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Defilement   Listen
noun
Defilement  n.  (Mil.) The protection of the interior walls of a fortification from an enfilading fire, as by covering them, or by a high parapet on the exposed side.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defilement" Quotes from Famous Books



... dropped upon his knees before a carved oak chest of indisputable antiquity. Its panels were delightfully irregular, its angles faultlessly faulty, its one modern defilement a strong lock to the lid. Raffles was smiling as he produced his jimmy. R—r—r—rip went lock or lid in another ten seconds—I was not there to see which. I had wandered back into the bedroom in a paroxysm of excitement and suspense. I must keep busy as well as Raffles, and it was not too soon ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... this gold is impure in the end, it is because it has contracted fresh defilement by coming in contact with other bodies. But this impurity is only superficial, and does not prevent its being used; whereas its former impurity was hidden within it, and, as it were, identified ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... school-slave, rather than a schoolmaster. Only conceive him in blessed weather like this, in his close school, teaching children to write in copy-books, "Evil communication corrupts good manners," or "You cannot touch pitch without defilement," or to spell out of Abedariums, or to read out of Jack Smith, or Sandford and Merton. Only conceive him, I say, drudging in such guise from morning till night, without any rational enjoyment but to beat the children. Would you compare such a dog's life as that with your own—the happiest under ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... and play with it. The voice, human speech, that sacred organ, whose whole worth lies in sincerity, has in all ages been the victim of odious profanations. But in this age it is more than ever attainted. The evil from which it suffers is defilement. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... renewing them. But I must indicate one train of thought which kept passing through my mind with constant recurrence:—Was it fair to let her marry such a man in ignorance? Would she marry him if she knew what I knew of him? Could I speak against my rival?—blacken him even with the truth—the only defilement that can really cling? Could I for my own dignity do so? And was she therefore to be sacrificed in ignorance? Might not some one else do it instead of me? But if I set it agoing, was it not precisely the same thing as ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... 1905.) Thence rose the obligation on virgins to yield to a stranger first. Only then were they permitted to marry a man of their own race. Furthermore, various means were resorted to in order to save the husband from the defilement which might result from that act (see for inst., Reinach, Mythes, cultes, I, p. 118).—The opinion expressed in this note was attacked, almost immediately after its publication, by Frazer (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 50 ff.) who preferred to see in the sacred prostitutions a relic ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... girl drew away from him as from defilement. "I—I hate you!" she cried in a voice ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... if you have occasion to take part in them, let not your attention be relaxed for a moment, lest you slip after all into evil ways. For you may rest assured that be a man ever so pure himself, he cannot escape defilement if his associates ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... hour had been wasted in palaver, that I found they considered themselves slighted, first of all because we had not fired a salvo in their honor, and secondly because we failed to spread mats from the beach to the house, upon which the bride might place her virgin feet without defilement! These were indispensable formalities among the "upper ten;" and the result was that COOMBA could not land ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... drive the nail through quivering flesh or insensate wood. Men are those scowling priests and infuriate Pharisees. Men, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who shout and curse without knowing why. No visible glory shines round that head; yet how, spite of every defilement cast upon him by the vulgar rabble, seems that form to be glorified! What light is that in those eyes! What mournful beauty in that face! What solemn, mysterious sacredness investing the whole form, constraining from us the exclamation, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... emotion. But it is not poetry, not the best words in the best order announcing that the feeling expressed has been experienced with the highest intensity possible to the mind of man. The tenderness for earth and its people and the heroic determination not to watch their defilement in silence, have been deeply significant things to Ruskin, moving him to excellent words. But could they be more strictly experienced, yet more deeply significant, shaping yet more excellent words? Blake ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater

... penetrated the matted thicket and lay in the heat, alone on the soft short grass that grew within the fort. There was a cloud of madness, and confusion of broken dreams that had no meaning or clue but only an indefinable horror and defilement. He had fallen asleep as he gazed at the knotted fantastic boughs of the stunted brake about him, and when he woke he was ashamed, and fled away fearing that "they" would pursue him. He did not know who "they" were, but it seemed as if ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... necessarily belongs, though living in the next street, to the Wady Liwa and to a hostile clan of Badawin whose blades are ever thirsting for the lover's blood and whose malignant tongues aim only at the "defilement of separation." Youth is upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a branch of the Ban-tree which we should call a willow-wand,[FN307] while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane says of these stock ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... at this time, and any cloth or other article which she touches must be washed before it can be touched by anybody else; but woollen cloth, being sacred, is not rendered impure, and she can sleep on a woollen blanket without its thereby becoming a defilement to other persons. When bathing at the end of the period a woman should see no other face but her husband's; but as her husband is usually not present, she wears a ring with a tiny mirror and looks at her own face ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... the loss of everything good and clean and happy. The only reality was this foul creature to whom she was bound, from whom there was no escape, who had but to speak and she must obey, who had the authority to compel obedience. She was sick with horror of the man's nearness. She felt defilement from the avid eyes, which moved over her in wanton lingering from head to foot, and back again. But she had no resource against him. She could only endure for the present, awaiting the return of strength. She could see no ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... up to the excesses of this debasing indulgence, carry about with them, continually, a consciousness of their defilement, and cherish a secret suspicion that others look upon them as debased beings. They feel none of that manly confidence and gallant spirit, and chaste delight in the presence of virtuous females, which stimulate young men to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... God was represented to her under the semblance of a vast sea, with whose limpid waters no defilement however small was allowed to mingle, all such being instantaneously rejected. Overwhelmed at—sight of the disproportion between the purity of the human, soul, and the holiness of the great God with whom she aspires to be united, she ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... began to curse. May the dogs of the city howl at her ugliness! How she did curse! She cursed my father and mother—she cursed their graves—flung dirt upon my brother and sisters, and filth upon the whole generation. She gave me up to Jehanum, and to every species of defilement. It was a dreadful thing to hear that old woman curse. I pulled my turban over my eyes, that she might not recognise me, and lifted up my garment to cover my face, that I might not be defiled with the shower of curses which were thrown at me like mud, and sat there watching till the storm ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... However, he lay with the bride, against his will, and abode that night sore troubled in mind, as he were in the prison of Ed Dilem.[FN260] Hardly had the day dawned when he arose from her and betaking himself to one of the baths, dozed there awhile, after which he made the ablution of defilement[FN261] and washed his clothes. Then he went out to the coffee-house and drank a cup of coffee; after which he returned to his shop and opening the door, sat down, with discomfiture and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... whether that be so or not, if we want an answer to the questions, How can my stained feet be cleansed so as to be fit to tread the crystal pavements? how can my foul garments be so purged as not to be a blot and an eyesore, beside the white, lustrous robes that sweep along them and gather no defilement there? the only answer that I know of is to be found by turning to the final visions of the New Testament, where the spirit of this whole section of our prophet is reproduced. Again, Babylon falls amidst the songs of saints; and then, down upon ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... unanimous in this point; and among the Romans, Greeks Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without defilement, in mind or body. The fathers, from the very disciples of the apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellency of holy virginity, as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution, and a virtue which has ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... is no defilement," interposed Miriam soothingly. "Hast thou not told us how our fathers went to the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Lydia, and the gold of Ind! Yet know, Grey-beard! ye ne'er shall hide him in a tomb. No, not if heaven's own eagle chose to snatch And bear him to the throne supreme for food, Even that pollution should not daunt my heart To yield permission for his funeral. For well know I defilement ne'er can rise From man to God. But, old Tiresias, hear! Even wisest spirits have a shameful fall That fairly speak base words for ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... their clothes and washed themselves. Shortly afterwards we saw them come out and deposit their cast-off funeral garments in a stone receptacle near at hand. Not a thread leaves the garden, lest it should carry defilement into the city. Perfectly new garments are supplied at each funeral. In a fortnight, or, at most, four weeks, the same bearers return, and, with gloved hands and implements resembling tongs, place the dry skeleton ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... common house-fly by "papier Moure," by decoctions of quassia, by various traps, and by the so-called "catch 'em alive," is tried here and there, now and then, by some grocer, confectioner, or housewife angry at the spoliation and defilement caused by these little marauders. But there is no concerted continuous action—which after all would be neither difficult nor expensive—and consequently no marked success. Experiments with a view of finding out new modes of fly-killing are few and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... when the sky was grey with the morning light; it was the pain of my burnt hand that aroused me from my sleep or from my stupor. I rose shaking the ashes from me, and went without the kraal to wash away their defilement. Then I returned, and sat outside the gates of the Emposeni, waiting till the king's women, whom he named his sisters, should come to draw water according to their custom. At last they came, and, sitting with my kaross thrown over my face to hide it, looked for the passing of Baleka. Presently ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... using the power of my hands, for my right hand withered for the length of seven days. Then I knew that what had happened was for the sake of Joseph. I repented and prayed to God to restore my hand and withhold me henceforth from all sorts of defilement, envy, and folly. For two years I gave myself up to fasting and the fear of God, for I perceived that redemption from jealousy could come only through ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... two weep and cease weeping and she asks you if I have taken her clothes, then tell her you have them, and she will be ashamed and shrink from you because she has defiled you; then she will have nothing great enough to recompense you for your defilement, only one thing will be great enough, to get you the high one; then when she asks you what you desire, tell her; then you shall see your brother; we shall both see him, for I see him only once a year; he peeps ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... most sanguine, dared to hope that their eyes should see the salvation of the Lord. Upright men spent their lives in unyielding and indignant protest, not so much for any immediate result as because they could do no otherwise,—because the constant violation of sacred right, the constant defilement and degradation of country, wrought so fiercely and painfully in their hearts that they could not hold their peace. Though they expected no sudden reform, they believed in the indestructibility of truth, and knew, therefore, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... found one soul which was akin to mine, that of a beautiful woman who loved me and whom I had come to love and desire. But what was the end of it? Owing to the necessities of statecraft and her own nobleness, she had been separated from me and although, as it would seem, she had as yet escaped defilement, was spirited away into the temple of some barbarous worship where I was almost ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... an existence as king of a dewa loka, keeping his personality for a hundred million years in the uninterrupted enjoyment of perfect happiness, or of translation into Nirwana, he would spurn the former as defilement, and would with unutterable avidity choose the latter. We must therefore suppose that by Nirwana he understands, not naked destruction, but some mysterious good, too vast for logical comprehension, too obscure to Occidental thought to find expression ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Hebrews, in chap. ix. 13, 14: [Greek: ei gar to haima] [Pg 272] [Greek: tauron kai tragon kai spodos damaleos rhantizousa tous kekoinomenous hagiazei pros ten tes sarkos katharoteta. mallon to haima tou Christou ... kathariei ten suneidesin hemon apo nekron ergon eis to latreuein Theo zonti.] The defilement by dead bodies, against which the water of purification was specially used, is the most significant symbol of sinners and sins.—4. "It is, in general, not probable that the Servant of God, who farther down is described as a sacrificial beast (!),—who, by taking upon Himself the sins of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... the earth; Till I found yon noble woman—in the palace of your son. Like to her of mortal women—is there none, her beauty's peer; In the midst, between her eyebrows—from her birth a lovely mole, Dark was seen, and like a lotus—that hath vanished from my sight, Covered over with defilement—like the moon behind a cloud. This soft mark of perfect beauty—fashioned thus by Brahma's self, As at change the moon's thin crescent—only dim and faintly gleams. Yet her beauty is not faded—clouded o'er with toil and mire Though she be, it shines apparent, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... delightful to Tom sitting there in their leafy concealment, waiting for any other hapless German emissaries who might come, bent on the murderous defilement of that crystal brook, and eating of the rations which Roscoe never failed ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... D., and who died in 202, writing against the Valentinians and certain Gnostics led by Marcus, states explicitly that many of the women who had been led into heresy and impurity, and who afterwards returned to the Church, confessed even publicly, and wept over their defilement. "But others, ashamed to do this, and in some manner secretly despairing within themselves of the ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel

... Aaron to the priesthood (xvi., xvii.). Again the narrative element gives place to legislation regulating the duties, relative position and revenues of the priests and Levites (xviii.) and the manner of purification after defilement (xix.). [Footnote 1: Caleb alone in JE, ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose, The divine property of her first being. Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp Oft seen ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... the word, which means a garden or park and was applied to the abode of our first parents in Eden, could not but call up in the consciousness of the dying man a scene of beauty, innocence and peace, where, washed clean from the defilement of his past errors, he would begin to exist again as a new creature. Even Christians have believed that the utmost that can be expected in the next world by a soul with a history like the robber's is, at least to begin with, to be consigned to the fires of purgatory. But far different ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... in whom it speaks with most authority is to be found amongst the worthiest; and to a youth like Charley the result of actual offence against it might be utter ruin. In his case, however, it was not merely a consciousness of personal defilement which followed; for, whether his companions had so schemed it or not, he supposed ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... one little corner left, Free from the world's defilement; One little corner where not a breath of wrong Shall enter to disturb your slumbering. And I will cherish you there In the nest you will make so pure. I will hold you and guard you safe from the snares of the stony streets. Be at peace, ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... the radiant sisterhood of queenly graces! She can not be crushed to earth. The eternal years of God being hers, she, no more than her author, can go down. Error may fling widely open his arsenal gates of defilement and deceit, and seek so earnestly and tirelessly the usurpation of her throne; but there she sits, as firmly and gracefully as when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. Such is truth, the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... saying, for, with trembling hands, she took it off and threw it to a child. I hoped this meant something definite, and tried to lead her to Jesus. But as soon as she understood Who He was, she drew back. "I cannot be a disciple of your Guru, here," she said; "would my relations bear such defilement?" Being a Christian really meant sooner or later leaving her home and all her people for ever. Can you wonder an old lady of perhaps seventy-five ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... to man his sins, but it provides no remedy. While it promises life to the obedient, it declares that death is the portion of the transgressor. The gospel of Christ alone can free him from the condemnation or the defilement of sin. He must exercise repentance toward God, whose law has been transgressed; and faith in Christ, his atoning sacrifice. Thus he obtains "remission of sins that are past," and becomes a partaker of the divine nature. He is a child of God, having ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... addresses. Some of my women hearers will be shocked to hear me tell of declarations of love of this kind, but when a woman takes the step I did, she must accept such; one cannot play with pitch and escape defilement, and though I loathed the messenger and his words it would have been an incongruity to say so; so when he said I had best take the sunny side of life's boulevard with him, with forced calmness I refused and decidedly. On his taking a reluctant leave, I fell into a death-like ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... gray with some foreign matter held in solution—the brown of selfish sensuality or the gray of morbid melancholy. But when they are free again! when they hurry over rock and weed and sparkling pebble-shallow, then they are clear! Then all the foreign matter, the defilement which earth pours into them, falls to the ground, and into them the trout work up for life and health and food; and through their swift yet yielding eddies—moulding themselves to every accident, yet ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... and mounted in silence. Fatally she recognised the old fellow's description; but—was it possible her lover had brought this man to marry them?—this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their hands? If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy, this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous farce. If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to have ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... And a little doubt dropped into it, "If former days there ever were." For who can tell? This crumbling, ragged business which to us means that we stand before the Past; this gradual perishing of things in neglect and defilement, may very well have formed a necessary part of our ancestors' present. Our own standard and habit of tidiness, decorum, and uniformity may be quite recent developments; barbarism, in the sense of decay and pollution, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... her own; caring nought for the purity of her own blood, so she might stain with incest the man who had cost her her own maidenhood at first! Infamous-hearted woman, who, to punish her defiler, measured out as it were a second defilement to herself, whereas she clearly by the selfsame act rather swelled than lessened the transgression! Surely, by the very act wherewith she thought to reach her revenge, she accumulated guilt; she added ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... want God to use you in His service, you must first be sprinkled, made pure from all defilement of sin. Until this has been done you cannot do one single thing to please God; until you have been cleansed, it is impossible for you ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... at a little place at the eastern extremity of the Shimane promontory where there is a shrine and no cultivation of any sort is allowed "for fear of defilement." Waste products are taken away by boat. I marked a contrast between theoretical and practical holiness. Our inn overlooked a special landing-place where, because a "sacred boat" from the shrine is launched there, a notice ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... valleys, through which the Thames (not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills (which pour into it their tributary rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain of Bandusium, or the wells of Scamander, by which ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... Christ and Satan; but the first would overthrow all else. "Glory!" he cried mechanically aloud. He put down the hairbrush and inspected the razors on their shelf. The bright morning light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, with ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... are," replied the Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns, and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on their beards. The curse of the Shaykaim is on them—may it ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... neighbor's life as we have to defend our own, even to protect his or her innocence and virtue and possessions. A husband may defend the honor of his wife, which is his own, even though the wife be a party to the crime and consent to the defilement; but the right is only to prevent, and ceases on the event of accomplishment, even ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... mind, as, after Liftore's punishment, he lifted the portrait, set it again upon its easel, and went on trying to clean the face of it—with no small promise of success. But as he made progress he grew anxious—lest with the defilement, he should remove some of the colour as well: the painter alone, he concluded at length could be trusted to restore the work he ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... remember, sweet airs out of woods aflame with flowers and murmurous with the sound of pellucid waters. The hemisphere lay waiting to be touched with life,—life from the old centres of living, surely, but cleansed of defilement, and cured of weariness, so as to be fit for the virgin purity of a new bride. The whole thing springs into the imagination like a wonderful vision, an exquisite marvel which once only in all history could ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... face buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... food. The result in Mysie's case would be this—not that she would call evil good and good evil, but that she would take the beautiful for the true and the outer shows of goodness for goodness itself—not the worst result, but bad enough, and involving an awful amount of suffering and possibly of defilement. He who thinks to climb the hill of happiness thus, will find himself floundering in the blackest bog that lies at the foot of its precipices. I say he, not she, advisedly. All will acknowledge it of the woman: it is as true of the man, though he may ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... backs against a post,—some huddled together between sleeping and waking, breathing hard,—all wallowing about; a great boar swaggering round, and a big sow waddling along with her huge paunch. Notwithstanding the unspeakable defilement with which these strange sensualists spice all their food, they seem to have a quick and delicate sense of smell. What ridiculous-looking animals! Swift himself could not have imagined anything nastier than what they practise by the mere impulse of natural genius. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... actual destruction of the battle—for Barcy alone of the towns in sight from here seems to be practically destroyed—which is the most painful, it is the devastation of the German occupation, with its deliberate and filthy defilement of the houses, which defies words, and will leave a blot for all time on the records of the race so vile-minded as to have achieved it. The deliberate ingenuity of the nastiness is its most debasing feature. At Penchard, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... the honour of his, to him, high and noble race, found himself a god-send to the Out-castes, the Untouchables, the Depressed Classes, Mangs, Mahars, and Sudras,—they whose touch, nay the touch of whose very shadow, is defilement! For, at last, they, too, had some one to look down upon, to despise, to insult. After being the recipients-of-contempt as naturally and ordainedly as they were breathers-of-air, they at last could ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... the enemy. His Majesty resolves, that Regenspurg 150 Be purified from the enemy, ere Easter, That Lutheranism may be no longer preached In that cathedral, nor heretical Defilement desecrate the celebration Of that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Lucretia's powers. This perpetual atmosphere of duplicity was positively distasteful. In the free gallop of the horses there was nothing but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this subtle diplomacy Allis detected the touch of defilement which her mother so strongly resented. Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive to depressing influences; at any rate she felt a great weariness of the whole business. Then the spirit of resolve rose in open rebellion against these questionings; almost ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... kept the balance of their ideal. She would have love, not hidden lust. What she had done this once could never be done again without defilement. She had come to him as to a man condemned to die, to leave the earth forever, and the one most precious thing he wanted and the one most precious thing that she had to give,—that she had given freely—to the man ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... 'A fire?'—yes; then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'—yes; then why in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us' is sorely hindered by the weakness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... issue and nine that enter; two yield the draught and one drinks." Said he to her: "Seven are the days of a woman's defilement, and nine the months of pregnancy; two are the breasts that yield the draught, and one the child that drinks it." Whereupon she said to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... and to obey are two very different things. The girl knew that she could unbar the closed door of her heart if she chose. One earnest, sincere prayer would bring the omnipotent aid of the Spirit to cast out the evil things and cleanse the defilement. But she did not want them cast out; she loved them too well. It would be all very well to have Christ's love, pity, forgiveness, and protection, and to be sure of heaven when she died; but to be ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... was interested to watch the bustling, active life of the little creature; his morning toilet when the black velvet coat was attended to, carefully brushed and licked by a tiny red tongue (though it never seemed to pick up dirt or defilement in its passage through the earth) and finally, after a few days, I had the pleasure of setting him free, when he dived into the ground out of ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... poem should appear to any one hardly religious enough for the purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as"the living body is from ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... the village, for no horse nor vehicle is permitted to enter its precincts, lest it should cause defilement of the well-scoured pavements. Shaking the dust off my feet, therefore, I prepared to enter, with due reverence and circumspection, this sanctum sanctorum of Dutch cleanliness. I entered by a narrow street, paved with yellow bricks, laid edgewise, and so clean that one might ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... sacred uses. 2. Purification. A man is sanctified in the first sense when he ceases to do evil, and begins to do well; and he is sanctified in the second sense in proportion as he is freed from inward defilement, from bad passions, bad tempers, bad dispositions, bad tendencies, and filled with love to God, to Christ, to God's people, to mankind at large, and to all things true and good. There is no mystery about sanctification. People are sanctified by God's ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... destroying a living creature, and diminishing human kind; if any one, therefore, proceeds to such fornication or murder, he cannot be clean. Moreover, the law enjoins, that after the man and wife have lain together in a regular way, they shall bathe themselves; for there is a defilement contracted thereby, both in soul and body, as if they had gone into another country; for indeed the soul, by being united to the body, is subject to miseries, and is not freed therefrom again but by death; on which account the law requires this ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... the spot where the Spanish torpedo boat rode at anchor. Then a number of tarpaulins were got up on deck and hung over the ship's sides, fore and aft, covering the hull from the bulwark rail right down to the surface of the water, to protect the white paint from defilement by flying coal dust; and, this having been done, the yacht was taken alongside the coal hulk, and the process of coaling the vessel at once began under the joint supervision of Milsom and the second engineer, the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... a firm believer in the kindly effects of artistic education upon the masses. She held that defilement of mind often arose from ignorance of eye; and her philanthropy being, by the simple force of her situation, of that sort which lingers in the neighbourhood of home, she concentrated her efforts in this kind upon Sol and Dan. Accordingly, the Academy exhibition ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... breaking down the ridges of rice-fields, filling up drains, destroying aqueducts, sowing seeds twice in the same place, putting spits in rice-fields, flaying an animal alive or against the grain, etc. The crimes against the State were cutting and wounding (whether the living or the dead), defilement on account of leprosy or cognate diseases, unnatural offences, evil acts on the part of children towards parents or of parents towards children, etc. Methods of expiating crime were recognized, but, as was the universal ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk covered with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... others, women, hanged by their hair over that mire that flamed up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. And the men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery, were hanging by the feet with their heads in that mire, and they exclaimed in a loud voice: We did not believe that we should come to ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... Paris was the guest of Menel[a]os, when he eloped with his wife, Helen; and Sextus was the guest of Lucretia when he defiled her. (2) The elopement of Helen was the cause of a national war between the Greek cities and the allied cities of Troy; and the defilement of Lucretia was the cause of a national war between Rome and the allied cities under Por'sena. (3) The contest between Greece and Troy terminated in the victory of Greece, the injured party; and the contest between Rome and the supporters of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... wrath. There, however, he was executing a profound pathological study in a serious spirit. If the subject is horrible, we have to blame the composition of human character, or the mischievousness of a human institution. La Religieuse is no continuation of the vein of defilement which began and ended with the story of 1748—a story which is one among so many illustrations of Guizot's saying about the eighteenth century, that it was the most tempting and seductive of all centuries, for it promised full satisfaction at once to all the greatnesses ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... not get away from the mud and defilement of sin in this world. Sin will ever be all about us. Its stench will be in our nostrils from day to day. Our eyes will be offended by it, and our ears will be shocked. But so long as we keep it all on the outside, we can be saints and faithful in Christ Jesus. We are told ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... eager only for a quick retreat! How oft his blushes made my shame the deeper! Why did you turn me from the death I sought? Ah! When his sword was pointed to my bosom, Did he grow pale, or try to snatch it from me? That I had touch'd it was enough for him To render it for ever horrible, Leaving defilement on the ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... his teeth angrily, and thought no more of the defilement which might threaten Bent-Anat from the paraschites, but exclusively, on the contrary, of the impending desecration by the princess of the holy feelings astir in this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... barbarous God who was always ravenous for praise and sacrifice, we could not tolerate the mockery of "Divine Service" by well-fed and respectable Christians in the midst of untaught ignorance, unchecked roguery, unbridled vice, and the degradation and defilement and ruin of weak women and little children. Seven thousand pounds to repair a chapel to the praise and glory of God, and under its very walls you may buy a woman's soul for a ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... the greatest contract I had ever signed, and I placed my liberty, if not my life, at the mercy of your wonderful police system. But those things count for little. I have been forced, Isobel, to leave you very much to yourself. You come of a race who would regard any association with me as defilement. And there is always the chance that you may be able to take your proper position in the world. That is why it has been my duty to keep away from you, why I have been forced to leave to others what I would gladly have done myself. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... traditions the sect of Nikon has lost all claim to the apostolical succession, so that the established clergy constitute no longer a Church, but the synagogue of Satan. All communion with these emissaries of hell is a sin, and ordination by the apostate bishops a defilement. The Oriental patriarchs have shared the heresy of the Russian prelates by agreeing to their anathemas against the ancient rites, and orthodoxy has carried with it in its fall the episcopate, apostolical succession ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped out ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... over twins. Time and again she had to send the girls to bring babes to the Mission House, and many a stirring night she had, she sleeping with them in her bed, whilst outside stealthy forms watched for a chance to free the town from the defilement of their presence. The first that survived was a boy. The husband, angry and sullen, was for murdering it and putting the mother into a hole in the swamp. She faced him with the old flash in her eye, and made him take oath not to hurt or kill the child. He even promised ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... making use of Christ, for taking away the guilt that cleaveth to the soul, through daily transgressions; "for every sin defileth the man," Matt. xv. 20; and the best are said to have their spots, and to need washing, which presupposeth filthiness and defilement, Eph. v. 27. John xiii. 8-10. Hence we are so oft called to this duty of washing and making us clean. Isa. i. 16. Jer. iv. 14. Acts xxii. 16. David prays for this washing, Psal. li. 2-7. And it is Christ's work to wash. 1 Cor. vi. 11. Rev. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... determines the worth or the worthlessness of the gift. God looks not at the gift, but at the hand that brings it. "Your hands are full of blood!" "Your hands are unclean!" The Lord demands "clean hands." He will not have our compliments if there is defilement behind them. Our courtesies are rejected if iniquity attends them. The shining gloss on the linen is an offence if the dirt looks through! Who cares for food if presented by unclean hands? "Be ye clean, ye that bear the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... on the crops of one tiny plot of ground; and if the Saviour was not reborn with the spring, they slowly and miserably died. And all the while they knew almost nothing of the real causes that made crops succeed or fail. They only felt sure it was somehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defilement. It is this state of things that explains the curious cruelty of early agricultural doings, the human sacrifices, the scapegoats, the tearing in pieces of living animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping of the fields in blood. Like most cruelty ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... would be, I suppose, in any one's ideal city. Surely Town, in theory at least, is a place one walks about as one walks about a house and garden, dressed with a certain ceremonious elaboration, safe from mud and the hardship and defilement of foul weather, buying, meeting, dining, studying, carousing, seeing the play. It is the growth in size of the city that has necessitated the growth of this coarser traffic that has made "Town" ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... breathe my last. But for all that, I'll not have road dirt flung on me by no one. For, roadsters varmint though I be, there be things which I do hold brighter nor silver and cleaner nor new opened leaves, and I'll not have defilement throwed upon them. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... play the game!" cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultant darkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the rough ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... doubtless lamentable, and it would be a hundred times more agreeable to see among people who have been made the heirs of so priceless a work of art as the sublime campanile some such feeling about it as would keep it free even from the danger of defilement. A cab-stand is a very ugly and dirty thing, and Giotto's Tower should have nothing in common with such conveniences. But there is more than one way of taking such things, and the sensitive stranger ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... (xv. 24). Most remarkable of all is the direction to obey the scribes and Pharisees (xxiii. 3). On the other hand, there is a rigorous denunciation of the rabbinical additions to the Jewish Law. Mercy is preferable to sacrifice (xii. 7), the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath (xii. 8), moral defilement does not come from a failure to observe ceremonial (xv. 11), the kingdom will be transferred to a more faithful nation (xxi. 43), even the strangers from the east and the west (viii. 11), the Gospel will be for all people (xxiv. 14), and ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... until dismissed by a voice sounding from a network of flowers hard by. Parsifal turns and sees Kundry, now a woman of exquisite loveliness, advancing towards him. She tells him of his dead mother, and drawing him towards her, presses upon his lips the first kiss of love. The touch of defilement wakens him to a sense of human frailty. The wounded Amfortas's cry becomes plain to him. He starts to his feet, throbbing with compassion for a world of sin. No thought of sensual pleasure moves him. He puts Kundry from him, and her endearments move ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... the Senate in opposition to the measure. His speech was five hours in length, and occupied parts of the sessions of two days in its delivery. Mr. Sumner argued that the proposed amendment would introduce "discord and defilement into the Constitution," by admitting that rights could be "denied or abridged on account of race or color," and that by its adoption Congress would prove derelict to its constitutional duty to guarantee ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... please"; the sixth "injures no one, and profits someone in saving his money"; the seventh "injures no one and profits someone in saving him from death"; the eighth "injures no one, and profits someone in saving him from defilement of the body." Therefore it seems that the first division ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... his people enjoyed uninterrupted happiness. In this place was "neither overbearing nor mean-spiritedness, neither stupidity nor violence, neither poverty nor deceit, neither puniness nor deformity, neither huge teeth nor bodies beyond the usual meassure." The inhabitants suffered no defilement from the evil spirit. They dwelt amid odoriferous trees and golden pillars; their cattle were the largest, best, and most beautiful on the earth; they were themselves a tall and beautiful race; their food was ambrosial, and never failed them. No wonder ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... the sailor of St. Malo, and the losing of the gem on the day the ship sailed forth. Of the value of the amethyst the most fabulous stories went abroad, and for a season the good wives of the settlers had but a sorry time of it, cleansing their husbands' garments from a daily defilement of mud. ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... opened I saw the man-eaters lying on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off: they rose up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate guarding his skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: 'I am here once again. Give me six and yoke up.' They zealously then pushed to us with poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said: 'Fetch fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.' The wind is strong on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... by me; and, if it were, its defilement is such that I could not be tempted to give it at length. Laughable and lamentable as the article is in the main, I still thank Hibbard for some portions of it, and especially for that one which substantiates the charge which I have brought against the "respectable men of Fulton." ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen

... twilight fell; night came; and then Madeline rose to sit by the window to let the cool wind blow upon her hot face. She passed through hours of unintelligible shame and impotent rage and futile striving to reason away her defilement. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... They are ceremonies to which the Divinity, they say, attaches some secret virtue, by unseen views, of which we can form no ideas. In baptism, without which no man can be saved, the water sprinkled on the head of the child washes his spiritual soul, and carries away the defilement which is a consequence of the sin committed in the person of Adam, who sinned for all men. By the mysterious virtue of this water, and of some words equally unintelligible, the infant finds itself reconciled to God, as his first father had made him guilty without his ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... despair as when we read, in the words of an eyewitness, that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention—that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building—that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst—that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while no vultures or other ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... do with purity. Nevertheless we speak of its being able to do the work of purity because it in its turn is perfumed by suchness. Determined by suchness ignorance becomes the raison d'etre of all forms of defilement. And this ignorance perfumes suchness and produces sm@rti. This sm@rti in its turn perfumes ignorance. On account of this (reciprocal) perfuming, the truth is misunderstood. On account of its being misunderstood an external world of subjectivity appears. Further, on ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... on Cambronne's surrender the offending fragment of the great literary masterpiece? That chapter is the sublimity of disgust! There never was anyone hurt spiritually or morally by the great French masterpiece of fiction. The man who can say the book is defiling, would draw defilement from the fount of Castaly. The Philadelphia school board has declared itself an aggregation of asses. "Les Miserables" is the greatest poem of divine humanity that this world has known since Shakespeare wrote "Lear." But I suppose "Lear," too, is immoral. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the property of William of Germany, which was about nine miles from the city. If Achilleion had been a French property and German soldiers had paid a visit, what pillage, what defilement, what ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... was personally and inherently an act of mine. It was personally his, and imputatively mine; personally his, because he did it; imputatively mine, because I was then in him. Indeed, the effects of his personal eating is found in my person; to wit, defilement and pravity. The effects also of the imputation of Christ's personal righteousness are truly found in those that are in him by electing love and unfeigned faith, even holy and heavenly dispositions; but a personal act is one thing, and the effects of that another. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the fountain springs of life could mean. By the triumph, she realized what the defeat, the debasement could be. She thought of love as a fountain spring, a spring into which you could not both cast defilement and drink of waters undefiled; as an altar flame fed with incense lighting the darkness; and one could no more offend love with impurity, than cast the dung heap on the altar flame and not expect blastment. She wanted to clap her hands ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience rejected its defilement, struggled fiercely in its shame, rent itself in its repentance and did not for one second permit itself the full enjoyment of vice, was never completely ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed; statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... not be," he answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers—the defilement of common life." ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... firstborn child of Crime! Produc'd before the bloom of Time; Ambition's maiden Sin, in Heaven conceiv'd, And who could have believ'd Defilement could in purity begin, And bright eternal Day be soil'd with Sin? Tell us, sly penetrating Crime, How cam'st thou there, thou fault sublime? How didst thou pass the Adamantine Gate; And into Spirit thy self insinuate? From what dark ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... of dates was significant; it amounted to proof. It meant that Sir Frederick must have long anticipated the catastrophe, and that he had the decency to spare her the last painful details. She would not have to witness the invasion of the Vandals, the overturning of the household gods, and the defilement of their ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... outrage that makes the Frenchman most revengeful is not the murder of his family or the defilement of his women, but the wilful killing of his land and orchards. The land gave birth to all his flesh and blood; when his farm is laid waste wilfully, it is as though the mother of all his generations ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he, 'The images ye have made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... which another is dug, and when the enclosure can conveniently contain no more pits a new one is selected and prepared. None but priests and bearers of the dead may enter, or even look into, these walled cemeteries. The priests, by virtue of their holy office, are preserved from defilement, but the bearers are men set apart for this express purpose, and they are considered so unclean that they may not enter under the roof of any other Parsee or salute him on the street. If in passing a bearer do but touch one's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... in a row on a ridge of the pebbles; and we were sore afraid, yet more for defilement at their hands than for death; for they were evil-looking men exceeding foul of favour. Then said one of them: 'Which of all you maidens is the Hostage of the House ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... Canaan, sobeit they observe the limits of decent moderation, and vex not our souls beyond Christian patience, hoping, moreover, that, seeing our righteous example, they may be converted from their evil ways, and trusting that the Lord will preserve us from defilement. But we hold not ourselves bound to tolerate rioting and drunkenness, which are not convenient, but contrariwise, to restrain them by the sword of the magistrate, if need be. Of both these thou art, unhappily, guilty, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... God, she appears the glory of her sex and the ornament of her country; but from the moment she indulges a guilty passion, her honour is tarnished, her dignity degraded, and her pre-eminence lost; the moral defilement she has contracted is marked by an external deformity, and issues in a degrading separation. Miriam is deeply conscious of her guilt, and confounded at its bitter consequences: she feels that she is a sufferer because she was a sinner; ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... inwardly just, through the cleansing and sanctifying power and Spirit of Christ revealed in the soul; which is commonly called sanctification. But none can come to know Christ to be their sacrifice, that reject him as their sanctifier: the end of his coming being to save his people from the nature and defilement, as well as guilt of sin; and, therefore, those that resist his light and Spirit, make his coming and offering of none effect ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn

... twin birth is accordingly regarded as a visitation from God for some sang, or transgression, committed by some member of the clan. When the twins are of opposite sexes the sang is considered to be extremely serious, the Khasi idea being that defilement has taken place within the womb. The case is treated as one of shong kur, or marriage within the clan, and the bones of the twins cannot be placed in the sepulchre of the clan. There are no special birth ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... alloweth the forgiving of sins after baptism, or immersion in the font a second time. For it is one baptism that we confess, and need is that we keep ourselves with all watchfulness that so we fall not into defilement a second time, but hold fast to the commandments of the Lord. For when he said to the Apostles, 'Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' he did not stop there, but added, 'teaching them to observe ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... it mean the stone-built altar, and the cleft-wood for its fire, That with sacrificial offering shall the soul to God aspire, Purged and pure from sin's defilement, lifting holy hands on high, "Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me, cleave the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... he could detect a breathing; and though scared, he being a Cohen, and the presence of death defilement, yet he stayed, bending over Mephi several minutes, thinking, not ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... becomes a source of future trouble. It is to be observed, however, that in the wet season these trenches cannot be used, and in sandy soil they do not answer. This system, although it is preferable to what formerly prevailed—viz., the surface defilement of the ground all round villages and of the adjacent water courses—is fraught with danger unless subsequent cultivation of the site be strictly enforced, because it would otherwise retain large ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... fate of, say, a brig sailing into the China Sea in all the perfection of order of the British Marine: at, perhaps, Hong Kong, sold to a native firm, she would be refitted under an extravagant flag, and slowly the order would depart until, in a slovenly tangle of rigging and defilement, she'd be seen yawing on ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... chosen among thousands to be the Mother of His beloved Son? If we ourselves, though sinners, can help one another by our prayers, how irresistible must be the intercession of Mary, who never grieved Almighty God by sin, who never tarnished her white robe of innocence by the least defilement, from the first moment of her existence till she was received by triumphant ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... of the young gentlemen who personate heathen damsels; and we only ask, What must have been the effect of representing far fouler characters than Terence's on the minds of uneducated lads of the lower classes? Prynne and others hint at still darker abominations than the mere defilement of the conscience: we shall say nothing of them, but that, from collateral evidence, we believe every word they say; and that when pretty little Cupid's mother, in Jonson's Christmas masque, tells how 'She could have had money enough for him, had she been tempted, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... of the Pacific. The Phoenician settlements on the Mediterranean have not even yet recovered from the moral blight of that religion; and had such a cultus been allowed to spread over all Europe and the world, not even a second Deluge could have cleansed the earth of its defilement. The extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith, and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... opposite causes satisfaction. Thus the soul striving to recover its natural beauty seeks to purify itself, to heal itself, and to reform itself, and to this end it uses fire, because, being like gold, mixed with earth and crude, with a certain rigour it tries to liberate itself from defilement, and this result is obtained when the intellect, the real smith of Jove, puts itself to the work and causes an active exercise of the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... brought up in a city of Galilee which had a character so infamous that no good thing was expected to proceed from it; [21:1] and yet, like a ray of purest light shining into some den of uncleanness, He contracted no defilement from the scenes of pollution which He was obliged to witness. Even in boyhood, He must have uniformly acted with supreme discretion; for though His enemies from time to time gave vent to their malignity in ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... our journey; a long way, but one that did not seem long to us, so engaged were we with our hopes. It was with me thou sawest Jerusalem for the first time; and I remember telling thee as we journeyed by the Jordan seeking a ford that the Essenes looked upon oil as a defilement, and if any one of them be anointed without his approbation it is wiped off, for we think to be sweaty is a good thing, and to be clothed in white garments, and never to change these till they be torn to pieces or ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... afraid, now that they had flown into the light. Hesitatingly they unfurled their fragile, gauzy wings, and floated out into the room, up from the quivering lips. And under the roof they met with their hundreds of sisters, and their defilement fell from them. They became a jubilation, loud and splendid, over some unknown treasure, over the kingdom of happiness, that was close at hand. To Pelle it seemed that the air must be full of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... performed; and by the help of chisels, thin crowbars, and other instruments, it was safely detached. The plaster was then removed from the back down to the priming, and the picture was backed with strong canvas. It was then cleaned from all its defilement, and, on being offered for sale at a good price, was bought by a nobleman, whose name I have not heard, and is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... opens with the impressive prayer, "Father of Heaven, from Thy eternal Throne," sung by the Priest. As the fire ascends from the altar, the sanctuary having been purified of its heathen defilement, the Israelites look upon it as an omen of victory and take courage. A Messenger enters with tidings of Judas's triumph over all their enemies. The Israelitish Maidens and Youths go out to meet him, singing the exultant march chorus, "See the Conquering Hero comes," ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... brave my Wilhelm," he said, "but I am confirmed in my opinion that some of our princely houses have become tainted. The harm that was done when Napoleon smashed his way through Europe has never been undone. The touch of the democracy was defilement, and it does not pass. Do you think our ancestors would have wasted so much time over a ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... sudden drum-like sound, the passing umbrellas, whose varied tints of pink, blue, and orange, like the draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate. Then came the rush and splatter of cabriolets, scattering terror and defilement. The well-mounted English dandy shows his sense by hoisting his parapluie; the French dragoon curls his mustachio at such effeminacy, and braves the liquid bullets in the genuine spirit of Marengo; the old French count picks his elastic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... same table, to abide with him under the same roof. The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted defilement ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... weak and vulgar argument, child. It should not touch a true woman, Grey. Any young girl can find work and honorable place for herself in the world, without the defilement of a false marriage." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the cholera collapse and could probably be saved by stimulants and warmth. This suspended animation is common enough in cholera. Why, the Brahmins have a regular ritual for dealing with cases of recovery on the funeral pyre—purification after defilement by the corpse-washers or something of the sort. These stupid oafs are ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... ever having been kissed. In that granite city, the women were not much given to kissing children, even their own, but if they had been, who of them would have thought of kissing Gibbie! The baker's wife, kind as she always was to him, would have thought it defilement to press her lips to those of the beggar child. And how is any child to thrive without kisses! The first caresses Gibbie ever knew as such, were given him by Mother Nature herself. It was only, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... roused her indignant wrath; she sickened when Braddell touched her child. All her pride of intellect, that had never slept, all her pride of birth, long dormant, woke up to protect the heir of her ambition, the descendant of her race, from the defilement of the father's nurture. Not long after her confinement, she formed a plan for escape; she disappeared from the house with her child. Taking refuge in a cottage, living on the sale of the few jewels she possessed, she was for some ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... struggled to his feet, bent on saving his good blade from the defilement of heathen hands. He grasped Durendala, and the brown marble before him split beneath his mighty blows; but the good sword stood firm, the steel grated but did not break, and Roland lamented aloud that his famous sword must now become ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... weakness in religion! The sense of wrong and right is innate in man; it may be undeveloped, or it may be deadened, but it is instinctive; and a religion which does not know it, or which finds the difference between right and wrong to lie in matters of taboo or ceremonial defilement, cannot speak to one of the deepest needs of the human heart, the need of forgiveness. There is no righteousness, in the ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... they make use of the Aleph, by which we can tell that they are not of the seed of Israel, although they know the law of Moses with the exception of these three letters. They guard themselves from the defilement of the dead, of the bones of the slain, and of graves; and they remove the garments which they have worn before they go to the place of worship, and they bathe and put on fresh clothes. This is their constant practice. On Mount Gerizim are fountains ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... education in more refined, more corrupt, and more enlightened times, but it never had its origin in such feelings.... It is out of the question therefore to suppose that a general prevalence of vice would of itself, without the authority of priests and scriptures, suffice to lead to the defilement of holy temples."(101) ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... performs the service of the Temple in a state of defilement, his brother priests are not required to lead him before the tribunal, but the juniors of the priestly order are to drag him out into the hall and brain him ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... binding to the souls of men, that it was never too late to retract errors, and if, in the first hurry of separation, some remains of popish impurity adhered to a new-born church, it behoved its members to remove the defilement, as soon as a more simple and scriptural view of the subject allowed them to complete the work ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... seems to me nothing else than another compromise of human rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromise in the past." He declared that he was "painfully impressed by the discord and defilement which the amendment would introduce into the Constitution." He quoted the declaration of Madison in the convention of 1787, that it was wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in man. "Of all that has come to us from that historic convention, where Washington sat as President ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... from the indigenous tribes, who have settled in Hindu villages and entered the caste system. These are relegated to the most degrading and menial occupations, and their touch is regarded as conveying defilement like that of the Sudras. [27] The status of the Sudras was not always considered so low, and they were sometimes held to rank above the mixed castes. And in modern times in Bengal Sudra is quite a respectable term applied to certain artisan ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... into the Citadel of Piacenza, Cosimo d'Anguissola might stand at his usual post beside the Duke and might fall with him. Surely justice demanded it!" she cried out. "God's justice, as well as man's. His act in marrying me was a defilement of one of the holiest of sacraments, and for that he should surely be ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... this morning of the day before Christmas, were these Shining Ones, moving to and fro with the crowd, whose faces were loving and serene as the invisible stars, whose robes took no defilement from the spatter and the rush of earth, whose coming and going was still as the falling snow-flakes. They entered houses without ringing door-bells, they passed through apartments without opening doors, and everywhere they were bearing Christ's Christmas presents, and silently ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... are thinking a little about your own disgrace and not only of the bad you have done. Why should you not be ashamed? Why would you have the shame taken off you? Nay; you must humbly consent to bear it. Perhaps your shame is the hand of love washing the defilement from off you. Let us keep our shame, and be made ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... him was not so deeply buried under refuse as in many a better-seeming man. Sickness had awakened in him a sense of requirement—of need also, and loneliness, and dissatisfaction. He grew ashamed of himself and conscious of defilement. Something new began to rise above and condemn the old. There are who would say that the change was merely the mental condition resulting from and corresponding to physical weakness; that repentance, and the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... Blanche of Castille, Philippe the Hardy, and the city fathers all aided the work substantially, and the fabric speedily took on its finished form. Through the later centuries it still preserved its entity, and even during the Revolution its walls escaped destruction and defilement through the devotion ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... of pleasure. For well I knew that Pereira alive was more dangerous to me than all the wild men and beasts in Africa put together. Thrusting back this unworthy sentiment as best I could, I entered the cave alone, for the natives, who dread the defilement of the touch of a corpse, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... scratching up the ground with his feet, and was thereby liable to turn up impurities, by touching which in passing by, a Jew would be ceremonially defiled, and rendered incapable of visiting the Temple to perform his devotions, till after the evening of the day on which the defilement took place], therefore all the four Gospels which all contain, this story, must have been written by Gentiles ignorant of the ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... still half asleep on his iron bedstead which was lifted half-way up the wall and clamped to it with iron, four sluices or metal mouths opened above him at the four corners of the chamber and washed it white of any defilement. Turnbull's solitary soul surged up ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... trembling, and to cause them to meditate and see how naked and helpless the Lord of lords departed from this life. With a terrible voice He cried, to stir up all those who live in wantonness, and who have grown old in their defilement, and send forth a foul savour, like dead dogs, so that at last these miserable men may rise from their lusts and pleasures and sensual delights, and see how the Son of God, who was never strained ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... becomes a second nature, that sets the will free for higher conquests. The habit of purity, which at first may have resulted only from a sleepless watch of the will in directing the thoughts and imagination into safe channels, becomes an instinctive recoil from the least touch of defilement. The habit of unworldly simplicity, which may have had to be induced by deliberate self-denial, becomes a natural disposition which rejects superfluities from ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... through what this white woman had? No! She was the reincarnation of some forgotten goddess. They knew that, and Umballa would soon bring famine and plague and death among them. Whenever they uttered his name they spat to cleanse their mouths of the defilement. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... gay with winding walks and banks Of fruits and flowers; for the southern road Skirted its lawns, on this hand leaf and bloom, On that the suburb-huts where base-borns dwelt Outside the gates, a patient folk and poor, Whose touch for Kshatriya and priest of Brahm Were sore defilement. Yet those, too, were quick With expectation, rising ere the dawn To peer along the road, to climb the trees At far-off trumpet of some elephant, Or stir of temple-drum; and when none came, Busied with lowly chores to please the Prince; Sweeping their door-stones, setting forth ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... Hence it is endowed with life-giving and purifying powers. It is bordered for a full mile by a grand succession of palaces and temples, of bathing ghats and of burning ghats. Here the Hindu, often after long pilgrimage, washes away his defilement and prepares himself to die. When death actually comes, his relatives wash his body in the holy stream. But the bathing ghat only makes ready for the burning ghat. These burning ghats are castle-like edifices, from which the smoke of burning flesh ascends continually. Cremation, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong



Words linked to "Defilement" :   befoulment, dirtiness, defile



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