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verb
Taint  v. i.  (past & past part. tainted; pres. part. tainting)  To thrust ineffectually with a lance. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books



... places that try men's souls to the extreme, hath always comported himself as a Spanish gentleman should. This may be a lie. But if it is true, his old association with you and yours, and some humor of courage and fidelity and gentleness that I doubt not his mother gave him, have washed out the taint. Will you not reconsider your words? Give the maiden to the man. I am an old soldier, sir, and have done you some service. I would cheerfully stake my life to maintain his honor and his gentleness ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... 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

... I, 'like Great Britain ought to be made to keep such gin-swilling, scurvy, unbecoming mud larks as you at home instead of sending 'em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands. We kicked you out of America once and we ought to put on rubber boots ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... which marriage is right and childbearing may be wrong. There are tendencies to disease, in which, although there may be a long and useful life for the one bearing a family taint, it may be socially wrong to risk carrying on that taint. If all who need to know are agreed, and there is a chance of living many years of real union together, no law should step in to prevent, and no inherited view of the limitation of marriage to those seeking ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious, tending to sour the meat and taint it with their flavor. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... in the least tinctured with bigotry, and nothing that is even alienated from the affections, or her duties in life, is mingled with her devotion. My family, like its female head, has ever been deeply impressed by religion; but it is religion in its most pleasing aspect; religion that has no taint of puritanism, and in which sin and innocent gaiety are never confounded It is the most cheerful family of my acquaintance; and this, I must implicitly believe, solely because, in addition to the bounties it enjoys, under the blessing ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... prove it; moreover, when we find, as is very constantly the case, that the introduction of fresh blood has been of the very greatest use to deer, both by improving their size and appearance, and particularly by being of service in removing the taint of 'rickback,' if not of other diseases, to which deer are sometimes subject when the blood has not been changed, there can, I think, be no doubt but that a judicious cross with a good stock is of the greatest consequence, and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood- lust, thick and hot. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate climes where the warm sun steals away ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... "'Taint no gal's picture," offered the man at the fire. He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick. "That's a charm; some kind of hoodoo business that one o' them ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... half jestingly, half earnestly. "Do not look so grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated so long with ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... drew on a better time, And Statesmen owned the check of public will; And, at the last, light pierced the shadow chill That fouled his honour with the taint ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... Catholic education; that, in fine, he, Dr. Dilman, if Paul consented, would take the younger, Eugene, with him into the city, where his education could be attended to, and where he, at least, might be saved from the influence of the barbarous mannerism and irreligious taint of these country "common schools." His reverence the doctor furthermore added, that Mr. Prying had no objection to the arrangement he proposed, and that he had conquered the repugnance that Mrs. Prying had to the separation of the brothers ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... by successive 'scrutinies or epurations,' from all taint of Girondism, has become a great Authority: what we can call shield-bearer, or bottle-holder, nay call it fugleman, to the purged National Convention itself. The Jacobins Debates are reported in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... First Reader, legs apart, hands in knickerbocker pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder. "What you wanter do," stated the small boy, "is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley. 'Taint much outer my way," condescendingly; "I'll take you there." And meekly ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... her offence Must be of such unnatural degree, That monsters it; or you for vouch'd affection Fall into taint. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... Mehudin in her anger, and at these times the coarsest and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a voice of crystalline purity that might have belonged to some little chorister chanting the Ave Maria. He would even try to assume a hoarse roughness of tone, seek to degrade and taint that exquisite freshness of childhood which made him resemble a bambino on the Madonna's knees. The fish-wives laughed at him till they cried; and he, encouraged, could scarcely say a couple of words without rapping out an oath. But in spite of all this he still remained ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... woman will think the worst Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone No word is more lightly spoken than shame O heaven! of what avail is human effort? She thought that friendship was sweeter than love Taint of the hypocrisy which comes with shame They take fever for strength, and calmness for submission Women and men are in ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... there they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams; Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride. Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear Touched lightly; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... my mind, I am convinced that there is not a grain of bad taste in the matter, and that there is a manly composure and courage in the proceeding deserving of the utmost respect. If Lemon were one of your braggart honest men, he would set a taint of bad taste upon that action as upon everything else he might say or do; but being what he is, I admire him for it greatly, and hold it to be a proof of an exalted nature and a true heart. Your idea of him, is mine. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... whole of that warm summer night. As the hours went by she told me of her home in London and how she first went wrong. She had been a good girl till one day on an excursion she drank some rum or gin, which seemingly revived some dormant taint of heritage; when she went home that night she fell flat at her mother's feet. Her parents, well-to-do shopkeepers, who had forgiven her several times before, turned her out. She became one man's mistress and then another's. She began early, and was scarcely 19 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... sick here;—I would that he had died!—and, trusting to your commendations, and his apparent honesty, I raised him to my favor, and gave him a post, which he has but now most basely betrayed. Fool, that I was, to think he could have served with such a master, and not bring with him the taint of treachery!" ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe; the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always accepted by the people ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... the man that made the play so interesting. A robust, vigorous man of thirty-eight, flaunting and florid as a rather successful Italian can be, there was yet a secret sickness which oppressed him. But it was no taint in the blood, it was rather a kind of debility in the soul. That which he wanted and would have, the sensual excitement, in his soul he did not want it, no, not at all. And yet he must act from his physical desires, his ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... were true, or at least meant to be true, they were full of flattery. Why should this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas Finn and Lady Laura Kennedy had not seen each other for two years, and when they had parted, though they had lived as friends, there had been no signs ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... went away, it was with the persuasion, that though outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... church in Brighton, and putting in open benches in their place. Everyone knew what that meant; everyone knew that a high pew was one of the bulwarks of Protestantism, and that an open bench had upon it the taint of Rome. But Manning hastened to explain: 'My dear friend,' he wrote, 'I did not exchange pews for open benches, but got the pews (the same in number) moved from the nave of the church to the walls of the side aisles, so that the whole church has a regular arrangement of open benches, which (irregularly) ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... my choice, and I shall revenge myself on you, through her, in the way best calculated to pierce your thick British hide. The future Countess of Fairholme should be superior to Caesar's wife in being not only above suspicion, but altogether removed from its taint. I am afraid that it will be my task ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... spectacles few are more beautiful, and in some respects more touching, than a friendship between two boys, unalloyed by any taint of selfishness, indiscriminating in its genuine enthusiasm, delicate in its natural reserve. It is not always because the hearts of men are wiser, purer, or better than the hearts of boys, that "summae puerorum amicitia: saepe cum ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... law, the taint of contraband extends to all property on board belonging to the owners of detected ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... censetur donec in Christo recenseatur," and other passages); but he has speculations about Adam (for the most part developments of hints given in Irenaeus; see the index in Oehler's edition), and he has a new realistic idea as to a physical taint of sin propagated through procreation. Here we have the first beginning of the doctrine of original sin (de testim. 3: "per diabolum homo a primordio circumventus, ut praeceptum dei excederet, et propterea in mortem datus exinde totum genus de suo semine infectum ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... despair when he realised that the cup of happiness might be dashed from his lips at any moment, right up to the last. At such times he was full of passion—desperate and remorseless—and he ground his teeth and clenched his hands in a wild way as though some taint of the old Berserker fury of his ancestors still lingered in his blood. On the Thursday of that week he looked in on Sarah and found her, amid a flood of sunshine, putting finishing touches to her white wedding gown. His own heart was full of gaiety, and the sight of the woman who was so ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by having it printed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing and passing, like the gladness and sorrow of a man's life. How sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay. How humanizing to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city. Each in his own way was solemn and overcome. Arthur was silent, and was, I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... do, save as it may have influenced the former: it is enough for our purpose that he saw and spoke the right, whether he acted it or not. For, whatever his faults and infirmities and shortcomings as a man, it is certain that they did not infect his genius or taint his mind, so as to work it into any deflection from the straight and high path of moral ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... creating an alliance between the Tories and malcontent Whigs for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation, moreover, of the Craftsman—the first official journal of a political party in England—showed his appreciation of the technique of political controversy. Most of it is dead ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... struck a slightly false note in these last remarks. He should not have said "old man." Until this I had thought him merely an amiable person who wished to do a favor. But "old man" came in wrong. It had a hateful taint of his profession; the being too soon with everybody, the celluloid good-fellowship that passes for ivory with nine in ten of the city crowd. But not so with the sons of the sagebrush. They live nearer nature, and ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... prayers is non-repetition; the taint of houses, non-repair; the taint of the body is sloth; the taint of ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... be placed upon a level with great sinners. But the disease is the same—in breaking one commandment, the whole law is violated; and, however in some the moral leprosy does not make such fearful ravages as in others, the slightest taint conveys moral, spiritual, and eternal death. ALL, whether young or old, great or small, must be saved by grace, or fall into perdition. The difference between the taint of sin, and its awfully developed leprosy, is given. Who so ready to fly to the physician as those who feel ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... our reading together Balzac's "Recherche de l'Absolu," your objecting to the character of Madame de Claees, and very justly, a certain meretricious taint which Balzac seldom escapes in his heroines, and which in some degree impaired the impression that character, in many respects beautifully conceived and drawn, would have produced? Well, there is a vein of something similar ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... consistently followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other fate in store for the soma of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without taint to those who ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertain'dst it royally, Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... some extent from the Dutch papers in Cape Colony and the Transvaal, but in a much fuller and more substantial form from the Continental papers, notably the Parisian Press. On the other hand, our own journalists have not been altogether free from this taint. Let us take one or two concrete instances, e.g., violation of the white flag, firing on ambulances, the use of "explosive" bullets, looting. Just after the first reverse at the Tugela, a correspondent wired home that the Boers were "shooting horses and violating all the usages ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... gone out in the stable; the windows of Isla were darkened; there was a faint scent of heather in the night; a fainter taint of peat smoke. The world had grown ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... "Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter—Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him—but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he keep ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Thee, 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

... people would think she was merely strolling a little out of her way to view the ruins of the buildings set on fire by the mob. She did pause to look at these ruins; the air of the neighborhood still had a taint of burnt wood and paper. Presently, when she was sure the street was clear of people of the sort who might talk—she hastily entered the tiny front yard of Victor's house, and was pleased to find herself immediately screened from the street by the ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... standpoints of ancient art. One must rescue Richard's head; it was not that nubbin of a head which goes with the Farnese one. Moreover, it showed wisest balance from base to brow; with the face free of beard and mustache, while the yellow hair owned no taint of curl—altogether an American ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... his father. "'Taint no door open to us or the likes on us. There ain't no open door for the likes of us but the door o' ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... 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

... intelligently interested in all that related to her husband's business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were twelve ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... soft, sandy floor, and—best of all—there was a pool of deliciously cool, sweet water at the far end of it—the first fresh water that we had found. And the air was as clean and sweet as the water; no Zoological Gardens odour, or taint of rotting bones, you understand. We ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... woman here with the new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... blue-jacket who conducted them, 'is the captain's cabin.' 'And is that,' whispered blue-eyes, in the sweetest of voices, 'the captain?' My heart stopped! U. Biquitous the captain of the Thunderer! I felt indignant when blue-jacket replied, with a contemptuous growl—'No, miss, 'taint.' They passed on, but I could not rest. I rose and followed blue-eyes about the ship like a loving dog, at a respectful distance. I tried to find out her name, but failed—her address, but failed again. Then they left, and she ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... that tarnished the fame of Gates and Wilkinson and Burr and Conway? What made their lives, and those of men like them, futile and inefficient compared with other men whose natural gifts were less? It was the taint of dominant selfishness that ran through their careers, now hiding itself, now breaking out in some act of malignity or treachery. Of the common interest they were reckless, provided they might advance their own. Disappointed in that "ever favorite object ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke

... means of cure, we must recognize the necessity of studying the aetiology of insanity, including that damnosa haereditas, which is the cause of causes in so large a number of the cases coming under our treatment. But what induced the ancestral taint? It behoves us to pay more and more attention to those laws of inheritance in general to which Mr. Hutchinson has recently directed attention in his suggestive lectures at the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... creeping up. Her lips were wet; the hair on her neck stood up. Behind her came others. I gave the low growl of a lion— the cry he makes when he is angry at being disturbed. She threw up her head and sniffed the air. Then she growled in her throat, for there was no taint of lion in the air, but the taint of man! Her white eyes found me out where I sat in a low tree, and there was death in them. So I gathered the air in my lungs and shouted. A man's shout is as much ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... bull-necked, and freckled face, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores, that taint the ambient air!" ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... the numerical results: 86 infants with hereditary taint of syphilis have been at the nursery. Of 6 fed exclusively on cow's milk, only 1 survived and the other 5 died. Forty-two were suckled by goats, of which 8 lived, 34 are dead, which is equal to a mortality of 80.9 per cent. Thirty-eight were suckled by an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... then an over-supply of blood of diverse kinds, mingling with air in the veins, having variegated colours and bitter properties, as well as acid and saline qualities, contains all sorts of bile and serum and phlegm. For all things go the wrong way, and having become corrupted, first they taint the blood itself, and then ceasing to give nourishment to the body they are carried along the veins in all directions, no longer preserving the order of their natural courses, but at war with themselves, because they receive no good ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... were disastrous. The whole island was strown with volcanic ashes, which, where they did not smother the grass outright, gave it a poisonous taint. The cattle that ate of it were attacked by a murrain, of which great numbers died. The ice and snow, which had gathered about the mountain for a long period of time, were wholly melted by the heat. Masses of pumice weighing nearly half a ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... cease to be one because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the less wrong because it is uttered by one to whom all spiritual things have become indifferent. Filial affection is a motive which would, if any motive could, remove some of the taint of meanness with which pious lying, like every other kind of lying, tends to infect character. The motive may no doubt ennoble the act, though the act remains in the category of forbidden things. But the motive of these complaisant assents ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... sold. Yes mam I sho was. Jes put up on a platform and auctioned off. Sold right here in Des Arc. Nom taint right. My old mistress [Mrs. Snibley] whoop me till I run off and they took me back when they found out where I lef from. I stayed way ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... the formula of the Church clings even to the mummery of the atheists. Not long ago in Madrid a man and woman who belonged to some fantastic order which rejected religion and law had a child born to them in the course of things, and determined that it should begin life free from the taint of superstition. It should not be christened, it should be named, in the Name of Reason. But they could not break loose from the idea of baptism. They poured a bottle of water on the shivering nape of the poor little neophyte, and its frail life went ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... suggestion of negro blood. Could it be proved, I was free; that taint I could not pardon. [And here, even as the surgeon spoke, I noticed this as the peculiarity of the New England Abolitionist. Theoretically he believed in the equality of the enslaved race, and stood ready to maintain the belief with his life, but practically he held himself entirely aloof ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... of Israel, by the wisdom of Solomon, and by the whole succession of the prophets. Hence the poetry of the Hebrews is radiant throughout with the pure monotheism of the Theocracy. It exhibits God in his infinite perfections, as the Creator and sovereign Ruler of the world, without a single taint of pantheism or polytheism, and that in an age when pantheism and polytheism were the reigning forms of religion without the pale of the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... been devastating the new settlements of the wilderness. Nor could the difference in their aims affect this feeling in the least. To a nature like William Pressley's, anything won by another is something taken from himself. Yet the dislike for Paul Colbert, which thus hardened within him, had no taint of jealousy in the ordinary sense of that term. He did not think of Ruth at all in the matter. It did not occur to him to associate her with this stranger, or with any one but himself. It was in keeping with his character for him to ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... know the real reason," Step Hen declared, indignantly. "If you wasn't so crazy after eating all the time, I guess now you'd be the last one to go down there of your own free will. But that ain't saying we ain't glad of it. 'Taint often we get a chance to harness that appetite of yours to something that pays. Go on down a few more times, Giraffe; we might toddle along under another ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... "prudence and gentleness" he could once turn so many fine periods. He even expressed some anxiety lest doubts should begin to be entertained as to the perfect clemency of the King's character. "Here is so much confiscation and bloodshed going on," said he, "that some taint of cruelty or avarice may chance to bespatter the robe of his Majesty." He also confessed that he had occasionally read in history of greater benignity than was now exercised against the poor Netherlanders. Had the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a taint of mockery, for I cared little what might follow; then, with head erect and the firm tread of defiance, I stalked out of his apartment, along the corridor, down the great staircase, across the courtyard, past the guard,—which, ignorant of my disgrace, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... taint of passion inspired these outbreaks, nor might the most critical student of character have found them blameworthy. Alban Kennedy's rule of life defied scrutiny. His ignorance was often that of a child, his faith that of a trusting woman—and ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... atom to a world! Shall I not, when this momentary separation is past, again meet ALMEIDA to part no more? and shall not a purer flame than burns upon the earth, unite us? Even at this moment, her mind, which not the frauds of sorcery can taint or alienate, is mine: that pleasure which she reserved for me, cannot be taken by force; it is in the consent alone that it subsists; and from the joy that she feels, and from that only, proceeds the joy she ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... understood that he is trustworthy. We may expect to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist principles does not require any violent disturbance ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... brass band," said a young girl in a gingham apron and with brick red hair in long tightly woven braids, who stood close by; "he's a melodeon. I don't see what they sent such a big car for with such a little boy. 'Taint no fit, it ain't." ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... degrade, to drag the mind to a worse than earthly level. The crudity of the warriors, the minute description of the battles, the leper, Hann; even the sensual love-scene of Salammbo and Matho, and the rites of Taint and Moloch. Possibly this is due to the peculiar shortness and crispness of the sentences, and the painstaking attention to details. Nothing is left for the imagination to complete. The slightest turn of the hand, the smallest bit of tapestry and armor,—all, all is ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother—a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal Rougon, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... relationship to any of the agencies or elements in the story, and without a sign of that organic development which is the distinguishing characteristic of Wagner's creative style. Reyer's orchestration is discreet and free from all taint of that instrumental Volapk which is so marked in the Young Italian school. His subject invites the use of Oriental intervals, and he employs them with the discretion which is noticeable in "Ada," but not with Verdi's effectiveness. Some of his devices are admirable, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the world called him a fool; a Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;" a Stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... I s'pose we must call a gentleman 'mister' who speaks so fine an' looks so fine, tho' he be's an Injun—it's mighty easy to settle who hut the bird. That thing's a fifty or tharabouts; Killbar's a ninety. 'Taint hard to tell which has plugged the varmint. We'll soon see;" and, so saying, the hunter stepped off towards the tree on which hung ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... forward modestly and hesitatingly, peering slightly from beneath the upper fold of her SWADESHI cloth. Her eyes glistened like smouldering embers in the shadow of her head piece; we were enamored by a most benevolent and kindly face, a face of realization and understanding, free from the taint of earthly attachment. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... Liberty is sweet and bitter. He is prematurely aged and broken down; the great future that had been before him is now for ever impossible. His still undeveloped scientific theories and discoveries have been anticipated by others. He feels the prison taint upon him; he will not see Lilian until it is removed, and he has become accustomed to the bewilderment ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... "'Taint but a small tramp after all," he said. "And ye'll jest catch the A.M. up train and miss the sojers. Jest hand this yere to the A. & Co.'s agent, and he'll help yer ef she's crowded. Here's luck!" and he took a long pull at the bottle and handed it back—rather ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... most of our expertness in it is in terms of local problems, of partial significances, rather than in the wider tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the ultimate laws of conduct which should govern them. We ought to be troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical situation, with its taint of an almost frantic immediacy. Not only are we not sufficiently dealing with the Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and effect of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our generation. We are tinkering here and patching there, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... together and kept from curdling by stirring steadily in one direction only, over an even heat. The spoon used should be of hard wood, sterling silver or porcelain. Never use tin, aluminum or soft metal—the taste may come off to taint ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... for red ef I dies nex' minnit.' And at et he goes accordin'. Ef he seed the Scarlet Woman about in his part o' the country, he'd lay by an' h'ist her, an' you'd say, 'Well done!' an' I don't say you'd be wrong. But jest you stop an' ax hes motives, an' you'll find 'taint religion. Lor' bless 'ee, sir, a bull's got no more use for religion than a toad for side-pockets. 'Tes obstinacy—that's what 'tes. You tells me a jackass es obstinate. Well, an' that's true in a way; and so's a hog. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 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 ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... trust until it made him head of the Government. And it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from every ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... machinery of such a commission. For the weak and uneducated to be in complete subjection to the stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint, She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.' ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... they struck our scent and all recoiled as though we were among them. They scattered in alarm, rushed south again, then, gathered in solid body, came on as before, again to spring back and scatter as they caught the taint of man. After much and various running, scattering, and massing, they once more charged the fearsome odour and went right through it. Now they passed at 500 yards and gave the chance for a far ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... ceremony was soon over, and as the Separatists denied themselves the privilege of a religious service lest some taint of Papistry might lurk therein, Elder Brewster closed his magisterial office with a prayer in which Isaac and Rebecca were not forgotten, and about which hung a curious flavor of the Church of England service so ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... students' lodgings, on the second floor of a house in Quartier Latin. The occupant of the room below, Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel-copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? For neither ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... money of Louis XI., of whom they spoke with great distrust and antipathy; others insisted upon the importance of being supported by the King of France in their quarrels with the Duke of Burgundy, and scornfully repudiated the fear that the influence and money of Louis would bring a taint upon the independence and the good morals of their country. The latter opinion carried the day; and, on the 2d of October, 1474, conformably with a treaty concluded, on the 10th of the previous January, between the King of France and the league of Swiss cantons, the canton ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... as physicians. What would it have cost me, save a moment's trouble, so to have drugged that balm, as should have made your arm rot to the shoulder joint, and your life blood curdle in your veins to a corrupted jelly? What is there that prevented me to use means yet more subtle, and to taint your room with essences, before which the light of life twinkles more and more dimly, till it expires, like a torch amidst the foul vapours of some subterranean dungeon? You little estimate my power, if you know not that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... not I marry an honest man?" said the of lady, shaking her head sadly. "Henry Esmond was noble and good, and perhaps might have made me so. But no, no—we have all got the taint in us—all! You don't mean to sacrifice this ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Edith, emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of Bohemia out ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... 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

... a painter an unduly favorable estimate was taken during his life, and since his death his reputation has suffered an undue depreciation. Much that he did partook of the false and bad style which, from the deeper source of degraded morality, spread a taint over all matters of art and taste, under the vicious influence of the "first gentleman of Europe," whose own artistic preferences bore witness, quite as much as the more serious events of his life, how little he deserved the name. Hideous Chinese pagoda pavilions, with grotesque and monstrous ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... stepping up to me, lifted my hat with one hand, and laid the other upon my head. I understood very well what his movements meant. He was looking for outward evidences of negro blood. So far as my complexion went a suspicion of African taint might very well have been entertained. I had been assisting my father in harvesting his wheat crop, and my face and hands had a heavy coating of tan, but my hair was straight and stiff. I could see that the old gentleman was ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... the bitter experiences of her childhood? Had the cruelty which tortured her during the years when the soul is being fashioned left upon her no brand of slavish vice, nor the baseness of those early associations affected her with any irremovable taint? As far as human observation could probe her, Jane Snowdon had no spot of uncleanness in her being; she had been rescued while it was yet time, and the subsequent period of fostering had enabled features of her character, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... innocently direct reading and study to a certain extent. Even in these cases, however, we are bound to improve ourselves morally as well as intellectually, by seeking truth and rejecting falsehood, and by watching against the taint which inheres in almost all human productions. What avails intellectual without moral power? How little does it avail us to study the outward world, if its greatness inspire no reverence of its Author, if its beneficence awaken no kindred love towards our fellow-creatures! How little does it avail ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... the dread, unmitigated pest Man after man, and day succeeding day, With taint voracious; like the herds they fell Of bellowing beeves, or flocks of timorous sheep: On funeral, funeral hence forever piled. E'en he who fled the afflicted, urged by love Of life too fond, and trembling for his fate, Repented soon severely, and himself Sunk in his guilty ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... sometimes, breaks from Satan's mouth; for there are thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass, however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain to a pious ear. The language ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... for though the good seed in them is altogether divine, yet, there being no blessing in the springing thereof, it brings forth wild grapes in the end. And yet these wild grapes are well discernible, like the deadly gourds of Gilgal. There is in all works of such men a taint and stain, and jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in proportion to the moral deficiency, of which the best proof and measure is to be found in their treatment of the human form, (since in landscape ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... with her aunts until a few months before her father's death. I expect Eustace felt more embarrassed than grateful when she came to take care of him, but, to do him justice, he would see that none of the taint of his surroundings rested on the girl. He did wrong, but I think he paid for it, and it is better ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... the First Reader, legs apart, hands in knickerbocker pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder. "What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley. 'Taint much outer my way, I'll take you there." And meekly they followed ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... "Oh, 'taint bein' poor I mind," laughed Willie, now quite himself again. "It's knowin' nothin' an' bein' nothin' that discourages me. If I'd only had the chance to learn somethin' when I was a youngster I wouldn't have to be goin' it blind now like I do. There's times, Celestina," ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... to the highest pitch, and party-feeling, both for and against, had always, of course, been rife here; but to-day they were manifest in an acuter form—hatred had added its taint and lent virulence to every emotion. The heathen were oppressed and angered, their rights abridged and defied; they saw the Christians triumphant at every point, and hatred is a protean monster which rages most fiercely and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... departed that evening for the Continent. Next day, Dr. Mosgrave, a mental specialist, arrived from London. He was fully informed of the history of Lady Audley, examined her, and finally reported to Robert: "The lady is not mad, but she has a hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. She is dangerous." He gave Robert a letter addressed to Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse, Belgium, who, he said, was the proprietor ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... himself at my feet in acceptance of the relationship and did me reverence. When he rose his eyes were full of tears ... O little brother mine! I am fast going to my death—let me take all your sin away with me. May no taint from ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... of wind outside, but the Dulcibella had begun to move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some taint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... strain, for his constitution was not strong. During one long, anxious year there had been fear of lung trouble, and mental agitation of any kind told quickly upon him. Margot's thoughts flew longingly to the northern glen where the wind blew fresh and cool over the heather, with never a taint of smoke and grime to mar its God- given purity. All that would be medicine indeed, after the year's confinement in the murky city! Ron would lift up his head again, like a plant refreshed with dew; body and mind alike would then expand ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... not know when the mustang suddenly stopped short as if in doubt, and stood with ears pointed forward sniffing at the stones beneath its hoofs, wrested them to the right and again to the left, as if there was some taint in the air. Then the doubt increased, and it bore to the right, stopped, bore to the left again, sniffed more loudly, lowered its head and sniffed again, uttered a low sigh, and resumed its steady walk, on and on, for how long Chris never knew, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... elevation or degradation, from the virtues or vices of previous states of being. The consequences of actions in a former birth are called vipaka; they may be either good or bad, but are rarely unmixed with evil taint. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... in the face of the King of the celestials he stood alone, holding the duty of protection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven. And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification, and that the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh, but men say, Shri Krishna counselled the telling of a lie! My brothers, can you not see beneath the illusion? What is there in this world that the Supreme does not do? There is no life but His, no Self ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant

... people, unless those schools are patronized; patronized, not by a few persons, not by one half, or three fourths even of a community, but by the whole community. As was said in a former chapter, there is no safety but in the education of the masses. A few vile persons will taint and infect a whole neighborhood. In the graphic language of the Scriptures, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... which Boris raised himself to the throne, after he had destroyed the last representatives of the direct line of Rurik, which, in all the vicissitudes of Russian fortune, had hitherto held the chief place in the nation—the taint of guilt which poisoned and polluted a mind otherwise powerful, and not without some virtues, and made him at length a suspicious and cruel tyrant, who, having alienated the good-will of the nation, was unable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... were more deplorably bespattered, and more, much more intimately tainted. But, by the very closeness of their family attachment, the mud of Violet's plungings would adhere largely to the Randalls, too. The taint would hang for years around him, John Randall, in his shop. He had hardly entered his sister's room before he had calculated about how long it would be before the scandal spread through Wandsworth ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... commonwealth then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, a pestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off, or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back upon themselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... standard. But all men in public life who desire to attain the highest and most unassailable position analyze the character of Washington and ponder over it deeply. There never was a man so free from taint, there never was such complete mental poise, there never was such cold, rarified, unerring judgment. The man seems to us—who live in a turbulent day when the effort to be and to remain high-minded makes the brain ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... and innocent 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

... incredulous silence a moment longer, and then hurried back to the living room, as though some of his horrible guilt would taint them, too, if they looked too long. Morty stayed behind long enough to give Lou a quizzical, annoyed glance. Then he also went into the living room, leaving only Emerald ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut

... the visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... water, that will clean you? Wash and be clean! Ah, my brother! Naaman's cleansing was only a test of his obedience, and a token that it was God who cleansed him. There was no power in Jordan's waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our cleansing is in that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take away all sin, and to make the foulest amongst us ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... soothingly. "If, for example, I were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be the wiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint." ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Barsetshire; and people conversant with Barsetshire doings declare that they can already decipher some difference of feeling, some division of interests. The eastern moiety of the county is more purely Conservative than the western; there is, or was, a taint of Peelism in the latter; and then, too, the residence of two such great Whig magnates as the Duke of Omnium and the Earl de Courcy in that locality in some degree overshadows and renders less influential the ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... very likely. I had a young man's differences with my cousin, as lads will fall out, but there was the making of a fine fellow in him. But it was the wife, bringing in that Greek taint, worse even than the Italian, so that there's no believing a word out ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... easily acted upon by the lactic acid of the sour milk, and is, therefore, objectionable. It is a matter of great importance that the dairy should not be situated near a pig-stye, sewer, or water-closet, the effluvia from which would be likely to taint the milk. It is surprising how small a quantity of putrescent matter is sufficient to taint a whole churn of milk; and as it has been demonstrated that the almost inappreciable emanations from a cesspool are capable of conferring a bad ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... or me. She, poor creature, offends herself, and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that make for such degradation. We are conniving with her to barter her birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than that of true love, and when we regard virtue as ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... This is not always a willful breach of duty on the part of the father, but usually comes from ignorance as to how to broach this subject to the boy. A great many growing lives would be saved from moral taint and become a blessing instead of a curse if the father discharged his whole duty to his growing son, by putting at his disposal the knowledge which is necessary to an understanding of the functions of the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... narrative. What was of more significance, no one had clearly defined the conception of legend. Strauss was sure that in the application of this notion to certain portions of the Scripture no irreverence was shown. No moral taint was involved. Nothing which could detract from the reverence in which we hold the Scripture was implied. Rather, in his view, the history of Jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at least, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... origin he gave each mortal wight may claim. Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line? If ye behold your being's source, and God's supreme design, None is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin And cherished vice he ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... scepticism of Mr. Hepworth Dixon in the copious compilation styled by him a History of the Tower, though it is not requisite to adopt his amusing surmise that a document allowed to repose in the dark till the present age was fabricated to taint the credit of Ralegh as a virtuous husband. Probably the epistle was innocently concocted as a literary exercise by an admirer, who wished to explain or apologise for his temporary loss ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... the garden. Her mind was so full that she did not as usual observe every twig, almost every leaf, as she passed. Nor, now that she was alone, was that religious bias, which had so much to do with her daily life, very strong within her. There was no taint of hypocrisy in her character; but yet, with the force of human disappointment heavy upon her, her heart was now hot with human anger, and mutinous with human resolves. She had proposed to herself to revenge herself upon the men of her husband's family,—upon the men who ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... itself clean. This excellent intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It is slushy and greasy, as if it were twin brother of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... [Footnote: Herbert Croly, Lincoln as more than an American in his "Promise of American Life," pp. 89-99.] has observed, had no "embarrassing effects," because he shared so completely and genuinely the amusements and occupations of his neighborhood. No "taint of bookishness" disturbed the local fellowships which gave him opportunity to express in "familiar and dramatic form" of story and illustration his more substantial philosophy and so find for it the perfect speech. His neighbors called him by homely, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... Defence of Justification by Faith, an answer to what Bunyan calls "the brutish and beastly latitudinarianism" of Edward Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the taint of Pelagianism. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... 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 warms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... struck chill on Hal's memory. He stared at the sinister oblong of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing to apprehend the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the last degree of actual crime in each case by the good taste of the author, feeling that such chapters had better not be written voluntarily in fiction, or perchance by his love for his proud maidens, whom he cannot taint with degradation in act, even if the sin upon their souls be wellnigh as black in the eyes of a strict judge, arbiter alike of the seen and the unseen. Such are hardly the conceptions wherewith the brain of a cultivated woman would teem. It were too glaring treason to her sex ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... long pipe that runs by the bone should be taken out, as it is apt to taint; as also the kernels of beef. Do not purchase joints bruised by the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... and hearing through the senses, to the Being in whom all things are and have life! Ere two years old, she, whose dream is now with us, all over the small silvan world, that beheld the revelation, how evanescent! of her pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of sin—inherited from those who disobeyed in Paradise—seemed from her fair clay to have been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. So pious people almost believed, looking on her so unlike all other children, in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... humble shepherdess, Germaine Cousin, and some poor and obscure monks who were hanged by heretics three hundred years ago, in a small town of Holland. Yet was not Paris distinguished only by material glories, nor was Rome altogether free from the taint of modern worldliness. There were those in the latter city who, in the midst of an atmosphere of pious thought, plotted deeds of diabolic wickedness, whilst Paris, which honored the arts, was not without sympathy at Rome, and her prelates, the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... here!" she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with the usual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. There was a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when driven forth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection,—the family room of an old Dutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were cheap,—thick walls; ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... chaps round here has gone," he said, "an' I don't like staying be'ind. Seems as though you were hanging back like. 'Taint that I shouldn't like to go; but it's this way ... (Hullo, I got my hand on a wasp that time) ... There's such a lot o' women-folk dependent on me. There's my wife and there's my mother down the village and my aunt; and not a man ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... handsome stranger that boarded last summer with Miss Plimpkins. I noticed him at church Sunday. Come down to make a little visit and bring Miss Plimpkins a nice present ag'in, I guess. He is mighty grateful to her for taking such good care of him while he was sick. A uncommon handsome man. But 'taint a bit likely he'll think of a baby like you. He is a man old enough to know better—near forty, likely. He was monstrous polite to me; always finding the hymns, and passing his book to me. And I noticed Sunday he looked amazing pleasing at me. Land! it's ten o'clock. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... got her, Jack—remember that; won't you? If I hadn't I'd been burning the midnight oil yet, I reckon. 'Taint safe to make me a present of a puzzle, because I'm just dead sure to nearly split my poor weak brain trying to figger it out. And Jack, I'll never be happy till I know what was in those boxes; and why did that sly little professor ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... 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 of impulse, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... facts about this church of Santa Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these frescoes—now, unhappily, ruined by restoration—is untroubled by the snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more pathetic, beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... its charms were imperative, partly because of remoteness from the taint of man-trodden land, mainly because, by right of discovery, it was joyfully mine. Could anything be more desirable than such a blending of jungle-clad mountains, verdurous hills, sheltered valleys, orange-tinted beaches, with the shadows of white ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... you have nothing whatever to fear. Clemency is her mother's living and breathing image as far as looks go, and as far as I can judge in the innermost workings of her mind. I have not seen in her the slightest taint from her evil father, though God knows I have watched for it with horror as the years have passed. After she was born I smuggled her away by night, and gave out word that the child had died at the same time with the mother. There was a private funeral, and the casket was closed. I ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... existing between Church and state upon the island. For instance, the Church recognizes the unity of all races and even permits marriage between all, but here steps in the civil law of Cuba and prohibits marriage between white persons and those having any taint of negro blood. In consequence of this,—nature always asserting herself regardless of conventionalities,—a quasi family arrangement often exists between white men and mulatto or quadroon women, whereby the children are recognized as legitimate. But should either party come under ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... better come up with me to the mountain—away, clean away, from the trail and taint of men. You cant' think what that means for me. ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen

... waited on their efforts. In truth, Mr Brooke belongs not to the present generation. His energy, his perseverance, which nothing can subdue, his courage which no dangers can appal, his simplicity which no possession of power and authority can taint, his integrity and honest mind, all belong to a more masculine and primitive age, and constitute a rare exception for our respect and gratitude in this. We take the earliest opportunity afforded us to pay our humble tribute to worth that cannot be questioned, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... habitually defective respiration, or the breathing of an atmosphere containing too little oxygen, which practically amounts to the same thing, has a very powerful tendency in the same direction, in persons who are apparently as free from scrofulous taint as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... begin shrewdly to suspect the young man of a terrible taint—poetry; with which idle disease, if he be infected, there is no hope of him in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. He made a god of him. This was the attitude of mind ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... quickly remember what this means, or else there may seem to be no following for us, only a wistful gazing where we cannot go. It does not mean simply this, that through His peculiar birthright there was freedom from all taint of sin. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... white meat, is quick to taint, and never should be kept long before cooking. If you have the slightest doubt about pork, it is best to reject it, for unlike other meat which may be quite wholesome and usable, though not of precisely prime quality, ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... to look for some other translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment were not appreciated in Trevisa's days, and I believe ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... master he growled and contracted the muscles of his lips, as if half disposed to threaten with the remnants of his teeth. The younger dog, who was resting after the chase of the morning, also made some signs that his nose detected a taint in the air, and then the two resumed their slumbers, as ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Taint" :   cloud, dust contamination, disinfect, impureness, contamination, foul, defile, pollute, mar, corrupt



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