"Polluting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corruption and filthiness. And now I tell thee, O King, that the city is troubled by thy ill counsels. For the dogs and the birds of the air tear the flesh of this dead son of Oedipus, whom thou sufferest not to have due burial, and carry it to the altars, polluting them therewith. Wherefore the gods receive not from us prayer or sacrifice, and the cry of the birds hath an evil sound, for they are full of the flesh of a man. Therefore I bid thee be wise in time. For all men may err; but he that keepeth not his folly, but repenteth, doeth well; but stubbornness ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... march on, your Majesty, and that we prepare oorselves tae be the vessels o' grace, and forbear frae polluting the cause o' the Gospel by wearing the livery o' the devil'—here he glared at a gaily attired cavalier at the other side of the table—'or by the playing o' cairds, the singing o' profane songs and the swearing o' oaths, all which are nichtly done by members ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... between Stainless and stained and high and mean; They to whose lot fair signs may fall Were but as they who lack them all, And those to virtuous thoughts inclined Were but as men of evil mind. If in the sacred name of right I do this wrong in duty's spite; The path of virtue meanly quit, And this polluting sin commit, What man who marks the bounds between Virtue and vice with insight keen, Would rank me high in after time Stained with this soul destroying crime? Whither could I, the sinner, turn, How hope a seat in heaven to earn, If I my plighted promise break, And thus the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... musicians on the stage; revelling in open day in the company of the most abandoned prostitutes and the vilest of men; in the night, committing depredations on the peaceful inhabitants of the capital; polluting with detestable lust, or drenching with human blood, the streets, the palace, and the habitations of private families; and, to crown his enormities, setting fire to Rome, while he sung with delight in beholding ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... eyes are turned, embracing as it does four of the five families of mankind. They huddle together in the lap of Christendom, but feel no warmth. They are a demonstration of the fact that civilization never touches barbarism without polluting it. The Indian, finding his highest ideal in the rude and tipsy defender of our flag; the Chinaman, taking home more heathenism than he brings; the Negro, bound tighter by the vices of the whites than ever he was by their iron chains—these three, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... It would be polluting these pages with ribaldry, obscenity, and blasphemy, were I to give specimens of some hymns of the Moravians and the Methodists, and some of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... not for your vain and polluting rites—it is to us—to the followers of Christ, that the last offices due to a Christian belong. I claim this dust in the name of the great Creator ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... you, in the strongest terms I could use, that Gustave Dore's art was bad—bad, not in weakness,—not in failure,—but bad with dreadful power—the power of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art was possible for you. Suppose I were to tell you that! What would be the use? Would you look at Gustave Dore less? Rather, more, I fancy. On the other hand, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... persons to avail themselves of the first supply, however unwholesome, and eagerly to drink even of a filthy stream; with similar impatience and satisfaction, the "carnal mind" indulges in its sensualities, seizing forbidden, and contented with polluting joys. But the grace of God in the heart is distinguished for its purifying influence: it cleanses the spirit from guilt—sanctifies it by the "washing of regeneration," and imparts a new desire, a heavenly thirst, a holy ardour for spiritual communications; so that "as the hart pants after ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... you dare whisper your polluting thoughts to either of them, lawless as is this land, you know that I still possess the power to punish you. You are villain enough, Heaven knows, for anything; but they shall not fall: one victim is enough— ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... counselled the worthy elector to follow the course indicated by the Spanish grandee, who informed Charles the Fifth that he intended to burn his castle to the ground so soon as the traitorous Constable de Bourbon had relieved it of his polluting presence.[1347] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the world, and see it "lying in wickedness;" we see men trampling on God's law, polluting his image, cruelly oppressing each other, and boldly defying and mocking at the Almighty. What does he then? For the sake of these miserable, weak, and wretched sinners, who seem scarcely worth ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the Indian peasant of his land; the Indian artisan of his industry, and the Indian merchant of his trade; it has destroyed religion by its godless system of education; it seeks to destroy caste by polluting maliciously and of set purpose, the salt and sugar that men eat and the cloth that they wear; it allows Indians to be ill-treated in British Colonies; it levies heavy taxes and spends them on the army; it pays high salaries to Englishmen, and ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... children, by the names of the ancient Britons. In some respects she was not unlike Scott's Ulrica, and had she been given to cursing, she would certainly have done so in the names of Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock. Not having submitted to the embraces of any polluting Normans, as poor Ulrica had done, and having assisted no parricide, the milk of human kindness was not curdled in her bosom. She never cursed, therefore, but blessed rather. This, however, she did in a strange uncouth Saxon manner, that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. When she was building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When she was projecting her ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... say, their priests. See, respecting the rites of this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta. Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... prince; consequently the history of their effects must ever be the same in every country." It is both mortifying and consolatory to think, that the utmost height to which ambition may aspire, will not exempt one from the polluting agency of "mire and dirt." Death, we see, is not the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... whose only justification lay in the fact that it was maintaining a tradition of the time; and Jimmy Hartigan, besieged in the livery yard with half a dozen of his coreligionists, felt called upon to avenge the honour of the South of Ireland at these soul-polluting sounds. Someone suggested a charge into the ranks of the approaching procession, with its sizzling band and its abhorrent orange-and-blue flags, following in the wake of Bill Kenna, whose proud post was at the head of the procession, carrying a cushion on which was an open Bible. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Sraddha, with even the permission of the other Ritwiks there present, he is said to take (by that act of his) the sins of all who may be sitting in the line. If, on the other hand, he happens to be conversant with the Vedas and freed from all those faults that are regarded as capable of polluting the line, he shall not, O king, be regarded as fallen (by taking the foremost seat in a Sraddha). Such a man would then be really a sanctifier of the line. For these reasons, O king, thou shouldst properly examine the Brahmanas before ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... every other kind of food. You turn from your dreadful half-slice of bread, which fills your mouth with bitterness, to your beefsteak, which proves virulent with the same poison; you think to take refuge in vegetable diet, and find the butter in the string-beans, and polluting the innocence of early peas; it is in the corn, in the succotash, in the squash; the beets swim in it, the onions have it poured over them. Hungry and miserable, you think to solace yourself at the dessert; but the pastry is cursed, the cake is acrid with the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to be the prey, had mistaken their victim, and had fixed themselves in HER heart. But where was my safety? Was the mischief exhausted or flown? The steps of the assassin had just been here; they could not be far off; in a moment he would rush into my presence, and I should perish under the same polluting and suffocating grasp! ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... of the drug preserved his sedateness through all this, and he remained motionless in sleep, folded in the centre of calm and satisfaction, while this tumult was rageing and the City shook with uproar. But the people, when they saw him whitened behind a lather, wrath at Baba Mustapha's polluting touch and the audacity of barbercraft wrestled in them with the outpouring of reverence for Shagpat, and a clamour arose for the instant sacrifice of Baba Mustapha at the foot of their idol Shagpat. And the whole of the City of Shagpat, men, women, and children, and the sheikhs and the dervishes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knowing the Hindu's horror of a stranger's polluting touch, but she accepted it without question. Stooping, she scooped up a cupful of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... scouring all the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and the new fruits. The public or sacred square was carefully swept of even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, "for fear of polluting the first-fruit offerings." Also every vessel that had contained or had been used about any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple before sunset. Then all the men who were not known ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... upon a fresh-water pond for its water supply, finds that his drinking water is contaminated, that the taste and odor are such as to render the water unfit for use. There is no reason why he should not treat the supply, provided he is properly careful. When the nature of the polluting organism is definitely determined and the average temperature of the water observed, then the necessary formula can be decided upon. First, of course, the pond must be plotted, the depth found, and the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... have helped it, really. Ships under the Drive are insulated from contamination clouds and everything else in normal space. The substance polluting the ventilation system, therefore, must have been trapped within their field since Vega. Now it had entered the ship through some infinitesimal opening in ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... gods have not decreed it. The elder of these men doth bear the guilt Of kindred murder; on his steps attend The dread Eumenides. They seiz'd their prey Within the inner fane, polluting thus The holy sanctuary. I hasten now, Together with my virgin-train, to bathe Diana's image in the sea, and there With solemn rites its purity restore. Let none presume our silent ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... this simple act, this girl had placed in me a greater trust than words could speak. She deemed me good enough to be by her side when she approached her Creator—and was I worthy? I knew I was not. And though my life had been free from those polluting sins which glow like rubies in the souls of some men, I felt that here I had no fitting place, that her prayers would be clogged by the unholiness of my presence. She knelt, immovable as the statued Christ which hung almost over our heads. The glow ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... the sly work of peaceful penetration, that work of spying and lying in which the German people proved itself easily first. The diabolical propaganda, aimed not only at undermining the United States, at seducing the Irish and other hyphenate groups of Americans, but at polluting the Mexicans and several of the South American States; and later there was a thoroughly organized conspiracy to stir up animosity between this country and Japan by making the Japanese hate and suspect the Americans, and by making the Americans hate and suspect the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold of it, that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the son of the stranger who hath joined himself unto Jehovah, speak, saying, Jehovah hath utterly separated me from his people—the sons of the stranger that join themselves to Jehovah, to serve him, and to ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... benevolent, candid, and sincere, it has at one time been proud and passionate, at another vain and flourishing, at another slanderous and revengeful; now again, it has been selfish, crafty, and dissembling, often also daringly impious and profane, and not seldom exceedingly polluting and impure. Do you ask what have been the sinful deeds he has done? O what a dreadful variety has there been in them! At one time he has been trying to overreach his fellow-trader; at another, he has been endeavoring to seduce some unhappy maiden: at one time he is seen quarrelling with ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... voice, with perfect suavity. "No doubt there are many weak and foolish persons who commit crimes,—nay, I will admit that the vast majority of criminals are weak and foolish; but that does not affect the dignity of the true sinner,—he who sins from exalted motives. Ignorance is the only real crime, polluting deeds that, wisely done, are sublime. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... reaching camp and before the men are allowed to go around, patrolling sentinels should be established to prevent men from polluting the camp site or adjoining ground before the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... as if, transported with some fit Of passion, I to them had quitted all, At random yielded up to their misrule; And know not that I called, and drew them thither, My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth Which Man's polluting sin with taint hath shed On what was pure; til, crammed and gorged, nigh burst With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son, Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave, at last, Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... He had forgotten himself; he made a step towards her—perhaps he stumbled. To me he seemed to be stooping low as if to touch the hem of her garment. And then the appropriate gesture came. She snatched her skirt away from his polluting contact and averted her head with an upward tilt. It was magnificently done, this gesture of conventionally unstained honour, of an unblemished ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... unchristian. My lords, I did not intend to have trespassed again on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My lords, we are called upon, as members of this house, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions, standing near the throne, polluting the ear of majesty! 'That God and nature put into our hands!' I know not what idea that lord may entertain of God and nature; but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... population expanding; deforestation results from logging and the clearing of land for agricultural purposes; further land degradation and soil erosion hastened by uncontrolled development and improper land use practices such as farming of marginal lands; mining activities polluting Lago de Yojoa (the country's largest source of fresh water) as well as several rivers and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... how long, before the flood Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate? From sodden plains in West and East the blood Of kindly men streams up in mists of hate Polluting Thy clear air: and nations great In reputation of the arts that bind The world with hopes of Heaven, sink to the state Of brute barbarians, whose ferocious mind Gloats o'er the bloody havoc of their kind, Not knowing love or mercy. Lord, how long Shall Satan in high places ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... into Miss Forrester's religious views before, but he had always assumed that they were sound. And now here she was polluting the golden summer air with the most hideous blasphemy. It would be incorrect to say that James's love was turned to hate. He did not hate Grace. The repulsion he felt was deeper than mere hate. What ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains Eat with their burning gold into my bones. Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips His beak in poison not his own, tears up My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by— The ghastly people of the realm of dream Mocking me; and the Earthquake fiends are charged To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds When the rocks split and close again behind; ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose waters must descend into their sanctified gullets. We had no wanton desire to wound even their feelings or trample upon their prejudices, but we were out of water, thus early in the day, and were burning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... died among strangers; had been shrouded by hirelings. That any other hand than hers had touched her sacred dead, seemed a profanation; and at the thought of the last rites rendered, the loyal child shivered as though some polluting grasp had been laid upon herself. Out of the envelope rolled a broad hoop of reddish gold, her mother's wedding ring; and in zigzag lines across a sheet of paper was written the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rarely possessed of more than a smattering of education, because their ranks are recruited from a class where education is not in vogue. They are not, as a rule, disgusted with their mode of living—most of them consider it as a means to an end, and in no measure degrading or polluting. Most of them look forward to marriage and a certain state in society as their ultimate lot. Many of these women reside in the most fashionable apartment houses up-town, and successfully conceal their shame from the inquisitive eye of the respectable matron. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... they alone, in the world, without polluting their inviolable race, shedding around them the divine influence of their love, the odoriferous incense of their caresses, the essence of their incomparable body, of their body adorned with every grace, with every elegances of every shape and form; who ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sanctuaries are safe from the profane and polluting feet of the buzzing plague of them. You journey miles away from this spot to the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise. You trudge past seemingly unending, constantly unfolding miles of monuments and mausoleums; you view the storied urns and animated busts ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... men pressing upon each other till often one or another would be pushed against the dead line, shot by the guard, and the body left lying till the next morning; even if it had fallen into the water beyond the line, polluting the scant supply left for the living. But the cry of these perishing ones had gone up into the ears of the merciful Father of us all, and of late a spring of clear water bubbles up in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... of theirs—what, we ask, would this eminent divine advise in such a case? Would he have the people of the northern states go on in their good work, and rejoice in the prospect, not only that these polluting and ruinous establishments would soon cease to exist within all their limits, but that the influence of their overthrow would be fatal to the like establishments in the southern states? To be consistent with himself—with the doctrine in question—he must ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of ours; it is Nature which drives the train as if it were sport. Man guides and directs the water pouring down our hillsides, turning wheels of countless factories. A few ounces of gasoline send the automobile down the street, polluting the air and endangering our lives. The power of Nature is absolutely irresistible and unlimited; and furthermore, she is always working towards some great and ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... frightful; there is also the moral death that is still more appalling in these unhealthy localities. Vice and crime consort with foul living. In these places, demoralization is the normal state. There is an absence of cleanliness, of decency, of decorum; the language used is polluting, and scenes of profligacy are of almost hourly occurrence,—all tending to foster idleness, drunkenness, and vicious abandonment. Imagine such a moral ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... again The smile of thy most holy face, From thine ethereal dwelling-place, Rejoice the wretched, weary race Of discord-breathing men? Too long, O gladness-giving Queen! Thy tarrying in heaven has been; Too long o'er this fair blooming world The flag of blood has been unfurled, Polluting God's pure day; Whilst, as each maddening people reels, War onward drives his scythed wheels, And at his horses' bloody heels Shriek ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... SMITH had given up a lucrative office to follow his political convictions. Such a man could not be viewed by Senators with any other feelings than those of horror and disgust. Let them reflect what would be the effect of polluting this body, as by this bill it was proposed to make it possible to do, with a man so dead to all the common feelings of our nature that he would set up his own conceits against the practice of his fellow-Senators, and the rewards of a grateful country. This settled ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... now, what I never could understand in Europe. I understand how an all polluting power can force into alliance men of strong convictions, but of the most deadly opposite social and political extremes. Such extremes meet in the wish to put an end to a power whom they hate ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... shepherds and vine-dressers no longer rebuked the foul licentiousness which flourished amid the benedictions of Santa Chiesa, provided heretics were exterminated. That gospel which apostles taught, and Rome once received, was no longer heard from the lips of pastors who disdain the polluting touch of hands more able to confer the gifts of Simon Magus than those ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... singular and plural nouns, where the reporter forgets momentarily to which he is referring. In the following sentences note that each of the italicized pronouns violates one or more of these principles, thereby polluting the clearness ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... with God." Rom. ii: 11. Isaiah shows us plainly that the Jew is not the only one to be blessed for keeping the Sabbath. He says "Blessed is the man (are not the Gentiles men) that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it." "Also the sons of the stranger, (who are these if they are not Gentiles?) every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, (does he mean me? yes, every Gentile in the universe, or else he respects persons) ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... In the polluting atmosphere of Philip's reign matters had grown worse. St. Bernard denounced the royal abbey of St. Denis as "a house of Satan, a den of thieves." "The walls of the churches of Christ were resplendent with colour but His poor were naked and left to perish; their stones ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey |
