"Contagion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no other way filled syrup cans with water and started for the Tecolotes on foot. A railroad! Well, why had they never thought of that in the long, wasted days before? Even L. W., the scoffer, caught the sudden contagion; but Andrew McBain did not stir. He was a cautious man and good friends had told him that Rimrock Jones had threatened his life. He stayed in town—and Rimrock stayed also—and soon the procession came back. It was led by L. W. in his cactus-proof automobile, and he reported ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... faithful herdsman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the poor-house? Why, she wouldn't be fit to sleep in my—" here Aunt Matilda choked. The bare thought of having a pauper in her billowy beds, whose snowy whiteness was frightful to any ordinary mortal, the bare thought of the contagion of the poor-house taking possession of one of her beds, smothered her. "And then you know sore eyes ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... narrow ways by staggering coolies with buckets of the vilest contents, and importuned for money by beggars who thrust their deformed limbs in his face. It is but natural to fear contagion of some sort from contact with such creatures, and yet the crowd is so dense that it is impossible to entirely avoid them. Under foot the streets are wet, muddy, and slippery. Why some deadly disease does not break out and sweep away the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... very gloomy for this young woman. She lived in constant apprehension of some disaster. This presentiment was in her soul as a contagion is in the air, but she had strength of mind and will to disguise her anguish beneath a smile. Juana had ceased to think of herself. She used her influence to make Diard resign his various pretensions and to ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... responded to. North Wales rose as one man, and flocked to the banners of the prince and his brother. South Wales was feeling the contagion of coming strife, and the pulse of the nation beat wildly at the thought that they might win liberty by the overthrow of the foe. One after another the petty chiefs, who had sworn fealty to Edward, ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... our last: "NEAR LUBLIN, 25th SEPTEMBER, 1770. It is frightful, all this that is passing in these parts,—about the Town of Labun, for example. The dead bodies remain without burial; they are devoured by the dogs and the pigs. ... Everywhere reigns Pestilence; nor do we fear contagion so much as famine. Offer 100 ducats for a fowl or for a bit of bread, I swear you won't get it. General von Essen [Russian, we will hope] has had to escape from Laticzew, then from" some other place, "Pestilence ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Whenever I went out I invariably wore an oil-cloth cloak, and by the aid of my cane prevented the dogs of the streets, which are there so numerous, from rubbing against me. If I visited any one, which I seldom did, I always sat on a bench or chair to prevent conveying or receiving contagion; and before even entering the house, I always underwent the preparation of being smoked in a box, which during the prevalence of the plague is placed near its entrance for that purpose. These boxes were some eight feet high by three square, the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... presence of Nero, when he was dying by the poison administered by the hands of that tyrant. The sighs, however, which I vented in my brother's presence, might convince him that I attributed my sickness rather to his ill offices than to the prevailing contagion. ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... of indignation in the minds of the people, as admitted of no temperament or control. An abhorrence and detestation of lord George Sackville, as a coward and a traitor, became the universal passion, which acted by contagion, infecting all degrees of people from the cottage to the throne; and no individual, who had the least regard for his own character and quiet, would venture to preach up moderation, or even advise a suspension ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... villains of the den;—now in regard to the wretched beings whom you have described, if we took them from that hole, what in the world should we do with them? Put them in the prisons and almshouse, you say. That would soon breed contagion throughout the establishments where they might be placed, and thus many lives would be sacrificed thro' a misdirected philanthropy. No, no—believe me, Mr. Sydney, that those who take up their abode in the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... mass of the nation. In this great duel, of which he was not to see the end, it was the consolation, as well as the honor of the illustrious minister, that he had constantly defended the principles of true liberty, as well as European independence, against the encroachments and contagion of the revolutionary powers, and ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... beacon, which La Salle rapidly approached, not without fear, it may be, but with a settled determination superior to the weakness which he felt, for the danger, exposure, and settled fears of his companion had almost transmitted their contagion to his own mind. As he drew nearer, however, the apparition resolved itself into a large reflecting lantern, suspended from a pole, in the hands of Captain Lund, who had headed a party to assist their friends to find the shore. The approach of our hero was not at ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... these poisonous germs. In some cases it has been found that privies, though twenty or forty feet away from a well, have yet drained into it—through a clay soil covered with gravel—and carried the germs to those drinking the water from the well. Next to water, milk is the most prominent carrier of contagion. Milk is apt to get infected with the germs if cooled in tanks of water which may receive drainage from ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... a happy state of things, re-peopled the lands with emigrants, whom he induced to come and settle there, from Anjou, Angoumois, and Saintonge. They united themselves to the very small remnant of those remaining, who had escaped the contagion, and, in a short time, forty-seven communes recovered ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... name of the makatza,"—here Okoya laughed again and his mother caught the contagion,—"but she must belong to Oshatsh. He did not say much, for he was tired ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... towns: by this means, if they had ever such a number of sick persons, they could lodge them conveniently, and at such a distance, that such of them as are sick of infectious diseases may be kept so far from the rest that there can be no danger of contagion. The hospitals are furnished and stored with all things that are convenient for the ease and recovery of the sick; and those that are put in them are looked after with such tender and watchful care, and are so constantly attended by their skilful ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the human family, such as small-pox, whooping-cough, and measles, and their rapid spread from a given point, &c. We must also admit that some cause or causes, adequate to the effect, must have produced the first case. To contagion, then, I would attribute the spread of this disease of our bees, at least nineteen cases in twenty. I will admit, if you please, that one stock in twenty or fifty may be somewhat affected by a chill to a small extent. It is only a portion of the brood that is in danger—only such as ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... a victory too long withheld, it came to me. He was mad. Goliath, my servant, was mad. But more than that—a telepathic madness. I have elaborated my understanding since. Goliath suffers from a contagion. His constant attendance upon me has proved fatal to his stupidity. His senses are the victims of my puppets. He has entered my world and my madness creates for him, as it does for me, shadows that deceive him. But there is no Mallare in him. Unlike ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... blithest of companions for the brother and sister there. They did much to foster the sympathies of Colin and Corinne for the English cause. The boys told of England and the life there, and were so full of enthusiasm for their country that it was almost impossible not to catch something of the contagion of their mood. Both Colin and his sister had seen much to disgust and displease them amongst the French; whilst round their foes there seemed to be a sort of halo of romance and chivalry which appealed to the imaginative strain ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... materials to satisfy, or rather to excite, the curiosity of more enlightened times. [63] At length the eye of criticism and philosophy was directed to the antiquities of France; but even philosophers have been tainted by the contagion of prejudice and passion. The most extreme and exclusive systems, of the personal servitude of the Gauls, or of their voluntary and equal alliance with the Franks, have been rashly conceived, and obstinately defended; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... you do not know the half of it, Dr. Annister, though you have guessed something from the change in the expression of his countenance. For years he has been like a carrier of typhoid, spreading the contagion of his own sinful nature wherever he went, himself unpunished, even admired, looked up to and patterned after. Do you want to keep such a man alive? Do you think, do you really believe, Dr. Annister, that the genius of such a man as that, whatever it is, could make amends to the ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... she. "It was foreordained that you should shed this man's blood; foreordained that, by digging into that old pit of pestilence, you should set the contagion loose again. You should have left it buried forever. But now what do you mean ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... significance of this crime, the danger to society that lurks in such pathological, as it were, individuals as Maslova. You must guard it against infection; it is your duty to guard the innocent, healthy elements of society against contagion, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... you forgotten? Was it not in New York, in '58, that you imported the voice from Havre, left behind by mistake? What more could be asked than to inspire a town with enthusiasm, so that the dullest should feel the contagion? They were triumphs such as women have seldom achieved. If you disdain them, recollect that human nature is still the same, and all that I have done is under the inspiration of a voice that broke on me in Duesseldorf, and opened heaven. And people find some pleasure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... whom we have had occasion to speak before, the same who sent Mrs. Brown, the washerwomen, sundry boxes of perfume to mix in her suds, while washing the pyramids of dimity and things of Mrs. P. There never was a lady—no member of the sex, that ever suffered more, from dread of contagion, fear of dirt, and the contamination of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... slavers, prostitutes, and restricted districts, and show exactly how an innocent girl may be seduced, betrayed, and sold. The stage finds it profitable to offer problem plays concerned with illicit love, with prostitution, and even with the results of venereal contagion. Newspapers that formerly made only brief references to corespondents, houses of bad repute, statutory offenses, and serious charges, now fill columns with detailed accounts of divorce trials, traffic in women, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... had caught the contagion, and more than once big wagons driven by smiling, cheery-faced men drove up to the door and unloaded their contents. And when the evening fell and a great sleigh with six seats and four horses, and every seat packed full, drove up and emptied its shouting occupants out at Livingstone's ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... kindled by the sincere applause that rang around him for noble efforts that had passed into completeness and fruition; and I, an old man, just about to make my bow and exit, felt almost young again, as the contagion of youth touched me, and I saw their eyes straining afar after the magnificent possibilities of the future. God bless them! for they need every square inch of energy and enthusiasm to meet the disappointments and defeats, the lack of sympathy and appreciation, and the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... all sudden accidents arising from physical causes, as distinguished from human agency, such as from lightning, earthquakes, hurricanes, plagues, and epidemic contagion amongst the crew. For none of these are ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... fellow-poets reveal some morbid characteristics, are afflicted with some Weltschmerz, with some internal spiritual malady. They live in an atmosphere of strife and discord. The marvellous vitality of Goethe has escaped from the contagion. Like his fellow-poets, he passed through the crisis of the Sturm und Drang. But it seems as if he had only known it in order to give to his experiences a final artistic expression. He communicated the "Wertherian malady" to a whole generation, but ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... worldly curiosity and the desire to find out for themselves whether other drawing-rooms might not sometimes be as entertaining, and the Verdurins feeling, moreover, that this critical spirit and this demon of frivolity might, by their contagion, prove fatal to the orthodoxy of the little church, they had been obliged to expel, one after another, all those of the 'faithful' who ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... fallen, recalling with a kind of tragic irony the emotions of that hour and contrasting them with his thoughts on the events that had followed through half a generation. All over England strenuous politicians, catching the contagion of excitement from excited France, formulated their sympathy with the Revolution in ardent, eloquent addresses, formed themselves into clubs to propagate the principles that were making France free and illustrious, and sent delegates speeding across the Channel to convey to a confident, constitution-making ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his army grew daily more intense. As pilgrims went back to their homes they carried news of Stephen's Crusade to their children, who, filled with excitement, in turn passed the news on to their friends. And so the interest spread like a contagion throughout all parts of France, through Brittany, where the English ruled, through Normandy, recently added to Philip's domain, to Aquitaine and Provence, to Toulouse and peaceful Gascony. Whatever feuds their parents ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... took her to the country of the Hyperboreans in Scythia, where she died. Some time after, the plague ravaging Phrygia, and the oracle being consulted, an answer was returned, that, to ensure the ceasing of the contagion, they must look for the body of Attis, and give it funeral rites, and render to Cybele the same honour which they were wont to pay to the Gods: all which was done with such scrupulous care, that in time she became one of the most ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... our neighbourhood, and there was sickness at several of the places where she called. In one cottage, particularly, was a case of low fever. I was troubled when I learned that she had been there, but still hoped that her excellent state of health would repel anything like contagion. During the first part of our voyage, she suffered considerably from sea-sickness; but got along very well after that. If it hadn't been for the unhappy scenes of the last few days, with their painfully exciting consummation, I think she would have thrown off, wholly, ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... moved to hilarity by this statement, but he was too young to resist the contagion of Lydia's mirth, and laughed back at her, wondering at the mobility of her ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... are inoculated with the cochineal, which, I scarcely need say, is an insect; it is the same as if you would take the blight off an apple or other common tree, and rub a small portion of it on another tree free from the contagion, when the consequence would be, that the tree so inoculated would become covered with the blight; a small quantity of the insects in question is sufficient for each plant, which in proportion as it increases its leaves, is sure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... Prussian military system of domination with its contagion which has done the harm and which ought to disappear, and that system itself is the fruit of Napoleonic imperialism. The struggle is always, and more now than ever, between imperialism and liberty, between ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... after Danny; the contagion soon spread and first Nora and then Celia Jane were running with all their might after ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... and running sores. They are sensible that religious instruction is of more consequence to them than to any others: from the greatness of the temptation to which they are exposed; from the important consequences that attend their faults; from the contagion of their ill example; from the necessity of bowing down the stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke of moderation and virtue; from a consideration of the fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning what imports men most to know, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... her to his solitary, rare, and sinister companionship. At last a note, in M. Le Prun's hand, upon her table, announced in a few barbarous and insulting words that his niece Julie had been removed, by his orders, from the contagion of a companionship unfit for innocence. This was to Lucille a frightful blow. Her solitude was now virtually complete. Her own old faithful servant, Marguerite, had been withdrawn; and a tall pale Norman matron, taciturn and sardonic, was now her sole attendant. It was plain, too, that M. Le Prun ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... arms. He told of heroic exploits—dashing acts of almost superhuman valor, where human nature became ennobled and man learned the possibilities of man. The fervid excitement that burned in his soul was communicated to the fiery nature of Zillah, who was always so quick to catch the contagion of any noble emotion; his admiration for all that was elevated, and true and pure found an echo in the heart of her who was the daughter of General Pomeroy and the pupil of Lord Chetwynde. Having herself breathed ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that by which they are conceived; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life: even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... reluctance. All this weighed dumbly on the mind of the little cowman, the more heavily that because of his inarticulate shyness he could never talk that weight away, nor could anyone by talk relieve him, no premises of knowledge or vision being there. From sheer physical contagion he felt the grizzly menace in the air, and a sense of being left behind when others were going to meet that menace with their fists, as it were. There was something proud and sturdy in the little man, even in the look of him, for all ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... skies of blue, Where sports an elf, mayhap a hare, We fain would haste, each soul, and die, Unfurl all dreams and pinioned sails, And sleep unmourned in haunts we knew, Now wracks and domes stare at each soul, Giant goddards leak a rubic foam; Blind forges hold Contagion's breath; A Morgan longs for earthly home. 'Tis so with hell's eternal shoal Where skinks eat flesh from wenches' bone; 'Tis thus with us purloined by Death, Infernal doom that spells a moan. Ten thousand years was Doom crown'd King; Sporadic ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... occurred in Moscow in 1771, and the populace began to throng round an image of the Virgin to which they attributed supernatural healing power. Ambrose, perceiving that this crowding together merely enabled the contagion to spread, had the image secretly removed. The mob, suspecting that he was responsible for its removal, attacked a monastery to which he had retired, dragged him away from the sanctuary, and, having given him time to receive the sacrament, strangled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... crew, including the master, were stricken with the hideous "putrid fever"—a common disease in "country" ships at that time. King, a quick and masterful man, took command, and with his four well men lived on deck in a tent to escape contagion. The rest of the ship's company, which included a surgeon, lay below delirious, and one after another of them dying—seventeen of ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... He repeated them to Maria, feeling the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... start spreading the word on everything we know. If people realize they're already safe or doomed it'll be better than having them going crazy to avoid contagion." ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... prohibit the other passengers from coming ashore also. He therefore ordered the alkaid to suffer all the passengers, together with their baggage, to be landed, and soon afterwards the plague appeared at Fas, and at Tangier. Thus the contagion which is now ravaging West Barbary was imported from Egypt. It does not appear that the mortality is, or has been, during its acme at Fas, any thing comparable to what it was during the plague that ravaged this country in 1799,[140] and which carried ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Daniel Webster's eyes during his greatest speech literally emitted sparks. Had we tests fine enough we would doubtless find each man's personality the center of outreaching influences. He himself may be utterly unconscious of this exhalation of moral forces, as he is of the contagion of disease from his body. But if light is in him he shines; if darkness rules he shades, if his heart glows with love he warms; if frozen with selfishness he chills; if corrupt he poisons; if pure-hearted he ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in the hands of the police force at the street corners, and am carried across to the opposite curb through a breaker that rolls in front of me again at the next crossing. So I move on, by external compulsion, knowing, as I move, by a kind of mental contagion, feeling by a sort of proxy, and putting my trust everywhere in ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... "he, like an eagle in a dove-cot, fluttered his Volscians," (the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale[151]) "in Corioli." I did not care for his doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof against their contagion; but I admired the author, and was considered as not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing—a masterly transition, a brilliant ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... above all other modern poets by the deliberate purity of his responsiveness. The contagion of the world's slow stain has not touched him; from the first he held aloof from the general conspiracy to forget in which not only those who are professional optimists take a part. Therefore his simplest words have a vehemence and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... won't. And you know, dear, that it would make no difference to me in my relations with the girl—except that"—she hesitated, smiling—"she is not good enough for you, Garry, and so, if you catch the prevailing contagion, and fall a victim, you have been inoculated now and will ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... to for his superior caution and sagacity. He was continually congratulated upon it. "Savings-banks are good enough for me," he kept repeating. But that was four years ago, and now his turn had come; the contagion of speculation had struck him at last. That was the way with ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... information concerning the health of foreign countries and all parts of our own country as related to contagious diseases, and consideration of regulations to be enforced in foreign ports to prevent the introduction of contagion into our cities and the measures which should be adopted ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... interest. Her Parisian fame did not precede her; her man of business alone knew the secret of her writings and of her connection with the celebrity of Camille Maupin. But at the period of which we are now writing the contagion of the new ideas had made some progress in Guerande, and several persons knew of the dual form of Mademoiselle des Touches' existence. Letters came to the post-office, directed to Camille Maupin at Les Touches. In short, the veil was rent away. In a region so ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... plagues, which from age to age decimate the population of whole countries, has almost always been accompanied by a sort of mental excitement, which none of those who have been spared by the contagion can hope to escape. It is a strange fever of the mind, which sometimes rouses the most stupid prejudices and the most ferocious passions, and sometimes inspires, on the contrary, the most magnificent devotion, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... emotion of brotherly love on the sufferings of every martyr in the cause of humanity, but you sever the very root of our sympathy when you single out one as divine and raise him to the skies. Why stand we gazing into heaven when we have but to look round to catch the contagion of noble enthusiasm from men of our own race? The ideal becomes meaningless when it is ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... gold, and league on virtue's side. No need to marvel at the stories told Of simple-sage Democritus of old, How, while his soul was soaring in the sky, The sheep got in and nibbled down his rye, When, spite of lucre's strong contagion, yet On lofty problems all your thoughts are set,— What checks the sea, what heats and cools the year, If law or impulse guides the starry sphere, "What power presides o'er lunar wanderings, What means the jarring harmony of things, Which after all is wise, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the pavement of the presbytery, on the left hand. His older biographers seem to think this unostentatious funeral a great slight to his merits, but if there were any doubts as to his illness being the plague, it would only have been a natural precaution to avoid spreading contagion by making ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... the imagination knowing no bounds in evil any more than in good. Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, nay, every moment, some portion separated from the yet organized lines and fell into disorder. There were some, however, who were proof against this widespread contagion of insubordination and despair. These were officers, non-commissioned officers, and the firmest among the soldiers. They were extraordinary men; they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk, which town they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised that all their ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... I heard that the Tribunal, after keeping the unlucky monk for two years under the Leads, had sent him to his convent. There, his superior fearing lest his flock should take contagion from this scabby sheep, sent him to their original monastery near Feltre, a lonely building on a height. However, Balbi did not stop there six months. Having got the key of the fields, he went to Rome, and threw himself at the feet of Pope Rezzonico, who absolved him of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... people are such a small part of the nation! What does it matter to us whether they live or die? Why should I bother to organize leagues and revolutions against them? The existing evil is not the work of any form of government. It is the leprosy of luxury, a contagion spread by the parasites of intellectual and material wealth. Such parasites ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... The contagion, to be sure, also reached two distinguished captains in the navy, but not till one of them was told about disturbances which had not previously disturbed him. If this explanation be true, it casts an unusual light on the human imagination. Physical science has lately ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... extricate herself from his arms, he gave further vent to his feelings by cutting a series of remarkable capers, doubtless a species of ancient dance, in which (undignified as doubtless it would have been) Mary, who had caught the contagion of his happiness, would, I believe, eventually have joined, had he not suddenly ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... "Why didn't yer ride wid de guy?" I replied as before, "Because I prefer to walk;" adding for his benefit, "I've no use for autos." Whereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty vagabond;" in the slangy parlance of today, he was a "husky hobo," equipped as such, even to the tin can of the comic journals. To him, the humor of a brother tramp refusing ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... meetings, who preach their loathsome crusade against the army and the country with open doors and are backed up by our rulers.... And that's only speaking of the capital!... Why, the very provinces haven't escaped the contagion!... Here, have ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... friendly Algonquins, was now never visited by a red man, and a few years after the frightful plague first appeared, the settlement of Sillery, near Quebec, was attacked; 1500 savages took the fatal contagion, and not one survived. The Hurons, who had been always most intimately associated with the French, suffered least among the native nations from the malady. In 1670 Father Chaumonat assembled the remnant of this once powerful tribe in the neighborhood of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... was also a result of unselfish labor in the service of the Fatherland. He succumbed to a nervous fever contracted from his wife, who, with self-sacrifice equal to his own, had shared in the care of the wounded, and who had brought the contagion back with her from the hospital. On his monument is inscribed the beautiful text, "The teachers shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars that shine forever and ever." Forberg ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... with heat roll'd on the lazy clouds. "Four times the full-orb'd moon had join'd her horns, "Four times diminish'd, had she disappear'd; "Still the hot south-wind blew his deadly blasts. "Our lakes and fountains, from th' infected air "Contagion suck'd; millions of vipers swarm'd "In our uncultur'd fields, our running streams "Tainting with poison. First the sudden plague "Its power display'd, on sheep, on dogs, on fowls, "Cattle, and forest beasts with deadly power. "The hapless ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... which should represent the body of Cecilia as it was found lying in the cypress chest. Maderno was then a youth of twenty-three years. Sculpture at this time in Rome had fallen into a miserable condition of degraded conventionalism and extravagance. But Maderno was touched with the contagion of the religious enthusiasm of the moment, and his work is full of simple dignity, noble grace, and tender beauty. No other work of the time is to be compared with it. It is a memorial not only of the loveliness of the Saint, but of the self-forgetful religious fervor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... indirectly assisted in the establishment of a republic on the confines of his Mexican Empire; apparently unconscious of the contagion in the word independence. But he quickly learned this to his sorrow. The story of the revolted and freed colonies sped on the wings of the wind. And in Peru a brave descendant of the Incas arose as a Deliverer. He ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... "What is individual morality today? Almost nothing. It almost doesn't exist. Individual morality can come to be collective only by contagion, by enthusiasm. And such things do not happen nowadays; every one has his own morality; but we have not arrived at a scientific moral code. Years ago notable men accepted the moral code of the categoric imperative, in lieu of the moral ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... hand, statistics show that the majority of men have acquired disease before they marry, and that a very large percentage of these men convey contagion to their wives. This condition, to a very large extent, accounts for the inefficiency of women as mothers. It is responsible for at least 75 per cent. of the sterility that exists. The effect of this deplorable condition is directly responsible, also, for the ill health that afflicts women and that ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... the cold hand that had welcomed him,—that had warmly embraced him; his name would no longer be respected. The circle of refined society that had kindly received him, had made him one of its attractions, would now shun him as if he were contagion. Beyond this he saw the fate that hovered over his father's and his uncle's estates;-all the filial affection they had bestowed upon him, blasted; the caresses of his beloved and beautiful sister; the shame the exposure would bring upon her; the knave who held ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the dire contagion spread so fast, That, where it seizes, all relief is vain: And therefore must unwillingly lay waste That country, which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of infection. And from the time that the phenomenon of fermentation were first carefully studied, it has constantly been suggested to the minds of thoughtful physicians that there was a something astoundingly similar between this phenomena of the propagation of fermentation by infection and contagion, and the phenomena of the propagation of diseases by infection and contagion. Out of this suggestion has grown that remarkable theory of many diseases which has been called the "germ theory of disease," the idea, in fact, that we owe a great many diseases to particles having ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... spite of himself, he felt the contagion of Hetty's merry and unsentimental view of the situation; and it was with a trace of obstinacy rather than of a lover's pain in his tones that ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... these crimes,—either as the crimes of one man, committed under some impulse of motiveless malignity and thirst for innocent blood—or as the equally appalling effect of IMITATION acting contagiously upon a criminal imagination; of which contagion there have been, unfortunately, too many examples—horrible crimes prompting certain weak and feverish imaginations, by the very horror they inspire, first to dwell on, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... were wonderfully alike, in every respect. For eight months of summer they were alike in their clear-skied, sweet-breathed loveliness; in the autumn, there where the melancholy of the falling leaf could not spread its contagion to the sculptured foliage of Gothic art, the days were alike in their sentiment of tranquil oblivion and resignation which was as autumnal as any aspect of woods or fields could have been; in the winter they were alike ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... impresario-looking gentlemen with Jewish noses, to lead Gregory to infer that the element was Madame von Marwitz's, and that he had, inadvertently, fallen upon the very morning of her departure. Already an awareness and an expectancy was abroad that reminded him of that in the concert hall. The contagion of celebrity had made itself felt even before the celebrity herself was visible; but, in another moment, Madame von Marwitz had appeared upon the platform, surrounded by cohorts of friends. Dressed ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the report which this mission will furnish will point out a way whereby the modicum of assistance which the United States may properly lend the Ecuadorian Government may be made effective in ridding the west coast of South America of a focus of contagion to the future commercial current passing ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fellows in the upper Fifth and lower Sixth took to writing poetry! I don't know how the distemper broke out, or who brought it to G—. Certain it is we all took it, some worse than others; and had not the Christmas holidays happily intervened to scatter us and so reduce the perils of the contagion, the results might have been worse ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Hopkins was such us might be expected in similar cases. The multitude are at first impressed with horror at the monstrous charges that are advanced. They are seized, as by contagion, with terror at the mischiefs which seem to impend over them, and from which no innocence and no precaution appear to afford them sufficient protection. They hasten, as with an unanimous effort, to avenge themselves upon these malignant enemies, whom God and man alike combine ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the lip of a parched, chalky nullah that sunset turned to amethyst, a swarm of howling Arabs suddenly attacked them. The Master flung himself down, and fired away all his ammunition, in frenzy. The woman, catching his contagion, did likewise. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... followed the speech of Siward,—unanimous applause from the Saxons, even those who in times of peace were most under the Norman contagion; but no words can paint the wrath and scorn of the Normans. They spoke loud and many at a time; the greatest disorder prevailed. But the majority being English, there could be no doubt as to the decision; and Edward, to whom the emergence gave both a dignity and presence ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sufferers, while the strength of the Grand Army was from these causes constantly diminishing; and, at the outset, not a few of the members of the organization doubted the necessity for, or feared the failure of, the project. But there was contagion in the fiery enthusiasm and terrible earnestness of Commander Sargent, and, slowly at first, but surely, the plan won its way. Breaking their hitherto and since invariable rule of "one term" elections of department commander, the comrades in Massachusetts a second and a third time re-elected ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... 13th, 1917. Military bands massed on the quay, blared out the American National Anthem as the ship was warped alongside the dock. Other ships in the busy harbour began blowing whistles and ringing bells, loaded troop and hospital ships lying nearby burst forth into cheering. The news spread like contagion along the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... have revealed the causes of many diseases and the manner in which they are spread. With a denser population and with more frequent contacts as a result of better transportation, the possibility of contagion has very largely increased and we now appreciate that the health of the family—even of the rural family—cannot be maintained without attention to the health of the community as a whole. Good health has become ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Indo-European races, that he can listen with understanding to the conversation of men who have made that subject their special study, and appreciate, in a measure at least, the value of the many references to it which he meets in the course of his miscellaneous reading. And should he be led by the contagion of Mr. Dasent's intelligent enthusiasm to desire a more intimate acquaintance with a topic which rarely fails to fascinate those whose tastes lead them to enter at all upon it, he may start from this Essay with hints as to the plan and purpose of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the contagion of sneering censure, and caused the Port Folio to say, in 1811: "American critics seem, in almost all cases, to have entered into a confederacy to exterminate American poetry. If an individual has ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... full old age, in their own houses, in peace and honour,' whose deaths, nevertheless, were 'violent, immature, and tragical.' Cicero also used an argument whose full force has only been recognised in modern times. 'What contagion,' he asked, 'can reach us from the planets, whose distance is almost infinite?' It is singular that Seneca, who was well acquainted with the uniform character of the planetary motions, seems to have entertained no doubt respecting their influence. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... being confessedly ranks higher and is more excellent than mere being. The rational soul imparts well being to itself, when it cultivates and perfects itself, and recalls and withdraws itself from the contagion of the body. It will therefore also impart being to itself. And this with great propriety; for all divine natures, and such things as possess the ability of imparting any thing primarily to others, necessarily begin ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... possessed by the irreproachable Obosky, the immaculate Amori,—to say nothing of the estimable lady we are pleased to call the 'Empress of Brazil,'—when such heads as theirs are turned by a man it is high time to admit that he has something more than personal magnetism. I am wondering how far the contagion has really spread. There is a difference between contagion and infection, you know. Infection is the result of personal contact,—contagion is something in the air. This epidemic of infatuation very plainly is in two forms. It appears to be both infectious ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... (tho' briefly) are describ'd in our foregoing Catalogue: For notwithstanding it seem in general, that raw Sallets and Herbs have experimentally been found to be the most soveraign Diet in that Endemial (and indeed with us, Epidemical and almost universal) Contagion the Scorbute, to which we of this Nation, and most other Ilanders are obnoxious; yet, since the Nasturtia are singly, and alone as it were, the most effectual, and powerful Agents in conquering and expugning that cruel Enemy; it were enough to give ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by Act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comets; nay, worse, for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease. Moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... forward, and before the eye could wink, five, ten, twenty, of the most desperate were outside. It was as though a sea, breaking against a stone wall, had found some breach through which to pour its waters. The contagion of battle spread. Caution was forgotten; and those at the back, seeing Jemmy Vetch raised upon the crest of that human billow which reared its black outline against an indistinct perspective of struggling figures, responded to his grin of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... virtues attributed to tobacco was its supposed value as a preservative from contagion at times of plague. Hearne, the antiquary, writing early in 1721, said that he had been told that in the Great Plague of London of 1665 none of those who kept tobacconists' shops suffered from it, and this belief no doubt enhanced the medical reputation of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... contagion of Aunt Polly's cheerful courage, but more likely it was the blessed hope of seeing home and father and mother again, that made the little folks so prompt to obey her directions. We formed ourselves in line in less time than it takes to tell about it; we elder girls ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... human heart pours out in prayer and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God? Brahman, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power, the same as El. It resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God. By the first man who formed or fixed these names, Brahman, like El, and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best expression ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... precipitation of utterance is like the flowing forth of the liquid contents of a bottle suddenly inverted; every word seems hurrying to be foremost. The unaccustomed hearer is at first left hopelessly in the rear; but presently the contagion of the speaker's rushing thought reaches him, and he is drawn into the wake of that urgent ongoing; he is towed along in the great multitudinous convoy that follows the mighty motor-vessel, steaming, unconscious of the weight it bears, across the sea of thought. The energy is sufficient for ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... him no support. They kept their eyes on Braceway. They gave the effect of falling away from some evil contagion. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... arbitrary egoism is quite as great as the danger of classicism. Luckily, Young, in stating the case against the classicists, has at the same time stated perfectly the case for familiarity with the classics. "It is," he declares, "but a sort of noble contagion, from a general familiarity with their writings, and not by any particular sordid theft, that we can be the better for those who went before us," However we may deride a servile classicism, we should always set out assuming the necessity of the "noble contagion ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... statutes concerning decency of apparel among the clergy to be put into execution, which was accordingly done. These instances are sufficient to shew, that the taste for preposterous and extravagant dress must have operated like a contagion in those times, or the clergy would scarcely have dressed themselves in this ridiculous and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson |
