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Pollute   Listen
verb
Pollute  v. t.  (past & past part. polluted; pres. part. polluting)  
1.
To make foul, impure, or unclean; to defile; to taint; to soil; to desecrate; used of physical or moral defilement. "The land was polluted with blood." "Wickedness... hath polluted the whole earth."
2.
To violate sexually; to debauch; to dishonor.
3.
(Jewish Law) To render ceremonially unclean; to disqualify or unfit for sacred use or service, or for social intercourse. "Neither shall ye pollute the holy things of the children of Israel, lest ye die." "They have polluted themselves with blood."
Synonyms: To defile; soil; contaminate; corrupt; taint; vitiate; debauch; dishonor; ravish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pollute" Quotes from Famous Books



... Cyclops ever-clanging forge Din in thy dells;—permits the dark-red gleams, From umber'd fires on all thy hills, the beams, Solar and pure, to shroud with columns large Of black sulphureous smoke, that spread their veils Like funeral crape upon the sylvan robe Of thy romantic rocks, pollute thy gales, And stain thy glassy floods;—while o'er the globe To spread thy stores metallic, this rude yell Drowns the wild woodland song, and ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... kicks up in heaven to have anybody swim on Sunday. It fills all the wheeling worlds with sadness to see a boy in a boat, and the attention of the recording secretary is called to it. In a voice of thunder they say, "Upset him!" It sought to annihilate pleasure, to pollute the heart by filling it with religious cruelty and gloom, and to change mankind into a vast horde of pious, heartless fiends. One of the most famous Scotch divines said: "The kirk holds that religious toleration is not far from blasphemy." And this same ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... house, and my name shall be here, and I will manifest myself to my people in mercy in this house, Yea, I will appear unto my servants, and speak unto them with mine own voice, if my people will keep my commandments, and do not pollute this holy house, Yea the hearts of thousands and tens of thousands shall greatly rejoice in consequence of the blessings which shall be poured out, and the endowment with which my servants have been ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... made her delicate mouth pronounce such things As would disgust a Wilmot in full blood, Or shock an Atheist roaring o'er his cups[13] O shameful profligate abuse of powers, Indulg'd to you for higher, nobler purposes, Than to pollute the sacred fount of virtue, Which, plac'd by heaven, springs ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... gathered all confusedly together, headed by their chiefs and countenanced by the marabouts, to destroy the Infidels who were come to pollute their country; but, undoubtedly, the major part were excited against us by ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... Church should claim them. And this arrangement suited the good folk who were alarmed at the possibility of hearing the piper in church, for as old Willie Henderson said, "Even though the lad did a great deed, that was no reason why the people of the village should pollute the House ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... of war that any soldier has to bear. She saw her faithful friends fall around her wasted by hunger or decimated by sickness. When all food was exhausted, dead and decomposed bodies were thrown into the castle that they might pollute the air she breathed. Otho with his troops was kept at Aversa; Louis of Anjou, the brother of the King of France whom she had named as her successor when she disinherited her nephew, never appeared to help her, and the Provencal ships ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... tippler's gullet. He felt obliged to keep up his character, taken for the occasion, and he retained the mouth of the bottle at his lips long enough to answer the requirement of the moment; but he did not open them, or permit a drop of the nauseous and fiery liquor to pollute his tongue. It was necessary for him to consider that he was struggling for the salvation of his beloved country to enable him even to go through the form of "taking ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... book, "that all who are not Hindus are outcasts, contact with whom may cause the loss of caste to a Hindu. He should not touch any cooking or water holding utensil belonging to a Hindu, nor disturb Hindus when at their meals; he should not molest cows, nor shoot any sacred animal, and should not pollute holy places by his presence if any objection is made. The most sacred of all animals is the cow, then the serpent, and then the monkey. The eagle is the attendant of Vishnu, the bull of Siva, the goose of Brahma, the elephant of Indra, the tiger of Durga, the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... that are at our disposal; we wish for something on which we can rely, and the only thing on which we can rely is character. Let them say to the representatives of the nation's dignity on the floors of Congress,—Conduct yourselves like men of principle; pollute not these chambers by invectives that would disgrace a dramshop nor by broils that belong to scenes of midnight riot; attend to the business for which we sent you to the national halls, and make us not ashamed of ourselves ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett

... sites, as many as in the previous 12. Now we should clean up 500 more so that our children grow up next to parks, not poison. I urge to pass my proposal to make big polluters live by a simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you should pay to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... ch. x.:—"And let us not pollute ourselves with fornication, as some of them were polluted, and fell in one day to the number of twenty-three thousand." Here is a blunder, for it is written " ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... sweetness, incorrupt; the rest (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour; The world has meddled with them. They have broacht The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows. Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, When they should have no fortune but themselves And the God in them, and be sealed therein. Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, Where only love may drink, and only—alas!— The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, For ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... he from his chamber; With no friends would he converse, Lest the breath of his dishonor Should pollute them with its curse." ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... injury is done? Your prejudices will call it by that name, but it merits it not. I was impelled by a sentiment that does you honor; a sentiment, that would sanctify my deed; but, whatever it be, you are safe. Be this chimera still worshipped; I will do nothing to pollute it." There he stopped. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... of two kindred peoples one of the principal events was the Feast of Virgins, given by Makatah. All young maidens of virtue and good repute were invited to be present; but woe to her who should dare to pollute the sacred feast! If her right to be there were challenged by any it meant a public disgrace. The two arrows and the red stone upon which the virgins took their oath of chastity were especially prepared ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... noble Fauconbridge. Richard,[478] King Henry's son, is light, Wanton, and loves not humble modesty, Which makes me (much contrary to my thoughts) Flatter his humour for my brother's safety, But I protest I'll dwell among the dead, Ere I pollute my sacred nuptial ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... unfortunate man or woman fell beneath his hellish ferocity. Should a fiend be allowed to personate liberty longer? Should a wretch whose very touch scorched and blistered, whose breath was that of the lake of fire, any longer be allowed to pollute France with his presence? These were the questions which presented themselves to the mind of a young country-girl. Who would have thought that the young and beautiful Charlotte Corday would have taken it upon herself to answer these ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... could you find more god-abhorred? Wretch whom no sojourner, no citizen May harbor or address, whom all are bound To harry from their homes. And this same curse Was laid on me, and laid by none but me. Yea with these hands all gory I pollute The bed of him I slew. Say, am I vile? Am I not utterly unclean, a wretch Doomed to be banished, and in banishment Forgo the sight of all my dearest ones, And never tread again my native earth; Or else to wed my mother and slay my sire, Polybus, who ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... feel now that I shall live. Listen, to me, Petrea, and stand by me, for as soon as my feet will carry me I must go away from here. I will not be a burden to this house. Stained and despised by the world, as I am, I will not pollute this sanctuary! Already have I read aversion towards me in Gabriele's look. Oh, my abode here would be a pain to myself! Might my innocent little one only remain in this blessed house. I must away from here! These charms of life; this abundance, they are not for me—they would ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... that she is indifferent to her husband, it foretells that many unhappy circumstances will pollute her pleasures. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... introduced and concluded by Fielding's own denunciation of this, "the blackest sin, which can contaminate the hands, or pollute the soul of man." And from these pages we may learn his own solemnly declared belief in a peculiarly "immediate interposition of the Divine providence" in the detection of this crime; and also his faith in "the fearful ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... our government any longer wink at such monstrous practices as that of children ejecting their dying parents, in their last struggles, from the shelter of their own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... heaven shall bid the swelling billows rage, And point vindictive lightnings at rebellion, Will not the patriot share the traitor's danger? Oh! could thy hand, unaided, free thy country, Nor mingled guilt pollute the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... manger lay; In humble contrast to the throne of light, He left to tread the thorny paths of earth; In undefiled and stainless innocence, Which earth with all her foul iniquities Might never tarnish nor pollute with sin. ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I come! But ere I leave my home forever, let me have the blessing of my mother Rachael. Stand thou beyond the threshold lest thy presence pollute the air." ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... a newly awakened voice of waters,—soft increase of whisper among its sacred stones; and on every crag its forming and fading veil of radiant cloud; temple above temple, of the divine marble that no tool can pollute, nor ruin undermine. And, therefore, beyond this central valley, this great Greek vase of Arcadia, on the "hollow" mountain, Cyllene, or "pregnant" mountain, called also "cold," because there the vapors rest,* and born of the eldest of those stars of spring, that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... rival winds their quarrel try, Contending for the kingdom of the sky, South, east, and west, on airy coursers borne; The whirlwind gathers, and the woods are torn: Then Nereus strikes the deep; the billows rise, And, mix'd with ooze and sand, pollute the skies. The troops we squander'd first again appear From several quarters, and enclose the rear. They first observe, and to the rest betray, Our diff'rent speech; our borrow'd arms survey. Oppress'd with odds, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... shalbe, God willinge, answered in the blast of the second trumpet. For this present, I say, that the erecting of a woman to that honor, is not onely to inuert the ordre, which God hath established: but also it is to defile, pollute and prophane (so farre as in man lieth) the throne and seat of God, whiche he hath sanctified and apointed for man onely[89], in the course of this wretched life, to occupie and possesse as his ministre and lieutenant: secluding from the same all woman, as before ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... incendiary of the fire at the inn. Fortunately, he had changed his room, and escaped being burnt to death, saving, at the same time, Luke Marks. The day was now past, he insisted, for mercy, after last night's deed of horror; and she should no longer pollute ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... the hate, the theft and falsehood, born In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene, Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean, From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies, Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, With the fell poison of a breast impure; Touch boyhood's passions with the breath of flame, From girlhood's instincts steal the blush of shame. So swells, from low to high, from weak to strong, The tragic chorus of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... while I am ignorant of the accusations in that letter. There must be something terrible, some fearful wickedness against me, which you will not tell me, but which, like poison thrown into a well, will pollute each thought of me in your mind, till at length your love of me and your trust will die. Whereas, if I know of what I am accused, I can wrench out this poisonous root with the sword of Truth, for oh! love of mine, I am innocent, save for the sin of ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... experienced by ourselves and our ancestors, through the special interposition of the goddess, they had, nevertheless, the audacity to apply their sacrilegious hands to those hallowed treasures, and pollute themselves, their own families, and your soldiers, with the impious booty. Through whom we implore you, conscript fathers, by your honour, not to perform any thing in Italy or in Africa, until you have expiated their guilty deed, lest they should atone for ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... detestable, with all seuerite to be punished. The [Sidenote: The adul- terer. The harlot.] adulterer and the harlotte, who by brutishe behauiour, leude affection, not godlines leadyng thereto: who by their vnchast behauior, and wanton life doe pollute, and co[n]taminate their bodie, in whom a pure minde ought to be reposed. Who tho- rowe beastly affeccion, are by euill maners transformed to beastes: and as moche as in theim lieth, multipliyng a bru- [Sidenote: The homi- cide.] tishe societie. ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... despatched to Bellerstown to offer this high behest to the poor parson, whose ready compliance was expected, as a matter of course. But he calmly and peremptorily refused the proffered vote, and intimated that he held it derogatory to the sacred nature of his office to pollute himself with such politics, and inconsistent with every principle of honour, morality, and religion, to take an oath, as required by law, that he was possessed of a landed estate, while, in truth, he had no earthly title to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... Wagge—had surely put it there! And, somehow, it touched her—emblem of stifled beauty, emblem of all that the girl had tried to pour out to her that August afternoon in her garden nearly a year ago. Thin Eastern china, good and really beautiful! A wonder they allowed it to pollute this room! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the laws for the treatment of dead bodies. The two determining principles are—1. That a dead body is impure. 2. The elements earth, fire, and water, are absolutely pure and sacred. Bodies are not, therefore, to be buried, or they would pollute the earth; nor are they to be burnt, or they would pollute fire, nor thrown into water of any kind. They must be carried up to a lofty mountain, placed on stones, or iron plates, and exposed to dogs and vultures. Impurity from contact with a dead body, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... scholar!" cried the old man. "None such shall pollute the Church with my will. They are beguiled by such baubles as the holy Saint Gregory denounced, poetarum figmenta sive deliramenta. If your grandson, madame, is to enter the service of God he must renounce these ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... so, swoln Niobe, comparing more Than he presumed, was trophaeed into stone. But are we therefore judged too extreme? Seems it no crime to enter sacred bowers, And hallowed places, with impure aspect, Most lewdly to pollute? Seems it no crime To brave a deity? Let mortals learn To make religion of offending heaven. And not at all to censure powers divine. To men this argument should stand for firm, A goddess did it, therefore it was good: We are not cruel, nor delight in blood.— But what have serious repetitions ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... Protestant who should burn the Pope in effigy before the eyes of thousands of Roman Catholics. I am not a Mussulman; but if I were a judge in India, I should have no scruple about punishing a Christian who should pollute a mosque. Why, then, should I doubt that a Jew, raised by his ability, learning, and integrity to the judicial bench, would deal properly with any person who, in a Christian country, should ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thy licentious tongue pollute mine ear With that foul menace? Tyrant! dread'st thou not Th' all-seeing eye of heav'n, its lifted thunder, And all the red'ning vengeance which it stores For crimes like thine?—Yet know, Zaphira scorns thee. [crosses to R. Though robb'd ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... gross desires, shine like the constellation of thy intellectual powers. As for thee, thy thoughts are pure and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed breath of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness, pollute the sacred flame of thy sky-descended and heaven-bound desires: never did the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene of thy cerulean imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my life, like thine the tenor of my conversation! then should no friend fear ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... at the King, who is pale with remorse]. Surely this is not like my husband; yet who can it be that dares pollute by the pressure of his hand my child, whose amulet should protect him ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... I, 'it was the officers she feared; and at any rate why does that beldam still dare to pollute the island with her presence? And O Cora,' I exclaimed, remembering my grief, 'what matter all these troubles ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... no place in the world for a lazy boy or girl. Nobody wants them. Boys who hate to work are the kind that loaf around poolrooms and pollute the air with vile cigarette smoke and language which bespeaks an empty mind and a ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or Mussulman would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Licorice, fiercely. "Perhaps we might shed tears first. But they must not pollute the sacrifice. Do not the holy Rabbins say that a tear dropped upon a devoted lamb washeth out all the merit ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... place I can only speak in the language of commendation. It is one of the most virtuous cities in the state, according to its population; and from the interest two of the principal organs took in behalf of the anti-gambling cause, I am certain that no filthy sheet can ever pollute ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... sancte, in the Japonian language, signified something too dishonest to be spoken. The Father declared, that the word in Latin had only a pure and pious meaning. Nevertheless, that it might not give scandal, nor pollute the imagination of the Japonians by an equivocal sound, he ordered the new Christians, from thenceforward, to use the word beate instead of it; and to say, Beate Petre, Beate Pauls, in the room of Sancte Petre, Sancte Paule. Concerning the name of God, the Bonzas would also have fastened ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... sneaking, dirty beast that all he can do is to trap and tie up a helpless girl. I don't know yet just what I shall do with you, but I know what I ought to do—I ought to choke the miserable life out of you! You're not fit to live. You soil the earth and pollute the air. But you're of the same treacherous, underhanded, scoundrelly breed as your father, same yellow flesh and blood, same crooked mind and heart, same sort of poisonous snake, and since you get it all ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... heard the sound of that before. Even in the older days there had been some among the ultra-conservative who refused to pollute their ideals by dropping a ballot. But it hadn't mattered much then. Public government had been as dual in its nature as good and evil, sometimes swaying to the side of one party, sometimes the other; but always, such had been traditionary influence, the best man of a party had been ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... were thus destroyed; and now Don Frederic issued peremptory orders that no one, on pain of death, should give lodging or food to any fugitive. He likewise forbade to the dead all that could now be forbidden them—a grave. Three weeks long did these unburied bodies pollute the streets, nor could the few wretched women who still cowered within such houses as had escaped the flames ever wave from their lurking-places without treading upon the festering remains of what had been their husbands, their fathers, or their brethren. Such was the express ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... many Circumstances it is not the Thing, but the Mind that distinguishes us from Jews; they held their Hands from certain Meats, as from unclean Things, that would pollute the Mind; but we, understanding that to the Pure, all Things are pure, yet take away Food from the wanton Flesh, as we do Hay from a pamper'd Horse, that it may be more ready to hearken to the Spirit. We sometimes chastise the immoderate Use of ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... they condescend to interchange with them and the other sects, the civilities of preaching freely and frequently in each other's meeting-houses. In Rhode Island, on the other hand, no sectarian preacher will permit an Unitarian to pollute his desk. In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... popular repute with thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and liberties ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... known that infectious diseases are caused by tainted air. Everything, therefore, which tends to pollute the air, or spread the infection, ought with the utmost care to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... that name any longer. We may say to such as the Prophet spake to their like, to wit, to the rebellious that were in the house of Israel. Goe ye, serve every man his Idols:- If ye will not hearken to the Law and Testament of God, to lead your lives thereafter: but pollute Gods holy name no more with your Gifts, and with your ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... honourable names that perished in their cause—though he cursed "the butcher, Cumberland," and the bloody spirit which commanded the heads of the good and the heroic to be stuck where they would affright the passer-by, and pollute the air—he had no desire to see the splendid fabric of constitutional freedom, which the united genius of all parties had raised, thrown wantonly down. His Jacobitism influenced, not his head, but his heart, and gave a mournful hue to many ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... not go abroad. There are papers in New York that long ago came to perfection of shamelessness, and there is no more power in venom and mud and slime to pollute them. They have dashed their iniquities into the face of everything decent and holy. And their work will be seen in the crime and debauchery and the hell of innumerable victims. Their columns are not long and broad enough to record the tragedies of their horrible undoing of immortal ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... field In panic, proved that not with warring Rome Barbarians may grapple. Then arose Immeasurable carnage: here the sword, There stood the victim, and the victor's arm Wearied of slaughter. Oh, that to thy plains, Pharsalia, might suffice the crimson stream From hosts barbarian, nor other blood Pollute thy fountains' sources! these alone Shall clothe thy pastures with the bones of men! Or if thy fields must run with Roman blood Then spare the nations who in times to ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... angry words; my misery is too deep for irritation, or excitement. I am an Oxford man, sir, a prize man, an Ireland scholar. But, unfortunately for me, my mother left me ten thousand pounds, and a heart. I love a lady whose name I will not pollute by mentioning it in this den of thieves. My father is the well-known banker, bankrupt, and cheat, of Barkington. He has wasted his own money, and now covets his neighbour's and his son's. He had me entrapped ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Pas. Sir, I never Pollute my Productions with Invectives against the Fair. I am to the best of my poor Abilities, their constant Advocate. he, he, he, he. (laughing & ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... fugitives sought refuge in the church, and the Yorkists followed them, striking down their victims in the graveyard, and even within the church-doors. The abbot, taking in his hand the sacred Host, confronted King Edward himself in the porch and forbade him to pollute the house of God with blood, and would not allow him to enter until he had promised mercy to those who had sought refuge inside. This clemency, however, was short-lived, for in the afternoon the young Prince of Wales, Henry VI.'s ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... soil, stain, taint, besmear, contaminate, defile, pollute, spoil, sully, vitiate. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... venerable patriot stand The unshaken pillar of a sinking land. The gladdening prospect let me still pursue, And bring fair Virtue's triumph to the view; 120 Alike to me, by fortune blest or not, From soaring Cobham to the melting Scot.[4] But, lo! a swarm of harpies intervene, To ravage, mangle, and pollute the scene! Gorged with our plunder, yet still gaunt for spoil, Rapacious Gideon fastens on our isle; Insatiate Lascelles, and the fiend Vaneck, Rise on our ruins, and enjoy the wreck; While griping Jasper glories ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... inanim, inanimate, lifeless. inconnu, unknown. inconstance, f., inconstancy, restlessness, fickleness. Inde, Indus (river). Indien, m., Indian. indigne, unworthy, shameful. indompt, wild, untamed, indomitable. invitable, unavoidable. inexorable, inexorable, unmovable. infecter, to pollute. infidle, faithless, infidel, heretic. inflexible, inflexible, unbending. infortun, unhappy, unfortunate. ingnieux, ingenious, skilful. ingrat, ungrateful. injure, f., wrong, insult, injury. innocent, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... means this revel and carouse? Is this a tavern and drinking-house? Are you Christian monks, or heathen devils, To pollute this convent with your revels? Were Peter Damian still upon earth, To be shocked by such ungodly mirth, He would write your names, with pen of gall, In his Book of Gomorrah, one and all! Away, you drunkards! to your cells, And pray till you hear the matin-bells; ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... should have deserved you; and you will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my poverty and misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is in a heart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in mine. Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart, this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it —and will you not dwell in it for ever? Did you not enchant me by the words, 'Now and for ever?' Nunc et semper! And I have written these words of our ritual below your portrait—words ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... they credulously believe the remission of their own sins will be the reward of their transgressions against their neighbour. Would it not be better to be an inhabitant of Soldania in Africa, where never yet form of worship entered, or the name of God resounded, than thus to pollute the land with superstitious castigation—with the enmity ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... hand, villain, nor dare to pollute me with your touch!" exclaimed Emily, shaking off his hand as though ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... from a stream flowing across his own land, has the right to divert such a stream from its natural channel—providing it is not a navigable or floatable stream—but in so doing, he must return it to its own channel for lower riparian owners. The generation of water-power does not pollute the water, nor does it diminish the water in quantity, therefore the farmer is infringing on no other owner's rights in using the ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... Demeter from whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... of the pillage of the monasteries. The well was connected with the miracles of some saint, and the last prior that guarded it was something like a saint himself; certainly he was something very like a martyr. He defied the new owner and dared him to pollute the place, till the noble, in a fury, stabbed him and flung his body into the well, whither, after four hundred years, it has been followed by an heir of the usurper, clad in the same purple and walking the world with ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... lived. He could not find peace in an invisible world of which he did not see any more even a shadow round about him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? He did not believe that. What miserable scruples to torment, blind, and pollute the soul! Pascal has written that there are thousands who sin without regret, who sin with gladness, who feel no warning and no interior desire not to sin. They doubted, hated, loved, acted, felt, and thought just as they pleased. Perhaps they were not ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... colored people! Didn't kill none the horses. (On Sunnyside on Waccamaw) Cheraw Yankee kill horses! (Indeed—YES! It is history in Marlboro, near Cheraw they were killed and thrown in the wells to pollute the water.)" ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are little beholden to them, for they mis-call them worse than one another. Though they never expound the scripture, they handle it much, and pollute the gospel with two things, their conversation and their thumbs. Upon worky-days, they behave themselves at prayers as at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. Their gowns are laced commonly ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... Must thou be a theme for pity? Fight like your first sire, each Roman! Alaric was a gentle foeman, Matched with Bourbon's black banditti. Rouse thee, thou eternal city! Rouse thee! Rather give the torch With thine own hand to thy porch, Than behold such hosts pollute Your worst dwelling ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... led to many persons recording themselves as Sikhs who were formerly content to be regarded as Hindus. It must be remembered that one out of four of the recorded Hindus belongs to impure castes, who even in the Panjab pollute food and water by their touch and are excluded from the larger temples. Since 1901 a considerable number of Chuhras or Sweepers have been converted to ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... ministers— Justice, and Truth, and Mercy, that forever Had hovered around His throne—and thus He spoke; "Shall we make man?" Then stern Justice replied: "Create him not, for he will trample on Thy holy law;" and Truth, too, answering, said, "Create him not, O God! he will pollute Thy sanctuary!" When forth Mercy came, And dropping on her knees, exclaimed: "O God! Create him! I will watch his wandering steps, And tender guide thro' all the darksome paths That he may tread." Then forthwith God made ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... dreaded than Plessis itself, fell like a death toll upon the ear of the young Scotchman. He had heard it described as a place destined to the workings of those secret acts of cruelty with which even Louis shamed to pollute the interior of his own residence. There were in this place of terror dungeons under dungeons, some of them unknown even to the keepers themselves, living graves, to which men were consigned with little hope ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... secure the pre-eminence of their own caste, and to the present day, for instance, in the more remote parts of Southern India, men of the lower castes may be seen retiring hastily from the road at his approach, lest they should pollute the air he breathes by coming within a forbidden ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... the poisons that infect it; that he may preserve the bodies of men from the corrupt influences that surround, and the maladies that afflict them; still more, that he may keep their souls pure from the malignant insinuations which pollute, and the gloomy images that obscure them; that he may restore its serenity to the Word, which false words of men fill with mourning and sadness; that he may satisfy the desires of the angels, who await from ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... invited me to smoke. Of course I declined, and when he insisted I told him that it was contrary to the customs of good society in our country for ladies to use tobacco in any form. He laughed heartily, and said, "Did you suppose I would ask a lady to pollute her fragrant breath and dewy lips with so foul a thing as vile tobacco? Taste and see." He brought his splendid hookah, which I found filled with the "fragrant spices of Araby" perfumed with attar of roses, while a long slender tube rested ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... were enlarged, and a great number of new ones started, will be taken for granted. It should be mentioned that only such factories were erected in Eden Vale or on the upper course of the Dana as would pollute neither the air nor the water; the less cleanly manufactures were located at the east end of the Dana plateau, close upon or even below the waterfall. Later, means were found of preventing any pollution whatever of the water ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... there is here a profitable source of economy. So far as I am aware, no work in this country saves its washings. The water all goes to pollute the nearest river. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... pliable tool of Tammany when well paid for his nasty work. What little conscience—and most men have some stored away—he possessed revolted at his intentions toward Jane Thrush—not that they were entirely dishonorable, but he knew a man with such a past and present as his had no right to pollute the life of any bright, happy, innocent woman. To be troubled with scruples was new to him; he had sent innocent men to death without a tremor, had even seen men and women go to long terms of imprisonment ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould

... the raven on the gallows, and for the courtier in the slime of majesty. We wonder at the wisdom of Providence, which even in the world of spirits maintains its staff of venomous reptiles for the dissemination of poison. (Relapsing into rage.) But such vermin shall not pollute my rose; sooner will I crush it to atoms (seizing the MARSHAL and shaking him roughly), ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... know you have resigned him to me—I know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred, Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... courser's bridle and his feet embraced. "Tell me," said Theseus, "what and whence you are, "And why this funeral pageant you prepare? Is this the welcome of my worthy deeds, To meet my triumph in ill-omened weeds? Or envy you my praise, and would destroy With grief my pleasures, and pollute my joy? Or are you injured, and demand relief? Name your request, and I will ease your grief." The most in years of all the mourning train Began; but swounded first away for pain; Then scarce recovered spoke: "Nor envy we "Thy great ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... reinforced by a bank account. Men who have despoiled the widow of her mite and the orphan of his patrimony are hailed with the acclaim due to conquering heroes. Our most successful books and periodicals would pollute a Parisian sewer or disgrace a Portuguese bagnio. The suffrages of the people are bought and sold like sheep. The national policy is dictated by Dives. Men are sent to Congress whom God intended for the gallows, while those he ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... cost me what it may. I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead ignorance or thoughtlessness. For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... hospital with both legs badly scalded. Around us were a hundred vats of water, boiling furiously; the air was heavy with the fumes of sulphur; and the whole expanse was seamed with cracks and honeycombed with holes from which a noxious vapor crept out to pollute the air. I thought of Dante's walk through hell, and called to mind the burning lake, which he describes, from which the wretched sufferers vainly ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... grasp his hand; and let him enlist their sympathies on behalf of the slave. Let him inspire them with abhorrence of the man-stealer—the slaveholder. No slaveholding American shall ever my cross my door. No slaveholding or slavery-supporting minister shall ever pollute my pulpit. While I have a tongue to speak, or a hand to write, I will, to the utmost of my power, oppose these slaveholding men. We must have Douglass amongst us to aid ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... through thyself only thou canst know God. Through the glass, darkly; but except through the glass, in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the ground;—you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure and at your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... nature, they are all undemonstrable by language (nirabhilapyas'unyata); (6) that there cannot be any knowledge about them except that which is brought about by the long-standing defects of desires which pollute all our vision; (7) that things are also non-existent in the sense that we affirm them to be in a particular place and time in which they are ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... of education thus consists in teaching each one the rights and duties of his caste so that he shall act only exactly within their limits, and not pollute himself by passing beyond them. As the family-state concerns itself with fortifying the natural distinction by a far-reaching and vigorous ceremonial, so the caste-state must do the same with the distinction of class. A painful etiquette ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... cities, they are covered with tiles. The kitchen is situated in the most retired part of the house. In the houses of the Brahmins, the kitchen-door is always barred, to prevent strangers from looking upon their earthen vessels; for if they should happen to see them, their look would pollute them to such a degree that they must be broken to pieces. The hearth is generally placed on the south-west side, which is said to be the side of the god of fire, because they say that this god ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... the kindest mother still, Though always changing in her aspect mild; From her bare bosom let me take my fill, Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child. O she is fairest in her features wild, Where nothing polished dares pollute her path; To me by day or night she ever smiled, Though I have marked her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her most in ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... inheritance from Hindu relations, of whom he had several in rather prosperous circumstances. It also made such a ferment in his own household, where he had a wife and mother-in-law and little son, that he had to leave his home and lodge elsewhere so that he might not "pollute" them, as they would express it, by eating with them. Two years after his own baptism, however, he had the joy of seeing his wife and now two little children, baptized, and the home life was happily resumed. Eventually ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... she said, going into the bath-room, "and you're to—to pollute it with some water and rub it on hard. Here, will I be doing, ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... hand away, as though something loathsome had dared to pollute her; and the bright red fever spot on either cheek deepened into ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... ended his oration, then Apollyon did begin. 'My opinion,' said he, 'concerning this matter, is, that we go on fair and softly, not doing things in a hurry. Let our friends in Mansoul go on still to pollute and defile it, by seeking to draw it yet more into sin (for there is nothing like sin to devour Mansoul). If this be done, and it takes effect, Mansoul, of itself, will leave off to watch, to petition, or anything else that ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... beauty, there is an expression about her face which I never liked; and I fully understand now why I did not like it. Of course, Mrs Stuart, this story is told to you in strict confidence. I would not for the world have dear Mrs Cheney know of it, nor would I pollute sweet Alice with such a tale. Indeed, Alice would not understand it if she were told, for she is as ignorant and innocent as a child in arms of such matters. We have kept her absolutely unspotted from the world. But I knew it was my duty to tell you the whole shameful ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... through the mountain of flesh she was addressing. "I take small comfort in the thought that he had no time to suffer bodily pain. You will suffer—later." Bill gazed at her wonderingly. "Liar!—cheat!—you pollute the earth. You thought to cozen that poor, harmless old man out of his property—out of me. You thought to ruin him as you have ruined others. Your efforts will avail you nothing. From the moment Bill discovered the use of your memorandum pad"—Lablache started—"your ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... of war shall echo thro' our mountains, Till not one hateful link remains Of slavery's lingering chains; Till not one tyrant tread our plains, Nor traitor lip pollute our fountains. No! never till that glorious day Shall Lusitania's sons be gay, Or hear, oh Peace, thy welcome lay Resounding thro' her ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Countess informs him of the outrageous language and conduct of her maid. My Lord not only declares his entire approval of the woman's conduct, but expresses his own abominable doubts of his wife's fidelity in language of such horrible brutality that no lady could pollute her lips by repeating it. "If I had been a man," the Countess says, "and if I had had a weapon in my hand, I would have struck ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... neighboring states, and even on the conduct of our best national allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious consequences. These things I mention as a caution to young printers, and that they may be encouraged not to pollute their presses and disgrace their profession by such infamous practices, but refuse steadily, as they may see by my example that such a course of conduct will not, on the whole, be injurious to ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... may be their personal cleanliness in appearance, their moral impurity, according to all accounts, is most gross and detestable. We shall not pollute our page by the slightest mention of the abominable gratifications in which they are said to indulge, contrary to the most ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... and of fowls, and a variety of fish, cocoanuts, and plantains, and whatever was presented as an offering to the gods; these the females, on pain of death, were forbidden to touch, as it was supposed they would pollute them. The fires at which the men's food was cooked were also sacred, and were forbidden to be used by the females. The baskets in which their provision was kept, and the house in which the men ate, were also sacred, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... say, girl," the Puritan rejoined sharply. "The evil spirit is not extinct, and these growing abominations prove it to be again raising its baleful crest to pollute and destroy. Listen to my words, ye vain and foolish ones!" he continued, advancing to the front of the window, and stretching forth his arms towards the assemblage. "Repent! and amend your ways ere it be too late! Hew down the offensive idol, which you term your ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... rapscallions In London dare to show Their overgrown battalions, Be sure I'll let you know. Should Russians or Norwegians Pollute our favoured clime With rough barbaric legions, I'll mention it in time. So sleep in peace, civilians, The Continent defy; While on its countless millions The Sentry keeps his ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... mode of burial is entirely unique, so far as known, and but from the well-known probity of the relator might well be questioned, especially when it is remembered that in the country spoken of water is quite scarce and Indians are careful not to pollute the streams or springs near which they live. Conjecture seems useless to establish a reason for ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... epizootie, had done its dread work. Annually this plague among the beasts plays havoc with the Nile, its surroundings and inhabitants. As the animals die of the disease, they are either left lying about on the banks to rot, decay, and pollute the air with devastating microbes, or are thrown into the water. It is then the hot sun does its work, and both the atmosphere ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... needed had to be carried from the nearest well and even after the mains had been restored to normal efficiency this practice was continued for fear that the possibly broken sewers might contaminate or pollute the water. No fires nor cooking were permitted in any building until every chimney and flue had been ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... justified by works, and all the land left barren, waiting the time when factories shall pollute its sky, and render miserable the European emigrants, who, flying from their slavery at home, shall have found it waiting for them in their new paradise ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... of corollary: If it has been proved, that the painter, by attending to the invariable and general ideas of nature, produces beauty, he must, by regarding minute particularities and accidental discriminations, deviate from the universal rule, and pollute his canvass with deformity[1]. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... to fire, water was reverenced. Sacrifice was offered to rivers, lakes, and fountains, the victim being brought near to them and then slain, while great care was taken that no drop of their blood should touch the water and pollute it. No refuse was allowed to be cast into a river, nor was it even lawful to wash one's hands in one. Reverence for earth was shown by sacrifice, and by abstention from the usual ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... shall these poor, despised, persecuted creatures have at my hands and on the road. The man that would do otherwise, that would obey this law to the peril of his soul and the loss of his manhood, were he brother, son, or father, shall never pollute my hand with grasp of hideous friendship, nor cast his swarthy shadow ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... takes my boy into his lap without shame, and sits down by me, yes, by ME. He may have killed Frank for what I know—killed our child. Why was he brought in to disgrace our house? Why is he here? Let him go—let him go, I say, to-night, and pollute the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... "Don't pollute the Holy Mother by calling on her," she cried in a cutting voice. "Rather blaspheme her, that she sends you the sooner to hell, where you belong. I shall not shed a single tear for you, I ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... Bartlett!—I hope that no woman who is not quite given up to dishonour, will pollute the sacred word, by affixing ideas to it, that cannot be connected with it. A friend is one of the highest characters that one human creature can shine in to another. There may be love, that though it has no view ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... it not. It cannot injure you. To me it will be worth millions." He wept. Yes, Lucy, this libertine, this man of pleasure and gallantly, wept. I really pitied him from my heart. "I forgive you," said I, "and wish you happy; yet on this condition only, that you never again pollute my ears with the recital of your infamous passion. Yes, infamous I call it; for what softer appellation can be given to such professions from a married man? Harbor not an idea of me, in future, inconsistent with the love and fidelity which you owe your wife; much less presume to mention ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... you, Don Luis," he said, so calmly, as Garcia ceased, that the latter started. "If there be truth in this strange tale, I thank you for imparting it: if it be false—if you have dared pollute my ears with one word that has no foundation, cross not my path again, lest I be tempted to turn and crush you as I would a loathsome reptile, who in very wantonness has ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... own; and they are some of them his father's; and they are some of them the sins of Roving Kate, the Silent Woman. Yes, they are some of them the woman's sins. For when Amos was but an impressionable boy, Kate had supplied him with literature by which she hoped to pollute and ruin him. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... Jabneh or Jamnia, when R. Eleasar ben Asaria was chosen patriarch, and Gamaliel the second, deposed. Here it was decided, not unanimously however, but by a majority of Hillelites, that Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs "pollute the hands," i.e., belong properly to the Hagiographa.(64) This was about 90 A.D.(65) Thus the question of the canonicity of certain books was ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... Macer, who learned of Christ, as he hopes, is at a loss to discern the follower of the lowly Jesus, but takes Felix, the Christian servant, for some Fronto of a Heathen temple! Were the power mine, as the will is, never would I stay for Aurelian, but my own arm should sweep from the places they pollute the worst enemies of the Saviour. Did Jesus die that Felix might flaunt his peacock's feathers in the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... her, and offer up prayers for her prosperity? I myself, who was not born within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, that want may never visit her cottages, vice her palaces, and that the abomination of idolatry may never pollute her temples. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... tear an unhappy wretch? Spare me, now that I am in my grave; forbear to pollute your pious hands. It is from no tree- trunk that the blood comes. Quit this barbarous land with all speed. Know that I am Pol-y-do'rus. Here I was slain by many arrows, which have taken root and grown ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... god, it is the knowledge that in the midst of this breathing world he reigns aloof and alone; and that those who are occupied with his worship know nothing of the pettiness, the strife, the bustle which, pollute and agitate the ordinary inhabitants of earth! What was now to them, as they stood alone in the deep stillness of Nature, everything that had engrossed them before they had met and loved? Even in her, the recollections of guilt ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Pendle; do not pollute young ears with blasphemy. And you the son of a bishop—the curate of a parish! Remember what is to be the portion of mockers, sir. What happened to the men ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... which every Irishman and every man whose soul throbs with a feeling of liberty should do. I, my lords, shall scarcely—I feel I should not at all—mention the name of Massey. I feel I should not pollute my lips with the name of that traitor, whose illegitimacy has been proved here—a man whose name even is not known, and who, I deny point blank, ever wore the star of a colonel in the Confederate army. ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... status. Kind the honoured words, great the gratitude inspired; but is not the summons unseemly. Deign forbearance; add not to the offence of Kiku." In her mind was the last scene with her father Jinnai; the tortured, distorted, suffering body of the condemned bandit. Pollute her body with this man who had thus played with the one to whom she owed life and duty; to the man who had sent the father to the execution ground? She would have used her dagger first on herself, rather than on him. His words did inspire uncertainty. He was the officer in the ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... against using them. They dwell in miserable hovels, distant from cities and villages, and are under no restrictions in regard to food, which last is not a privilege, but a mark of ignominy, as if they were so degraded that nothing could pollute them. The three higher castes are prohibited entirely the use of flesh. The fourth is allowed to use all kinds except beef, but only the lowest caste is allowed every kind of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... weakness of the flesh and the power of temptation. Satan works through the flesh to pollute the spirit. In order to be one with us in our temptation, and perfect Himself as an experimental sympathizer, our mediator must be tempted in all points like as we are, that He may know how we feel under temptation. This demanded that He take upon Himself not the ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... and fortress: in this, I say, The reverent awe its citizens shall own, And fear, awe's kindred, shall restrain from wrong By day, nor less by night, so long as they, The burghers, alter not themselves their laws: But if with drain of filth and tainted soil Clear river thou pollute, no drink thou'lt find. I give my counsel to you, citizens, To reverence and guard well that form of State Which is nor lawless, nor tyrannical, And not to cast all fear from out the city; For what man lives devoid of fear and just? But rightly shrinking, owning awe like this, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... me, thus, pollute Mine eyes, with looking on a wretch like thee, Thou cause of all my ills; I sicken at ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... how one must feel, Shock'd all day long, and sicken'd every meal; Could you behold our kitchen (and to you A scene so shocking must indeed be new), A mind like yours, with true refinement graced, Would let no vulgar scenes pollute your taste: And yet, in truth, from such a polish'd mind All base ideas must resistance find, And sordid pictures from the fancy pass, As the breath startles from the polish'd glass. "Here you enjoy a sweet romantic scene, Without so pleasant, and within so clean; These twining jess'mines, what ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... greater injustice to the owners? And if we set our slaves free, what is to be done with them? Few of them will return to their countries; they know too well the greater hardships they must there be subject to; they will not embrace our holy religion; they will not adopt our manners; our people will not pollute themselves by intermarrying with them. Must we maintain them as beggars in our streets, or suffer our properties to be the prey of their pillage? For men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... gate was called porta, from porta're, to carry. The reason of this part of the ceremony was, that the plough being deemed holy, it was unlawful that any thing unclean should pollute the place which it had touched; but it was obviously necessary that things clean and unclean should pass through the gates of the city. It is remarkable that all the ceremonies here mentioned were imitated from ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... consecrated wilds he shall not be permitted; and any one who meets him may stop him. As to the hunter in waters, he may hunt anywhere except in harbours or sacred streams or marshes or pools, provided only that he do not pollute the water with poisonous juices. And now we may say that all our enactments ...
— Laws • Plato

... lovingly, honestly.... And honest hearts turn from him in disgust; honest faces burn with indignation at his name. 'Be gone! Away with you!' honest young voices scream at him. 'We have no need of you, nor of your work. You pollute our dwelling-places. You know us not and understand us ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... Ellen"—here Ernest's heart hardened a little, and he felt as near an approach to an instinct to turn as one so defenceless could be expected to feel; his father quickly perceived this and continued, "who was turned out of this house in circumstances which I will not pollute your ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... a persevering power To keep thy just commands! We would defile our hearts no more, No more pollute ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... for him in the ante-room. Now that's a man I can't abide. If anybody told me he was the devil, I'd believe him soon enough. A bad 'un, James, or I don't know the breed. An evil man who seems to pollute the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... sweeter. Then in December, when everything else is bound by the frost of winter, the chilly blood of these grapes is allowed to flow forth. It is not insultingly trodden down by the feet, nor is any foul admixture suffered to pollute it; its stream of gem-like clearness is drawn forth from it by a noble provocation. It seems to shed tears of joy, and delights the eye by its beauty as much as the palate by its flavour. Collect this wine as speedily as possible, pay a sufficient price for it, and hand it over to the Cartarii ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... the best and the most advanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from the rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and legalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it among ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... whoso strives with wrong may find Its touch pollute, its darkness blind; And learn, as latent fraud is shown In others' faith, to doubt ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... South approved the murderous methods intended to make it a slave State. A journal published in the pro-slavery interest threatened "to lynch and hang, tar and feather, and drown every white-livered Abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil," and secret societies, organised for the purpose of keeping out Northern immigrants, resolved "that we recognise the institution of slavery as already existing in this territory, and advise slave-holders to introduce their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... villain upon the highway-a disgrace to your color, and a stain upon those who retain you in office. A man who has violated the peace and every principle of honest duty, a man who every day merits the worst criminal punishment, kept in the favor of the municipal department, to pollute its very name. If there is a spark of honesty left in the police department, I will use my influence to stop your conduct. The gallows will be your doom yet. You must not think because you are leagued in the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... charge 'of desiring the safety of the Senate' was no crime but rather a merit; and therefore, in order to darken it by the mixture of some kind of wickedness, they falsely declared that ambition for office had led me to pollute my conscience with sacrilege. But Philosophy had chased from my breast all desire of worldly greatness, and under the eyes of her who had daily instilled into my mind the Pythagorean maxim 'Follow God,' there was no place for ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... be qualified also with a blameless conversation. Their conversation must be as becometh the gospel, otherwise they are not meet for communion with the gospel church. Carnal walking will not suit spiritual temples: for they will greatly pollute and defile them, and stain and obscure their beauty and glory. Therefore they must not be brawlers and contentious persons, covetous and worldly-minded, vain and frothy. They must not be froward and peevish, nor defraud others of their right. Nor must they ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... acknowledged their fault from the pit of their impiety, by granting them opportunity for repentance. But some who had so deeply involved themselves that no remedy could assist them have been subjected to the laws, in accordance with the constitutions of our Christian princes, and lest they should pollute the holy flock by their contagion, have been banished into perpetual exile by the public judges. And all the profane and disgraceful things which are found, as well in their writings as in their secret traditions, we have disclosed and clearly proved to the eyes of Christian laity, that the people ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... God's gracious gift of night. The stars are watchful over them. On Clifton as on Bethlehem The angels, leaning down the sky, Shed peace and gentle dreams. And I — I ride, I blasphemously ride Through all the silent countryside. The engine's shriek, the headlight's glare, Pollute the still nocturnal air. The cottages of Lake View sigh And sleeping, frown as we pass by. Why, even strident Paterson Rests quietly as any nun. Her foolish warring children keep The grateful armistice of sleep. For what tremendous ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer

... God. God spake: "Go forth and say to the watchers of heaven who have sent thee hither to intercede for them: Verily, it is you who ought to plead in behalf of men, not men in behalf of you I Why did ye forsake the high, holy, and eternal heavens, to pollute yourselves with the daughters of men, taking wives unto yourselves, doing like the races of the earth, and begetting giant sons? Giants begotten by flesh and spirits will be called evil spirits on earth, and on the earth will be their dwelling-place. Evil spirits proceed from their bodies, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... God bless you!" she said. "I will try not to breathe on you, for I know what you think." And she sat down meekly on the floor, in a dark corner, not daring to offer any help, lest they should imagine that she would pollute anything she touched. Avice threw her a cake of bread, as she might have done to a dog; and Hester knew that it was a kinder act than she would have received from most ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt

... deceivers, corrupters, and executioners of their people. To what are the almost incredible abominations, familiar as household words to the French court of that day, to be ascribed? To what are the persecutions, perjuries, the massacres that pollute the annals of France during that period, to be attributed? To a false theory. Catharine of Medicis brought into France the practical atheism of Machiavelli's prince—the Bible, as she blasphemously called it, of her class. The maxims which, when confined to the petty courts of Italy, did not undermine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... determined not to be cured. Very well: buy book upon book, shut them safely up, and reap the glory that comes of possession: only, let that be enough; presume not to touch nor read; pollute not with that tongue the poetry and eloquence of the ancients; what harm have they ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... domestic unkindness than we might at first suppose. In thinking of the evils endured by society from malevolent passions of individuals, we are apt to enumerate only the more dreadful instances of crime: but what are the few murders which unhappily pollute the soil of this Christian land—what, we ask, is the suffering they occasion, what their demoralizing tendency—when compared with the daily effusions of ill-humour which sadden, may we not fear, many thousand homes? We believe ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... Fruit which convey Uncleanness" treats of fruits growing out of the earth, which have a stalk and no husk. They can be polluted and can pollute, but may not be compounded with anything that was unclean before. If they have neither stalks nor husks they neither can be polluted nor can they pollute. It also treats of the hair and wool that grows on some fruits, and the ...
— Hebrew Literature

... Neither Assyrians nor Egyptians nor Persians had so ruthlessly swept away religious institutions. Those conquerors were contented with conquest and its political results,—namely, the enslavement and spoliation of the people; they did not pollute the sacred places like the Syrian persecutor. By the rivers of Babylon the Jews had sat down and wept when they remembered Zion, but their sad wailing was over the fact that they were captives in a strange land. Ground down ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... as if in all that I were opening Christ's eye and Christ's ear and Christ's mouth; and let me thrust in nothing on Him as He dwells within me that will make Him ashamed or angry, or that will defile and pollute Him. That thought, O God, I feel that it will often arrest me in time to come in the very act of sin. It will make me start back before I make Christ cruel or false, a wine-bibber, a glutton, or unclean. I feel at this moment as if I shall yet come to ask Him at every ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... the worm of sorrow is secretly gnawing his heart, and preying upon his constitution. Honourable sentiment, struggling with untoward circumstances, is destroying his vitals; not having the courage to pollute his character by a jail-delivery, or to condescend to white-washing, or some low bankrupt trick, to extricate himself from difficulty, in order to stand ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... immortals, nor that a mortal man could make. Truly now will I arm myself; but I very much fear lest, in the meantime, the flies, having entered the gallant son of Menoetius, by his spear-inflicted wounds, create maggots, and pollute the corse, (for life in it is destroyed,) and all the parts of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... every post between the Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs is an instance. An English epitaph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for commemorating the deeds of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places . . . for the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built the high places of Tophet, . . . to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, nor came it into my heart." Here the Lord expressly declares, that instead of having foreordained these deeds, such an idea was never in His heart. There is ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace



Words linked to "Pollute" :   infect, soil, begrime, polluter, colly, pollution



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