"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... XIV., after 1660, the French government paid great attention to Canada, but not in a way capable of leading to the formation of a colony. The king was as intent as the rulers of Spain had been to keep the American possessions free from all taint of heresy. Therefore he carried on the policy of excluding the Huguenots — the only colonizing element among his subjects, — and drove them into the English plantations. A small handful of obedient peasants, priest-ridden ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mystery, to bring truth to the ears of the great. When men live under a system of duplicity, more or less of the quality gets interwoven with the habits of the most ingenuous, although they may remain themselves unconscious of the taint. Thus Father Anselmo, as he proceeded with the desired explanation, touched more tenderly on the practices of the state, and used more of reserve in alluding to those usages and opinions, which one of his holy calling and honest nature, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Lawrence took out his cigarettes. Isabel gave a grudging assent. She could not understand how any one could be willing to taint the sweet summering air that had blown over so many leagues of grass and flowers. "Dare I offer you one?" Lawrence asked, tendering his case. It was of gold, and bore his monogram in diamonds. Isabel eyed it scornfully. Jack Bendish's was only silver and much scratched and dinted ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... gently interposed, "she bears a name she knows I am anxious to save from all taint or reproach; because she was the wife, and I the only child, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 70 One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! To scatter rage, and traitorous guilt, Where Peace her jealous home had built; A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, Yell in the hunt, and share ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... members became interested in nut culture. Mr. John Engle of the Marietta Nurseries advised me to plant seed from this particular tree and raise seedling trees for sale. I finally did on a small scale only. But I soon found in the young seedlings a taint of black walnut blood, which discouraged me for a further continuance. Later I had correspondence with J. F. Jones, then of Monticello, Fla., who had specialized in the propagation of all nut trees. In 1903 scions were sent to him, and returned as budded trees in 1905, and are now a living monument ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... convictions. Mr. Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three, confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a union of all—a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr. Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are with Mr. Trollope the writer—who has not failed to appreciate the self-sacrifice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and the Spottiswoode Society was established. Here, it will be observed, there was a passing to the opposite extreme; and so intense seems to have been the anxiety to escape from all excuse for indecorous jokes or taint of joviality, that the word Club, wisely adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was abandoned, and this one called itself a Society. To that abandonment of the medio tutissimus has been attributed its early death by those who contemn the taste of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... take hold on this har day, Recowperate yer muscle; Let up a mite this day on toil, 'Taint made for holy bustle. Let them old sorrels jog along, With mighty slack-like traces; Half dreamin', es my sunbeams fleck ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid and a probable curate in mufti, demanded ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... advantage of nuts over meats is that they are absolutely free from any possible taint of disease. Those delectable foods, the walnut, the pecan, the hickory nut and the almond, are never the vehicle for parasites or other infections. Nuts are not subject to tuberculosis or any other disease which may be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... all nations became the most gloomily jealous of a Jewish cross in the pedigree, was because, until the vigilance of the Church rose into ferocity, in no nation was such a cross so common. The hatred of fear is ever the deepest. And men hated the Jewish taint, as once in Jerusalem they hated the leprosy, because even whilst they raved against it, the secret proofs of it might be detected amongst their own kindred, even as in the Temple, whilst once a king rose in mutiny against the priesthood, (2 Chron. xxvi 16-20,) suddenly the leprosy that dethroned ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... carry two men a four days' journey. I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be helped. You begin to understand me? I perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation. It is men of your sort who unmake kings. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... from her knees after close examination of the muddy trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air—stood with delicate nostrils quivering—advanced, still conscious of the taint, listening, wary, every stealthy ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and back, Countenance sunburnt, bearded, calm, unrefined, Reminder ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... relation of some common rich people from the States. The best county families, with daughters to marry, shook their heads. It was very sad—very sad, to see a good old name and a good old family degenerate in this way. But there was always a taint of madness in the Catheron blood—that accounted for a good deal. Poor Sir ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... another contribution penetrating directly into the sphere of morality. By statistic methods of sociology the social problems of immorality and crime have been opened up, and external facts have been studied; and criminal anthropology has revealed the "inferior types" who by hereditary taint are those who have a predisposition to all the moral infection of their surroundings. Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the resulting theories of Lombroso concerning criminals have undoubtedly brought light into ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... rise of words, acts, beings, Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command, leading not following, Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors, as to say Who are you? Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective; and the sentient organ project itself as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... occurrence, the details of which throw light over the internal condition of the island, at a period regarding which the native historians are more than usually obscure. At this time the glory of Buddhism had declined, and the political ascendency of the Tamils had enabled the Brahmans to taint the national worship by an infusion of Hindu observances. The Se-yih-ke foo-choo, or "Description of Western Countries," says that in 1405 A.D. the reigning king, A-lee-koo-nae-wurh (Wijaya-bahu VI.), a native of Sollee, and "an adherent ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... not convince the son, but the words which he had spoken helped to create a doubt which already had almost an existence of its own. Anton Trendellsohn was prone to suspicions, and now was beginning to suspect Nina, although he strove hard to keep his mind free from such taint. His better nature told him that it was impossible that she should deceive him. He had read the very inside of her heart, and knew that her only delight was in his love. He understood perfectly the weakness and faith and beauty of her feminine nature, ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... position with fairness, who lacked wholly the judicial quality, who were vainglorious and extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget their intellectual defects in the presence of their abounding physical and moral energy, their freedom from any taint of personal corruption, their whole-souled desire and effort for the public good. Were not such heroes, impossible as they would have been in any other civilized country, perfectly illuminative of your ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... maddening bowl, to keep off the demon of remorse or the cloud of sorrow, like the forgery or the robbery to save from want. "The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for herself in marriage"—these "had come to her hunger like food, with the taint of sacrilege upon it," which she "snatched with terror." Grandcourt "fulfilled his side of the bargain by giving her the rank and luxuries she coveted." Matrimony as a bargain never had and never will have ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of milk in the absorption of taint from the atmosphere, or any substance with which it comes in contact, ought to be thoroughly understood by all persons engaged in handling it, but, we believe, that but few comparatively are alive to the true facts of the case. I herewith present several ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... hung down O'er a brow like a holy saint; Her goodness was beyond renown, And yet—there was a taint. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... you lie. My mother was pure as the angels. Henceforth you can be only to me a slanderer who has dared to taint the one ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... you ask me," was the reply, "I'd shape a course due north. We'd be in the track of craft making up and down Channel before it gets dark. If we don't fall in with any vessel, we can carry on. 'Taint so very far to land, considering the number of hands we've ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Cross, long since robbed of the beautiful structure from which it derived its name, and noticing its numerous noble habitations, his eye finally rested upon Whitehall: and he heaved a sigh as he thought that the palace of the sovereign was infected by as foul a moral taint as the hideous disease that ravaged ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... forth with such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful, smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a deadly taint from daily contact with corruption. The spirit of gambling, confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was undermining the foundations of society. Rogues were growing rich; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of pure Ralph without any taint of Waddington. It seemed to be part of Mr. Waddington's book, and yet no part of it, for it was inconceivable that it should belong to anything but itself. Ralph didn't ramble; he went straight for the things he had seen. He saw the Cotswolds ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... he lies; Like some small angel strayed, His face still warmed by God's own smile, That slumbers unafraid; Or like some new embodied soul, Still pure from taint of sin— My thoughts are reverent as I stoop To tuck my ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... mixing in the private concerns of others uninvited. She had a sort of delicate hatred of curiosity. She longed to prove to the woman by the fire that she was wholly incurious now, wholly free from the taint of sordid vulgarity that ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... The taint about that was certain, but the honey almost drove him frantic. So with a sudden motion he snatched the coveted prize in his mouth and gave a hard tug at it. He would seize it before the man-scent had power to injure ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... taken out of the rain tub, and was strongly impregnated with the dust lodging on the roof, whence it had trickled down into the old wooden cask, which also added its own flavour to that of the original rain water. The milk, too, was often "bingy," to use a country expression for a kind of taint that is far worse than sourness, and suggests the idea that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk pans, rather than by the heat of the weather. On Saturdays, a kind of pie, or mixture of potatoes and meat, was served up, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... for a little and discuss the larger question. I don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. I don't think there is any taint of criminality about it at all, Mr. Fotheringay—none whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. No, it's miracles—pure miracles—miracles, if I may say so, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... paid at all, and eviction has in consequence been resorted to. Eviction, whether carried out in West Ireland or East London, is a very ugly necessity, and one, too, that is indelibly stamped with a taint of inhumanity. At the last extremity, it is, however, the only one open to any owner, qua owner, let his political sympathies or proclivities be what they may, so that it does not necessarily argue any ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the town as the "Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." A taint of insanity had affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies unmolested by the world with whose business ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had done their life's work, broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him again. And before the first horrid impressions had time to fade, the next occasion would have come round again: it was not the fate of Adrian Landale that either steel or shot, or splintered timber or falling tackles should put an end to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... decent to Grannie and the Aunties, and to Uncle Morrie and Uncle Bartie. That was the only burden she had laid on her children. It was a case of noblesse oblige; their youth constrained them. They had received so much, and they had been let off so much; not one of them had inherited the taint that made Maurice and Emmeline Fleming and Bartie Harrison creatures diseased and irresponsible. They could afford to be pitiful ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... could see that he was still unhappy, and I have no doubt that he has that pullet on his conscience yet, unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which has been partly or altogether brought up by hand, or who is of a feeble and delicate constitution, or imbued with any hereditary taint, the process of dentition will be attended with more or less difficulty, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... was—a fine thing for me to get a bid to; but I went to the Wild West show instead. Sir, I know it was childish, but—I couldn't help it! I saw the posters; I thought of the horse-breaking, the guns, the swing and snap and dash of galloping men, the taint of sweating horses—and by God, sir, I couldn't stay ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... bears the cost of illness, we shall have only the loss of wages during the illness or after the death of wage earners to consider. And here some form of universal insurance will probably be the solution; this is preferable to state care of dependents, as it carries no taint of charity. This solves every problem but the delicate one, which must be entrusted to expert diagnosticians, of determining to work is caused by physical weakness ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... understand the nature of this malady, caused partly by heated feelings, which should be passed over unnoticed and allowed to die out insensibly, instead of being inflamed afresh by equally strong contradiction, which, moreover, is always useless, when the taint is not confined to a certain known number, but spread throughout the state. I thought, therefore, that the best way of reducing the Huguenots of my kingdom little by little, was, in the first place, not to put any pressure ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a white rose: I picked it with my hand, and, you see, a drop of my blood is on it; when you can give me a rose with a drop of your blood on it as free from taint as the stain mine makes, I shall have an answer that will not be unworthy ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... what he thinks, and, ten to one, he mentally refers to some eminent exemplar of all the virtues for instructions, and, instead of telling you what he does think, quotes listlessly what he ought to think. So that his mincing affectation is not merely ungraceful, but is a sign of an inward taint, which may prove fatal to the whole character. It is very easy to make a child disingenuous; if he be at all timid, the work is already half done to one's hand. Of course, all children are not bad who are brought up on such books,—one circumstance or another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... extracted from rape seed but especially from sesame. The Persians pronounce it "Sraj" (apparently unaware that it is their own word "Shrah"juice in Arabic garb) and have coined a participle "Musayrij" e.g., B-i- musayrij, taint of sesame-oil applied especially to the Jews who very wisely prefer, in Persia and elsewhere, oil which is wholesome to butter which is not. The Moslems, however, declare that its immoderate use in cooking taints ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... therefore, by whom God had first made the world, entered into the womb of the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of a new organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creative energy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when it passed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thus wonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost power of mankind. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... skimming add half a dozen whole cloves, a dozen whole alspice, a pod of red pepper, a few whole grains of black pepper, and if you like, a young onion or a stalk of celery. Personally I do not like either onion or celery—moreover they taint the fat one may save from the pot. Let the water boil hard for half a minute, no longer, then slack heat till it barely simmers. Keep it simmering, filling up the pot as the water in it boils away, until the ham is tender throughout. The ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Shirley "a low wretch, a mad assassin, and a wild beast." He was, as my story will show, all this. He was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle, whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And this hereditary taint ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... people might be kept from the taint of idolatry, Jacob left Laban; yet Rachel had stolen her father's images—and there is then great significance in that act by which Jacob renewed his covenant with God, when called upon to build ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... describing to Russell the fall of Sumter, he stated that civil war had at last begun. The North he believed to be very much more powerful than the South, the South more "eager" and united as yet, but, he added, "the taint of slavery will render the cause of the South loathsome to the civilized world." It was true that "commercial intercourse with the cotton States is of vital importance to manufacturing nations[124]...." but Lyons was now facing an actual situation rather than a possible one, and as ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... very rich, at least as rich as Somerled, and ten years younger. Aline and I might be mistaken about the girl's feelings for Ian. Very likely it was no more than a romantic sort of gratitude; and though I absolved the child from the smallest taint of mercenary motive, it was almost impossible that a sleepless night had not given her some wise counsel. She was too sensitive and quick-witted a girl, I reflected, not to have seen that she could not go on living with ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Piccadilly, or even in the suburbs. And he wasn't in his motor-car, mind you, then; he was simply strolling over from his house to post a letter in the village on the green, and I do not know how he contrived to infuse into so simple an act that subtle taint of advertisement. There was no necessity for him to post his own letters, he could easily have sent a servant. But I do believe he couldn't bear to miss the opportunity of being seen. When he passed the Vicarage, the Vicar and his wife ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... heart of the Southern Oregon mountains, and has no connection with the outside world except through the daily stagecoaches. Its would-be leading men are old miners or refugees from the bushwhacking district whence they were driven by the civil war. The taint of slavery is yet upon them and the methods of border-ruffians are their hearts' delight. It is true that there are many good people among them, but they are often over-awed by the lawless crowd whose very instincts lead them to oppose a republican form of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... indignant at the fate of my innocent friend. Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing tale, or why hold you in delay, if all ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... itself, but on the tendency it has to perpetuate any constitutional weakness or other hereditary taints; and he attempts to prove this by the argument that "if crosses act by virtue of being a cross, and not by virtue of removing an hereditary taint, then the greater the difference between the two animals crossed the more beneficial will that act be." He then shows that, the wider the difference the less is the benefit, and concludes that a cross, as such, has no beneficial effect. A parallel argument would be, that change of air, as ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... go 'long!" she protested. "'Taint no sech thing. I ain't got sich a long appetite as date. Fifteen miles! Lan'a massa! whot you take ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... that the poet had not only given up his work, but that the taint of landowning under the existing conditions had corrupted him. As late as 1614 he was assisting one William Combe, a landowner and son of his old friend John Combe—who had left him five pounds by will—in an attempt to enclose the common lands round his estate at Welcombe. In the early days the ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... forgotten venial fault of infancy to the worst passion of youth,— only they came to me clear and vivid, in retrograde order. The lies I told when I was a little boy, the wicked words I spoke, the cruel things I did, the first taint that polluted my mind, the faces of school-fellows whom I had irreparably injured, the stolen waters of manhood—all were dashed into my remorseful recollection; they started up like buried, menacing ghosts, without, or even against my will. I felt ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... weedy green crops and ripe but neglected corn. The cry grew plainer, and convinced that she was right she hastened towards the hovel; but even in that hurried walk she felt an oppressive change in the air as she left the sea behind. Was there some taint lurking amongst the green luxuriance that had seemed such an inviting shelter from the heat of the coming day? She could see the opening into the hovel now, and the cry was darting through her like a pain. The next moment her ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... she not have done, what would she not do still for love of him,—he who had sold her for a kiss; and for it there came something,—she could not define it,—something that seemed to live in the atmosphere, to taint the glory of the sunshine, to speak ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor. Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed of its rotation—a small sound of ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... why the people laughed and Rodolph slunk away. For the old story is known throughout the shore, and Rodolph proved, in his fight with you, the bad blood in his veins. It never does to cross the white blood with the red, for the treachery of the Indian will taint the race for generations." ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... smelt him," answered Sir Patrick, "ever since I have been in the summer-house. There is a detestable taint of tobacco in the air—suggestive (disagreeably suggestive to my mind) of your ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... has committed some terrible crime,—perhaps many of them,—and he is afraid to look a stranger in the eye; and a glance at that beautiful girl is enough to fasten upon him one of his crimes. She is from a family whose blood is as pure from any taint, physical, mental, or moral, as is your own, and unless I am greatly mistaken, she is not wholly ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... hard to be in season at the witches' Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters always, but ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... verified the fact that the vine is the slave of certain conditions of soil, which impart to this extremely delicate and sensitive plant a special flavour that is incorporated with the wine, and can never be eradicated. The vines of the Cape, although of infinite variety, produce wines with a family taint which is a flavour absorbed from the soil. Any person who knows Constantia, the luscious wine of the Cape of Good Hope, will at once detect the soupcon of that flavour in every quality of wine produced ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Haskins; wade right into what we've got; 'taint much, but we manage to live on it she gits fat on it," laughed Council, pointing his thumb ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... went about the business quietly, and even rated some of their former officers as midshipmen, in special token of esteem. At the Nore, however, and in Duncan's squadron at Yarmouth, the mutiny was marked by bloodshed and taint of disloyalty, little surprising in view of the disaffected Irish, ex-criminals, impressed merchant sailors, and other unruly elements in the crews. In the end 18 men were put to death and ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... might'st live. He grieved as only strong, brave men can grieve For what is lost. Then wandered off a pace To seek new life in lands across the sea; He left thee here, thy life was wild and free. Long years ago came tidings of his death, Born sadly on the wind's taint whispering breath. He was a peer, the last of all his race, His Saxon strength was written on thy face. Yet in thy veins thy mother's Southern blood Is bounding with its warm, impetuous flood. Enough; my words are wandering; a will He left that may thy heart with gladness fill, Thy girlish right ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... 'dry-fats'—that is, weather-tight chests—to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian. Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed—for had he not been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin and Beza?—direct Dr. James to say masses ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the soul imbibes the print Of freedom—where nought comes to taint, Or its warm feelings quell: She felt love o'er her spirit driven, Such as the angels felt in heaven, Before they ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... flashing screens; central operators of communications dropped under the winking lights of their panels. Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, too, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... gray. The air was still, so still. It reeked with the taint of burning. It reeked with something else. There were bodies, in varying stages of decomposition, lying about, many of them burned, many of them half eaten by the wild scavengers of the region. All were mutilated in a ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... ill-fame—only a small proportion—make their way there of their own volition, and that small proportion are of the degenerate class who are born with a screw loose somewhere. From their babyhood they who are born with this taint—and we could, perhaps, trace that taint back—but born with that taint, they gradually go into that life—but they make a small proportion. The rest of them are either betrayed into that sort of a life, their lives ruined because they trusted ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... endlessly of a way out. For me what was there? There was no one to rob—I wasn't clever enough. There was no way I could earn money, honestly or dishonestly. And for her, buried in that Derbyshire village amongst the collieries, where there was scarcely a person who hadn't the taint of the place upon them—what chance was there for her? There was nothing she could do, either. I knew in my heart that we were both ready for evil things, if by evil things we could make our escape. And we couldn't. So we tried to lose ourselves in the only fields left for such as ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was very sad—very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity cropping up. The young ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... about the wagon. Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this fresh guy a little good—maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch—not a free street parade. Go on home now, the lot of youse, before you wake ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Evolution tell us, that in the genealogical ages during which man has struggled upward, from the lower stages of vertebrate and mammal to the genus of catarrhine apes, he has gradually thrown off bestial instincts, and that the tiger taint will ultimately be totally eliminated; that "original sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance which every man carries with him, and that Evolution is an advance toward true salvation." Meanwhile what becomes ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... her intellectuals and abilities, the wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and necessitated. She was learned, her sex and time considered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and in Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of race made Vesta reject this sympathy, precious to her parched breast despite the quadroon taint as the golden sand in the brooks of Africa, giving at once wealth and cooling. The slave girl's long white arms, scarcely less pale than ivory—for she had slipped in at the sign of sorrow, while making her simple toilet—drew ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Madam Snob is one who should be a lady, for by education and good breeding she is entitled to the name. Now, she really possess a good, kind heart, is kind to the poor, tries to do her duty, but away down, under several layers of good intentions, there is a little taint of snobbery, and she really has not the moral courage to rid herself of it. This Mrs. Snob may have a large circle of friends, but to each one she accords a different reception; to all she is kind, remember, but you can judge of her opinion of different ones, from the ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... sedulously sent up remainders till they were expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of an ethical battleground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at his provisions was too sacrilegious ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... wait of my approaching feet: Ile make th'inspired threshals of his Court Sweat with the weather of my horrid steps, Before I enter: yet will I appeare 190 Like calme security before a ruine. A politician must, like lightning, melt The very marrow, and not taint the skin: His wayes must not be seene; the superficies Of the greene Center must not taste his feet, 195 When hell is plow'd up with his wounding tracts, And all his harvest reap't by ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... greatest mischief wrought by these successive eruptions was the destruction of the pasturages, which were for the most part covered with volcanic ashes. Even where left exposed, the herbage acquired a poisonous taint which proved fatal to the cattle, inducing among them a peculiar murrain. Fortunately, owing to the nature of the district through which the lava passed, there was on this occasion no loss of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... truth, even when there is no stake at issue; and as for shame at being found out, the very feeling is unfamiliar to them. The gravest and most serious works in Chinese literature abound in lies; their histories lie; and their scientific works lie. Nothing in China seems to have escaped this taint. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... watcheth," that keepeth ever on the alert against the subtle temptations, and the compromise that fills the very air, "and keepeth his garments;"[52] sleeplessly, kneefully, takes care that no breath of evil get into his heart, no taint of compromise stain his life, no suspicion of lukewarmness cool his personal devotion ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... was ideal. To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless reaper,—a sordid and miserable taint was on her life, and she shuddered with mingled fear and grief as she realised that she had not even the simple privilege of ordinary baptism. She was a nameless waif, dependent on the charity of Farmer ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... half an hour before he reached the village. The Wabbly had gone from end to end, backed up, and gone over the rest of it again. There was the taint of gas in the air. Sergeant Walpole halted outside the debris. His gas-mask had been blown to atoms with ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... start. With an effort, the head lifted. Ivan was gazing into a pair of clear, blue eyes, and realizing that there was no taint of vodka in the other's breath. Nay! That face spoke of very different things. Youth was there, and hardship, and suffering, and discouragement. More than that, the gaunt pallor of face and lips, the sharp outline of jaw and cheek-bone, told of want, great and immediate. They were ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... He's well with all, compact of courtesy: Real heroism is real piety: Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint To charge the pipkins with impurity: Freedom I crave: who craves not to be free? Yet life that must be feigned for, leaves a taint. Ill conduct brings repentance?—If you prate This wise to me, why prate not thus to all Philosophers and prophets, and to Christ? Not too much learning, as some arrogate, But the small brains of dullards have sufficed To make us ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... pleasant quarters that I was tempted to settle there for some days. The town is almost an unbroken assemblage of the quaintest and most picturesque old houses. There are whole streets without any taint of modern architecture to disturb the perfect image of the past. Two magnificent churches, one of them formerly a cathedral, rise over the whole; and there is a very pretty public garden, with its terraces, pastures, and green alleys. A public garden is the invariable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... and while they amuse, they afford the reader much opportunity for reflection. Elsie Venner is a romance of destiny, and a strange physiological condition furnishes the key-note and marrow of the tale. It is Holmes' snake story, the taint of the serpent appearing in the daughter, whose mother was bitten by a rattle-snake before her babe was born. The traits inherited by this unfortunate offspring from the reptile, find rapid development. She becomes a creature ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... he is connecting himself with one of an inferior and servile caste, and that there is something of degradation in the act. The intercourse is generally casual; he does not make her habitually an associate, and is less likely to receive any taint from her habits and manners. He is less liable to those extraordinary fascinations, with which worthless women sometimes entangle their victims, to the utter destruction of all principle, worth and vigor of character. The female of his own race offers greater allurements. The haunts of vice often ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... prayer He is our unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying of every power from the taint of sin He ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... after the first week," said the captain with a twinkle in his eye. He was very much wrinkled and weather-beaten, but jolly and good-humored. "And now, sissy, I'm glad you're safe with your folks, and I hope you'll grow up into a nice clever woman. 'Taint no use wishin' you good looks, for you're purty as a pink now—one of them rather palish kind. But you'll ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... centre-form, the veil did fall, And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal, The highest Life with noblest Form made one, To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun; The living germ in this strange planet-ball, Even as thy form in mind of striving saint. So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint, Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield, In every splendour shadowy revealed: But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint, Power falls down ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... taint of gas or poison fumes. The air tasted fresh except for the faint smoke, and the birds were all in full song. Yet we all had to dismount, and to let the prisoners walk, too, because the horses were too ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... "Laws, honey, 'taint 'cording to rules for we coloured folks to hold meetin's no how. 'Course, we's ought to 'bey de rules; ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... poisoned at these schools, our trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No factory will be settled in France, that will not become a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of young men of that description will receive a taint in their religion, their morals, and their politics, which they will in a short time communicate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wage war on wrong, And the clash of their swords is sweet as song; Fair are the maids, and so pure from taint The flash of their eyes turns sinner to saint; There reptile is none, nor the ravening beast; There light has no shadow, no ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the reader will perceive that I was a comparatively weak and harmless little slander, with merely that taint of original sin which was to be expected in one of such parentage. But I developed with great rapidity; and I believe men of science will tell you that this is always the case with low organisms. That, for instance, while ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... love, of passion, in her life could neither tint nor taint the cool, normal sequence of her days. All that life held for a woman of her caste—all save that—was hers when she stretched out her hand for it—hers by right of succession, of descent; hers by warrant unquestioned, by the unuttered text of the ukase to be launched, if necessary, by ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sheep, and slaves have to be given to the father for the value of his daughter; but if she finds she has made a mistake, she can return the dowry-money, and gain her release. The Wahuma, although they keep slaves and marry with pure negroes, do not allow their daughters to taint their blood by marrying out of their clan. In warfare it is the rule that the Wahinda, or princes, head their own soldiers, and set them the example of courage, when, after firing a few arrows, they throw their bows away, and close at once with their spears and assages. Life ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke |
