barrier that blocked the way to Kimberley. Their failure was a blow to our hopes; but personal considerations were for the moment taboo. And, curiously enough, although the world was ringing with criticism of Methuen we in Kimberley blamed nobody. Even the "Military Critic" was dumb. Lord Methuen rose in our estimation to the level of a hero, who had driven the enemy before him from Orange ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Mrs. MacDonald's "taboo," Barrie's mother had become her ideal. The girl felt that whatever Grandma disapproved must be beautiful and lovable; and there had been enough said, as well as enough left unsaid whenever dumbness could mean condemnation, to prove that ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... outside world, and announcing that any one who brings newspapers here or is found with papers in his possession will be severely punished. Two German papers will be distributed by the authorities, and everything else is taboo. They evidently intend that their own version of passing events shall be the only one ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... discovered. Why must an American woman have a rocking-chair? In no other country in the world, excepting among the creoles of South America, is this awkward piece of furniture so popular. Burn the cradles and taboo the graceless rocking-chair, and our children will have steadier heads and our women learn the attractive grace ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... dread. Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews—no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... this preliminary business is nauseating, and in real sporting circles it is taboo as a topic of conversation. No wonder The Times devoted a leading article to the matter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... Ablutions both of persons and things are usually cathartic, that is, intended to purge away evil influences (kathairein, to make katharos, pure). But, as Robertson Smith observes, "holiness is contagious, just as uncleanness is''; and common things and persons may become taboo, that is, so holy as to be dangerous and useless for daily life through the mere infection of holiness. Thus in Syria one who touched a dove became taboo for one whole day, and if a drop of blood of the Hebrew sin-offering fell on a garment it had to be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and Stella met at breakfast as usual, but as though by mutual consent neither of them alluded to the events of the previous evening. Thus the name of Mr. Layard was "taboo," nor were any more questions asked, or statements volunteered as to that journey, the toils of which Morris had suddenly discovered he was after all able to avoid. This morning, as it chanced, no experiments were carried on, principally ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Taboo all heretical religious papers; support those that defend the truth. Let infidels maintain infidel papers and build infidel colleges. Not one dollar to propagate infidelity! Make your one short consecrated ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... egg, tapped it, and asked his son what he thought of the crops—did they want rain? The two were breakfasting alone—at the moment there was not even a man-servant in the room—but Lord Fairholme had long ago established the golden rule that controversial topics were taboo during meals. Medenham laughed outright at the sudden change of topic. He remembered that Dale was sent to bed in the Green Dragon Hotel at eight o'clock, and he had not the least doubt that his father's ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... told my host how abominably it traduced his country, and advised him first to beat the book well and then to burn it over a slow fire. It said that the people were superstitious—it is false. They have no taboo about days; they play about on Sundays. They have no taboo about drinks; they drink what they feel inclined (which is wine) when they feel inclined (which is when they are thirsty). They have no taboo book, Bible or Koran, no damned psychical ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... to touch the ground with their feet, 4-6; sacred persons apparently thought to be charged with a mysterious virtue which will run to waste or explode by contact with the ground, 6 sq.; things as well as persons charged with the mysterious virtue of holiness or taboo and therefore kept from contact with the ground, 7; festival of the wild mango, which is not allowed to touch the earth, 7-11; other sacred objects kept from contact with the ground, 11 sq.; sacred food not allowed to touch the earth, 13 sq.; magical implements and remedies thought to lose their ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon subjects which he had been taught were taboo. He admired and was accustomed to soft, helpless, clinging femininity, and it grated upon him to see Kate at the woodpile swinging an axe in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart |
