"Defilement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jesus took this meal with his disciples. John's account is consistent throughout, for he states that on the next day the desire of the Jews to "eat the Passover" forbade them to enter the house of the governor lest they should incur defilement (xviii. 28). The other gospels, moreover, hint in several ways that the day of Jesus' death could not have been the day after the Passover; that is, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread. Dr. Sanday has recently enumerated ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... with the bodies of malefactors; but, as the law directed, gave them burial on the night of execution.[111] The presence of dead bodies in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem during the Passover festival was regarded as a defilement, and steps were taken to have those of Jesus and the malefactors removed. The Jews could not themselves dispose of the bodies, because they would have sustained pollution by contact with them, and also because they had made over to the Romans the execution of the death-sentence. "The Jews ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... of the monks. This subtle and refined society, which sacrificed marriage and seemed inspired only with the poetry of adultery, preserved a strange scruple on a point so harmless. It dreaded all cleansing, as so much defilement. There was no ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... heathen damsels; and we only ask, What must have been the effect of representing far fouler characters than Terence's on the minds of uneducated lads of the lower classes? Prynne and others hint at still darker abominations than the mere defilement of the conscience: we shall say nothing of them, but that, from collateral evidence, we believe every word they say; and that when pretty little Cupid's mother, in Jonson's Christmas masque, tells how 'She ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... truth, justice, and love shall visibly reign, in which temptations shall cease and sin shall cease also; in which the upward strivings of noble souls shall find their end, and holiness shall supersede penitence, and hearts shall be pure of all defilement. This is the Faith which holds to the sure conviction that all things shall one day come to judgment; and whether by sudden catastrophe or by sure development, the physical system shall surrender to ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... limits of decent moderation, and vex not our souls beyond Christian patience, hoping, moreover, that, seeing our righteous example, they may be converted from their evil ways, and trusting that the Lord will preserve us from defilement. But we hold not ourselves bound to tolerate rioting and drunkenness, which are not convenient, but contrariwise, to restrain them by the sword of the magistrate, if need be. Of both these thou art, unhappily, guilty, inasmuch as thou didst forget where thou art, and wert mindful ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... is impure in the end, it is because it has contracted fresh defilement by coming in contact with other bodies. But this impurity is only superficial, and does not prevent its being used; whereas its former impurity was hidden within it, and, as it ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, nor anything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old board fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered till it overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal resting-place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannot hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and Spirit of Christ revealed in the soul; which is commonly called sanctification. But none can come to know Christ to be their sacrifice, that reject him as their sanctifier: the end of his coming being to save his people from the nature and defilement, as well as guilt of sin; and, therefore, those that resist his light and Spirit, make his coming and offering ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... spot where the Spanish torpedo boat rode at anchor. Then a number of tarpaulins were got up on deck and hung over the ship's sides, fore and aft, covering the hull from the bulwark rail right down to the surface of the water, to protect the white paint from defilement by flying coal dust; and, this having been done, the yacht was taken alongside the coal hulk, and the process of coaling the vessel at once began under the joint supervision of Milsom and the second engineer, the skipper being especially particular in the arranging of the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... flesh. The gargoyles are smashed; statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a soul than ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... ours the sin, — Our faces flushed with shame we turn to Thee, And at Thy gates we moan like doves. Vouchsafe unto us a life of tranquil joy, Purge us of our stains, make us white and pure. O that our youthful faults might vanish like passing clouds! Renew our days as of old, Remove defilement hence, set presumptuous sins at naught; The purifying waters of truth sprinkle upon us, For we confess our ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... will, nor alloweth the forgiving of sins after baptism, or immersion in the font a second time. For it is one baptism that we confess, and need is that we keep ourselves with all watchfulness that so we fall not into defilement a second time, but hold fast to the commandments of the Lord. For when he said to the Apostles, 'Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' he did not ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... appear to any one hardly religious enough for the purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as"the living body ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... closed in when I was in a mood akin to it. Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As soon ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... proved the stronger. I could not bring myself to the point of sending Dorgan, guilty as he doubtless was, back to the living death of the "long-termer." I make no excuses. One cannot touch pitch and escape defilement in some sort. For three years I had lived among criminals; and the bond . . . but I have ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... another compromise of human rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromise in the past." He declared that he was "painfully impressed by the discord and defilement which the amendment would introduce into the Constitution." He quoted the declaration of Madison in the convention of 1787, that it was wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in man. "Of all that has come to us from that historic convention, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... solemnity, on account of the vast number of strangers who were then assembled together. The Pharisees endeavoured to avoid the neighbourhood of the sentinels, for fear of being questioned by them, and of contracting defilement by answering their questions. The High Priests had sent a message to Pilate intimating their reasons for stationing soldiers round Ophel and Sion; but he mistrusted their intentions, as much ill-feeling existed between the Romans and the Jews. He could not sleep, but walked ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... extends an influence of decline around him, and the issue will be, in the end, a declining Church. Is "any root of bitterness growing up"? Is there (see Deut. xxix. 18) any Christian in the company so fallen, so "embittered" by alienation from his Lord, as to be a cause around him of "defilement," so as to stain ultimately large circles ([Greek: hoi polloi]) with the deep pollution of a practical apostasy from holiness? Is there here and there a personal example of spiritual infidelity ([Greek: pornos]) ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts; in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which affirmed it both lawful ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... realized what the poisoning of the fountain springs of life could mean. By the triumph, she realized what the defeat, the debasement could be. She thought of love as a fountain spring, a spring into which you could not both cast defilement and drink of waters undefiled; as an altar flame fed with incense lighting the darkness; and one could no more offend love with impurity, than cast the dung heap on the altar flame and not expect blastment. She wanted to clap her hands as the gay, twinkling cottonwoods ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... discussed in this pleasant room, so entirely feminine, where everything was safe and warm! Their imperfections were so small as compared with their sacrifice. Modern-day Christs, that's what they were! Christs by the thousands, who had found no Josephs of Arimathea to hide their defilement in garden-sepulchres. There they lay at this moment in the wilderness of corruption where they had fallen, while living people between puffs of cigarettes, undertook to explain why they ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... when addressing even toilers on the highway, and shout a warning on the approach of a traveler, that he may halt long enough for them to get off the road to secure his passing without possibility of defilement. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... of bed, in consequence of the still more dreadful alarm made by the country carts, and noisy rustics bellowing green pease under my window. If I would drink water, I must quaff the maukish contents of an open aqueduct, exposed to all manner of defilement; or swallow that which comes from the river Thames, impregnated with all the filth of London and Westminster — Human excrement is the least offensive part of the concrete, which is composed of all the drugs, minerals, and poisons, used in mechanics and manufacture, enriched ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the honour of his, to him, high and noble race, found himself a god-send to the Out-castes, the Untouchables, the Depressed Classes, Mangs, Mahars, and Sudras,—they whose touch, nay the touch of whose very shadow, is defilement! For, at last, they, too, had some one to look down upon, to despise, to insult. After being the recipients-of-contempt as naturally and ordainedly as they were breathers-of-air, they at last could apply a salve, and pass on to another the utter contempt and loathing ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Francisco as well as of Chinatown. What, we may ask, are the men and women of as beautiful a city as ever sat on Bay or Lake or Sea-Shore or River, doing for its purgation, for its release from moral defilement and "garments spotted with the flesh?" This indeed is one of the searching questions to be asked of any other City, such as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, London, Paris, Cairo, Constantinople, as well as San Francisco. Among the other noticeable things in the Joss-House ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... immense wealth can live in such regions in cleanliness and elegance; but how must it be with the poor? I know of no one circumstance more unfavorable to moral purity than the necessity of being physically dirty. Our nature is so intensely symbolical, that where the outward sign of defilement becomes habitual, the inner is too apt to correspond. I am quite sure that before there can be a universal millennium, trade must be pursued in such a way as to enable the working classes to realize something of beauty and purity in the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... affected wrath. There, however, he was executing a profound pathological study in a serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we have to blame the composition of human character, or the mischievousness of a human institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748—a story which is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all centuries, for it promised full satisfaction at once to all the greatnesses of humanity ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... for you, and you both refuse to ratify the war in which these very men elected to serve, and show yourselves inferior to them, who are ready to face dangers; for while you praise the soldiers that detected the defilement of Antony and withdrew from him, though he was consul, and attached themselves to Caesar, (that is, to you through him), you shrink from voting for that which you say they were right in doing. Also we are grateful to Brutus that he did not even at the start admit ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... priest performs the service of the Temple in a state of defilement, his brother priests are not required to lead him before the tribunal, but the juniors of the priestly order are to drag him out into the hall and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention—that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building—that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst—that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... to man his sins, but it provides no remedy. While it promises life to the obedient, it declares that death is the portion of the transgressor. The gospel of Christ alone can free him from the condemnation or the defilement of sin. He must exercise repentance toward God, whose law has been transgressed; and faith in Christ, his atoning sacrifice. Thus he obtains "remission of sins that are past," and becomes a partaker of the divine nature. He is a child of God, having received the spirit of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... that we might obtain some slight modifications, if we continued the war, but would those modifications be worth the loss of a few more hundred thousands of human lives, of a few more months of this hideous, pagan slaughter and defilement of ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hands of his own daughter after she is married; as soon as the ceremony is over her belongings are at once removed from the hut, and even the floor beneath the seat of the bride and bridegroom during the marriage ceremony is dug up and the surface earth thrown away to avoid any risk of defilement. Only when it is remembered that these rules are observed by people who do not wash themselves from one week's end to the other, and wear the same wisp of cloth about their loins until it comes to pieces, can the full absurdity ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... the nearest thicket, and seizing the most convenient ammunition, which chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk covered with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... stepping in awe, and gazed with gnawing curiosity at the pale, sprawling superscription, his very name—that he touched the envelope with his thick forefinger, just to make sure that 'twas tight in its place, beyond all peradventure of catastrophe—that, merely to provide against its defilement by dust, he removed and fondled it—that then he wondered concerning its contents, until, despite his crying qualms of conscience (the twins being gone to Trader's Cove and Davy Roth off to Heart's Delight to help the doctor heal the young son of Agatha Rundle), this fateful dreaming altogether ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... impure to this knowledge, but said: "Whoever has clean hands, and, therefore, lifts up holy hands to God ... let him come to us ... whoever is pure not only from all defilement, but from what are regarded as lesser transgressions, let him be boldly initiated in the Mysteries of Jesus, which properly are made known only to the holy and the pure." Hence also, ere the ceremony of Initiation began, he who acts as Initiator, according to the precepts of Jesus, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... Mehemet Ali, if, instead of constructing, at great expense, dams across the Nile to increase the extent of its inundations, he were to scatter his piasters in attempts to deepen its bed, that he might rescue Egypt from the defilement of the foreign mud which is swept down upon it from the mountains of the Moon? Exactly such a degree of wisdom do we exhibit, when at the expense of millions, we strive to preserve our country.... From what? From the blessings with ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... bright and pure, and the water which flows over the slime-smudged roots limpid and refreshing. If you cut into the bark of the tea-tree you will find water in beads and trickles, water which sparkles with purity and has a slightly saline taste. The bare roots alone suffer defilement. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... lamentable, and it would be a hundred times more agreeable to see among people who have been made the heirs of so priceless a work of art as the sublime campanile some such feeling about it as would keep it free even from the danger of defilement. A cab-stand is a very ugly and dirty thing, and Giotto's Tower should have nothing in common with such conveniences. But there is more than one way of taking such things, and the sensitive stranger who has been walking about for a week with his mind full of the sweetness ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... wisdom to become its servants, and still more when it perverts, falsifies, and adulterates them. Of the corresponding state of the heart, or of its blood in the lungs, there is no need to say more than has been said above (n. 420), except that instead of the purification of the blood its defilement takes place; and instead of the nutrition of the blood by fragrant odors its nutrition is effected by stenches, precisely as it is respectively in heaven ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... accusation will come with ill grace, and yet a public charge must be preferred. You must be the champion of my cause. Your's shall be the task of conferring a lasting obligation on your friend—your's shall be the glory of ridding the sanctuary of defilement." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... with its marble altar-piece, its silver candlesticks, its crucifixes, and, in short, all the paraphernalia of such places. If there be any efficacy in holy water, the little chamber must by this time be effectually cleansed from the sad defilement ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... had to send the girls to bring babes to the Mission House, and many a stirring night she had, she sleeping with them in her bed, whilst outside stealthy forms watched for a chance to free the town from the defilement of their presence. The first that survived was a boy. The husband, angry and sullen, was for murdering it and putting the mother into a hole in the swamp. She faced him with the old flash in her eye, and made him take oath not to hurt or kill ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Mediterranean have not even yet recovered from the moral blight of that religion; and had such a cultus been allowed to spread over all Europe and the world, not even a second Deluge could have cleansed the earth of its defilement. The extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith, and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of Peace to all ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Christian mysteries are freely communicated to all who can receive them. For many ages these truths were "hid in God,[77]" but now all men may be "illuminated,[78]" if they will fulfil the necessary conditions of initiation. These are to "cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,[79]" and to have love, without which all else will be unavailing. But there are degrees of initiation. "We speak wisdom among the perfect," he says (the [Greek: teleioi] are the fully initiated); but the carnal must still be fed with milk. Growth in knowledge, growth ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... there are that issue and nine that enter; two yield the draught and one drinks." Said he to her: "Seven are the days of a woman's defilement, and nine the months of pregnancy; two are the breasts that yield the draught, and one the child that drinks it." Whereupon she said to him: ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the defilement so thorough, that at first he despaired of the possibility of a complete cleansing. "Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all are alike. Such is life." But the free, spiritual ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... of the law had led many gentlemen to acknowledge a conversion to Protestantism, a statute was actually passed to require them to prove their sincerity by five years' adherence to their new form of religion before they could be regarded as having washed off the defilement of their old heresy sufficiently to be thought worthy to wear a gown in the Four Courts. No Roman Catholic might keep a school; while a strange refinement of intolerance had added a statute prohibiting ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle, which being ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the cholera collapse and could probably be saved by stimulants and warmth. This suspended animation is common enough in cholera. Why, the Brahmins have a regular ritual for dealing with cases of recovery on the funeral pyre—purification after defilement by the corpse-washers or something of the sort. These stupid oafs are letting ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... my ban On the assassin whosoe'er he be. Let no man in this land, whereof I hold The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him; Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes. For this is our defilement, so the god Hath lately shown to me by oracles. Thus as their champion I maintain the cause Both of the god and of the murdered King. And on the murderer this curse I lay (On him and all the partners in his guilt):— Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness! ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... priest, casts the promise into ceremonial form, and points to the sprinklings of the polluted under the law, or to the ritual of consecration to the priesthood. That cleansing is the removal of already contracted defilement, especially of the guilt of idolatry. It is clearly distinguished from the operation on the inward nature which follows; that is to say, it is the promise of forgiveness, or of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... penetrated the matted thicket and lay in the heat, alone on the soft short grass that grew within the fort. There was a cloud of madness, and confusion of broken dreams that had no meaning or clue but only an indefinable horror and defilement. He had fallen asleep as he gazed at the knotted fantastic boughs of the stunted brake about him, and when he woke he was ashamed, and fled away fearing that "they" would pursue him. He did not know who "they" were, but it seemed as if ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... yet one little corner left, Free from the world's defilement; One little corner where not a breath of wrong Shall enter to disturb your slumbering. And I will cherish you there In the nest you will make so pure. I will hold you and guard you safe from the snares of the stony streets. Be at peace, little maid, and lie in trust; ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... atmosphere is perceptible. 'A fire?'—yes; then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'—yes; then why in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us' is sorely hindered by the weakness in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... God to use you in His service, you must first be sprinkled, made pure from all defilement of sin. Until this has been done you cannot do one single thing to please God; until you have been cleansed, it is impossible for you to ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... jewel of the radiant sisterhood of queenly graces! She can not be crushed to earth. The eternal years of God being hers, she, no more than her author, can go down. Error may fling widely open his arsenal gates of defilement and deceit, and seek so earnestly and tirelessly the usurpation of her throne; but there she sits, as firmly and gracefully as when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. Such is truth, the rarest of all ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... days! And a little doubt dropped into it, "If former days there ever were." For who can tell? This crumbling, ragged business which to us means that we stand before the Past; this gradual perishing of things in neglect and defilement, may very well have formed a necessary part of our ancestors' present. Our own standard and habit of tidiness, decorum, and uniformity may be quite recent developments; barbarism, in the sense of decay and pollution, may have ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... very deeply discussed between the rector and his wife. She had given it as her opinion that priest M'Carthy was pitch, pitch itself in its blackest turpitude, and as such could not be touched without defilement. Had not all the Protestant clergymen of Ireland in a body, or, at any rate, all those who were worth anything, who could with truth be called Protestant clergymen, had they not all refused to enter the doors of the National schools because they could not do so without sharing their ministration ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... years after the disappearance of her social disabilities; a pretty fair proof that what she possessed of it was but skin deep, the result of a diligent observance of Greville's proprieties, for her personal advantage, not the token of a noble inner spirit struggling from excusable defilement to the light. "She does the honours of the house with great attention and desire to please," wrote Greville's correspondent of 1791, before quoted, "but wants a little refinement of manners, in which, in the course of six years, I wonder she has not made greater progress." "She ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... are in the deep of sorrow, whatever that depth may be, cry to God. To God Himself; and to none but God. If you can go to the pure fountain-head, why drink of the stream, which must have gathered something of defilement as it flows? If you can get light from the sun itself, why take lamp or candle in place of his clear rays? If you can go to God Himself, why go to any of God's creatures, however holy pure, and loving? Go to God, who is light of light, and life of life; the source ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... summits of the loftiest mountains and thrids the labyrinth of the deepest mine; he calls to the heights of the heavens and to the depths of the sea. But there is no answering voice, and he is left to nurse his dumb and piteous despair. Every attempt that he makes to rid his soul of its defilement is like the effort of a man who, in trying to remove the stain from his window, rubs on the wrong ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Most remarkable of all is the direction to obey the scribes and Pharisees (xxiii. 3). On the other hand, there is a rigorous denunciation of the rabbinical additions to the Jewish Law. Mercy is preferable to sacrifice (xii. 7), the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath (xii. 8), moral defilement does not come from a failure to observe ceremonial (xv. 11), the kingdom will be transferred to a more faithful nation (xxi. 43), even the strangers from the east and the west (viii. 11), the Gospel will be for all people (xxiv. 14), and the scribes and Pharisees are specially ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... N. uncleanness &c adj.; impurity; immundity^, immundicity^; impurity &c 961 [of mind]. defilement, contamination &c v.; defoedation^; soilure^, soiliness^; abomination; leaven; taint, tainture^; fetor &c 401 [Obs.]. decay; putrescence, putrefaction; corruption; mold, must, mildew, dry rot, mucor, rubigo^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... world. The men's clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, except an occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year or so; they were made of dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal the stage of defilement they had reached, and they were of a felted and porous texture admirably calculated to accumulate drifting matter. Many women wore skirts of similar substances, and of so long and inconvenient a form that they inevitably trailed among all the abomination ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... thought they that heard the voice of the crier? or they that saw you depart? or they that met you as ye came hither in such unseemly plight? What but this, that ye had done some great wickedness, wherefore ye must be driven away from the gathering of gods and men lest your presence should be a defilement? Is not this a city of enemies, wherein if ye had tarried but one single day ye would all have suffered death? They have declared war against you, and if ye are men they will suffer ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... surrender the offending fragment of the great literary masterpiece? That chapter is the sublimity of disgust! There never was anyone hurt spiritually or morally by the great French masterpiece of fiction. The man who can say the book is defiling, would draw defilement from the fount of Castaly. The Philadelphia school board has declared itself an aggregation of asses. "Les Miserables" is the greatest poem of divine humanity that this world has known since Shakespeare wrote "Lear." But I suppose "Lear," too, is immoral. I suppose everything is immoral, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... moment, while with upturn'd eyes he pray'd, The prince snatch'd from the sacrificer's hand The axe, and on the forehead of the King, Where twines the chaplet, dealt a mighty blow Which fell'd him to the earth, and o'er him stood, And shouted: Since by thee defilement came, What blood so meet as thine to wash it out? What hand to strike thee meet as mine, the hand Of AEpytus, thy murder'd master's son?— But, gazing at him from the ground, the King.... Is it, then, thou? he murmur'd; and with that, He bow'd his head, and deeply groan'd, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped out by ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... for salvation in this world. The thin veil of allegory enables us to penetrate Dante's teaching that this life also is a Purgatory, and here, too, we may cast off the defilement of sin by means of repentance and expiation. But first the soul must be girt with the rush of humility, and have perfect contrition represented by its being washed with the dew, the moisture that descends from Heaven. To Virgil (Reason guided ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Lord. Upright men spent their lives in unyielding and indignant protest, not so much for any immediate result as because they could do no otherwise,—because the constant violation of sacred right, the constant defilement and degradation of country, wrought so fiercely and painfully in their hearts that they could not hold their peace. Though they expected no sudden reform, they believed in the indestructibility of truth, and knew, therefore, that their word should not return unto them void, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the other world.[5] At least the word, which means a garden or park and was applied to the abode of our first parents in Eden, could not but call up in the consciousness of the dying man a scene of beauty, innocence and peace, where, washed clean from the defilement of his past errors, he would begin to exist again as a new creature. Even Christians have believed that the utmost that can be expected in the next world by a soul with a history like the robber's is, at least to begin with, to be consigned to ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... saturated with heat, and almost devoid of light. It contained a chair, a strip of matting, and a low string-bed, with red cotton quilt and legs of scarlet lacquer. Mud walls and floor alike were scrupulously clean. Sacred vessels, for cooking and washing, were stowed away out of reach of defilement. Above his bed the simple-hearted soldier had nailed a crude coloured print of the Kaiser-i-Hind in robes and crown; and on the opposing wall hung a tawdry looking-glass, almost as dear ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... I am doing right," resumed the Don, "in accepting such invitations, as it throws me into the society of heretics so often; and you know we cannot touch pitch without defilement." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... church has always been unanimous in this point; and among the Romans, Greeks Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without defilement, in mind or body. The fathers, from the very disciples of the apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellency of holy virginity, as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution, and a virtue which has particular charms in the eyes of God, who ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the dogs of the city howl at her ugliness! How she did curse! She cursed my father and mother—she cursed their graves—flung dirt upon my brother and sisters, and filth upon the whole generation. She gave me up to Jehanum, and to every species of defilement. It was a dreadful thing to hear that old woman curse. I pulled my turban over my eyes, that she might not recognise me, and lifted up my garment to cover my face, that I might not be defiled with the shower of curses which were thrown at me like ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... impure by her at this time, and any cloth or other article which she touches must be washed before it can be touched by anybody else; but woollen cloth, being sacred, is not rendered impure, and she can sleep on a woollen blanket without its thereby becoming a defilement to other persons. When bathing at the end of the period a woman should see no other face but her husband's; but as her husband is usually not present, she wears a ring with a tiny mirror and looks at her own face ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Mother of His beloved Son? If we ourselves, though sinners, can help one another by our prayers, how irresistible must be the intercession of Mary, who never grieved Almighty God by sin, who never tarnished her white robe of innocence by the least defilement, from the first moment of her existence till she was received by triumphant ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... delightful of all streams glides along the Aqua Virgo, so named because no defilement ever stains it. For while all the others, after heavy rain show some contaminating mixture of earth, this alone by its ever pure stream would cheat us into believing that the sky was always blue above us. Ah! ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... are ceremonies to which the Divinity, they say, attaches some secret virtue, by unseen views, of which we can form no ideas. In baptism, without which no man can be saved, the water sprinkled on the head of the child washes his spiritual soul, and carries away the defilement which is a consequence of the sin committed in the person of Adam, who sinned for all men. By the mysterious virtue of this water, and of some words equally unintelligible, the infant finds itself reconciled to God, as his ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... gained,' by myself is known that 'all is done,' by myself is known 'the highest wisdom.'" And having spoken thus respecting truth, the member of the Kaundinya family, and eighty thousand of the Deva host, were thoroughly imbued with saving knowledge. They put away defilement from themselves, they got the eyes of the pure law; Devas and earthly masters thus were sure, that what was to be done was done. And now with lion-voice he joyfully inquired, and asked Kaundinya, "Knowest thou yet?" Kaundinya forthwith answered Buddha, "I ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... compliments, a dissolute man, found me out, telling me my lover had sent him; he renewed his odious addresses. Some of my women hearers will be shocked to hear me tell of declarations of love of this kind, but when a woman takes the step I did, she must accept such; one cannot play with pitch and escape defilement, and though I loathed the messenger and his words it would have been an incongruity to say so; so when he said I had best take the sunny side of life's boulevard with him, with forced calmness I refused and decidedly. On his ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... weak and vulgar argument, child. It should not touch a true woman, Grey. Any young girl can find work and honorable place for herself in the world, without the defilement of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither. All around there is a quivering of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers—the defilement ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... pure; and no less pure were the notes which breathed from Nero's lute, whilst the blaze of ten thousand homes glutted his Imperial lust for spectacle. Divorce the unworthy song, stay the voluptuous dance, and the music suffers no clinging defilement; the redeemed melodies, stainless as fresh-fallen snow, may be wedded to songs of gallant aspiration or angelic sympathy, which shall raise the soul awhile above earth's sordid infection, disclosing ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... cannot enter into these abodes of your neglected and starving brothers and sisters—these forlorn scions of a common stock—and view their cold hearths and unfurnished tables, their beds of straw and tattered garments, without defilement—or witness their days of unremitting toil, and nights of unrest; and worse, far worse, to behold the evil passions and crimes which spring from a state of ignorance, producing a moral darkness ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... him. There was no denying that Woodville had great cause for anger, when he found his father's house occupied by a regiment of the enemy. He considered it defilement. The right or wrong of the war had nothing to do with it. It was to him ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... existence as king of a dewa loka, keeping his personality for a hundred million years in the uninterrupted enjoyment of perfect happiness, or of translation into Nirwana, he would spurn the former as defilement, and would with unutterable avidity choose the latter. We must therefore suppose that by Nirwana he understands, not naked destruction, but some mysterious good, too vast for logical comprehension, too obscure to Occidental thought to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the game!" cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultant darkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... obligation on virgins to yield to a stranger first. Only then were they permitted to marry a man of their own race. Furthermore, various means were resorted to in order to save the husband from the defilement which might result from that act (see for inst., Reinach, Mythes, cultes, I, p. 118).—The opinion expressed in this note was attacked, almost immediately after its publication, by Frazer (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 50 ff.) who preferred to see in the sacred prostitutions ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... was a horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering among ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... for cleansing. Inanimate objects also, especially such as are connected with religious worship (altars, vessels, and instruments), require purification; these are thought of originally as having souls, and as incurring defilement by the transmission of neighboring impurities. A moral conception may seem to be involved in the requirement of purification after the committal of a murder; certainly, in the more advanced stages of society, the feeling in this case ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... were also others, women, hanged by their hair over that mire that flamed up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. And the men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery, were hanging by the feet with their heads in that mire, and they exclaimed in a loud voice: We did not believe that we should ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... my Wilhelm," he said, "but I am confirmed in my opinion that some of our princely houses have become tainted. The harm that was done when Napoleon smashed his way through Europe has never been undone. The touch of the democracy was defilement, and it does not pass. Do you think our ancestors would have wasted so much time over a ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... time. She scarcely knew what she did. She tore off the pearls, the head circlet with its shining emerald, bracelets and other costly gee-gaws, and threw them on the table; she was glad to be rid of them; their touch meant defilement. She kicked off the grey slippers, tore off the silk stockings, and substituted for these her worn, down-at-heel shoes and stockings. There was no time to change her frock, so she pulled the cloak over her ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... simple: the glade is a mile distant from water—the nearest being that of the creek already mentioned as running past the cabin of the squatter. Thus Nature, as if jealous of this pretty wild-wood garden, protects it from the defilement of man. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... placed my liberty, if not my life, at the mercy of your wonderful police system. But those things count for little. I have been forced, Isobel, to leave you very much to yourself. You come of a race who would regard any association with me as defilement. And there is always the chance that you may be able to take your proper position in the world. That is why it has been my duty to keep away from you, why I have been forced to leave to others what I would gladly have done myself. To-night you ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... committed all the crimes charged against him, as far as he could commit them, is evident. The only intent which his act did not overtake, was the defilement of Isabel. Of this Angelo was only ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbour's footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master's, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,—girls who have a standard of their own, regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... but rather of the things offered to idols which many early Christians scrupled to eat. It has, however, another and special significance due to the regulations imposed by caste. As a rule a Hindu of respectable social status cannot eat with his inferiors without incurring defilement. But in many temples members of all castes can eat the prasad together as a sign that before the deity all his worshippers are equal. From this point of view the prasad is really analogous to the communion inasmuch as it is ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... quivering flesh or insensate wood. Men are those scowling priests and infuriate Pharisees. Men, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who shout and curse without knowing why. No visible glory shines round that head; yet how, spite of every defilement cast upon him by the vulgar rabble, seems that form to be glorified! What light is that in those eyes! What mournful beauty in that face! What solemn, mysterious sacredness investing the whole form, constraining from us the exclamation, "Surely this ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thin crowbars, and other instruments, it was safely detached. The plaster was then removed from the back down to the priming, and the picture was backed with strong canvas. It was then cleaned from all its defilement, and, on being offered for sale at a good price, was bought by a nobleman, whose name I have not heard, and is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... beautiful valleys, through which the Thames (not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills (which pour into it their tributary rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... My fathers! whom I will rejoin, It may be, purified by death from some Of the gross stains of too material being, I would not leave your ancient first abode To the defilement of usurping bondmen; If I have not kept your inheritance As ye bequeathed it, this bright part of it, Your treasure—your abode—your sacred relics 430 Of arms, and records—monuments, and spoils, In which they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron |
