Tainted Quotes - Page 3

• I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Reflection, Self, Dwelling

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2015). “Annotated Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus with English Grammar Exercises: by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.29, Powell Publications, LLC

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• As I watched Bill, waiting with apparent calm for death to come to him, I had a flash of him as I'd known him: the first vampire I'd ever met, the first man I'd ever gone to bed with, the first suitor I'd ever loved. Everything that followed had tainted those memories, but for one moment I saw him clearly, and I loved him again.

  Charlaine Harris

  Memories, Men, Waiting

  Charlaine Harris (2009). “Dead and Gone: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.178, Penguin

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• One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love. But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Expression, Looks, Too Much

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)”, p.1079, Delphi Classics

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• In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

  Howard Zinn

  Running, Long, Culture

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.10, Routledge

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• I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! There is a magic made by melody: A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, And floats forever in a moon-green pool, Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Dream, Song, Fall

  Elizabeth Bishop (2008). “Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters”

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• Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine.

  Janet Evanovich

  Country, Air, Cake

  Janet Evanovich (1999). “Three To Get Deadly: A Stephanie Plum Novel”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• You can't eat tomatoes because they're tainted with deadly salmonella. First there was tainted lettuce. Now, tainted tomatoes. Who would have thought that the healthiest part of a B.L.T. would be the bacon?

  David Letterman

  Would Be, Tomatoes, Firsts

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• You and I are, by birth, by nature, and by choice, inwardly depraved, which is to say that we are entirely corrupt. That's not to say that we have no good in us; we do. However, anything good in us has been tainted with evil. It touches everything. Without the redeeming power of Christ we cannot halt our own moral slide.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Evil, Choices, Slides

  Charles R. Swindoll (2006). “Marriage Workbook: From Surviving to Thriving”, p.10, Thomas Nelson

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• Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over. But once the decision was made, I simply followed through—usually with relief that the choice was made. Sometimes the relief was tainted by despair, like my decision to come to Forks. But it was still better than wrestling with the alternatives.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Wrestling, Choices, Decision

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• The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Thinking, Self

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.405, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted.

  Craig Ferguson

  Men, Hands, Half

  Craig Ferguson (2010). “Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel”, p.214, Chronicle Books

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• Those wretches tainted with the error of Indifferentism and Modernism hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute, but relative: that is, that it must adapt itself to the varying necessities of the times and the varying dispositions of souls, since it is not contained in an unchangeable revelation, but is, by its very nature, meant to accommodate itself to the life of man.

  Pope Pius XI

  Men, Errors, Soul

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• The undressed is vulgar; the nude is pure, and the well-dressed tainted.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Fashion, Vulgarity Is, Clothes

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• To Foreswear vengeance is to chain oneself to forgiveness, to flounder in pardon, to be tainted by the hatred smothered within.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Hatred, Vengeance, Pardon

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• In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.

  Donna Tartt

  Essentials, Way, Subtle

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.8, Vintage

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• We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

  Joseph de Maistre

  Philosophy, Real, Taught Us

  Joseph de Maistre (2017). “The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty, Religion and Enlightenment”, p.64, Routledge

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• The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

  P. D. James

  Daughter, Hurt, Children

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.101, Vintage

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• I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or noble one, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.

  Lord Byron

  Names, Vices, Noble

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• When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our “fault.” But it is undeniably our inheritance.

  Douglas A. Blackmon

  Father, Past, White

  Douglas A. Blackmon (2009). “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II”, p.394, Anchor

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• Somehow when you see a politician kiss a baby, shake a hand -- kiss anything -- it is tainted.

  Elise Valmorbida

  Baby, Kissing, Hands

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• The true history of Vietnamese civilian suffering does not fit comfortably into America's preferred postwar narrative - the tale of a conflict nobly fought by responsible commanders and good American boys, who should not be tainted by the occasional mistakes of a few 'bad apples' in their midst.

  Nick Turse

  Mistake, Boys, Apples

  Nick Turse (2013). “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”, p.256, Macmillan

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• I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction that's about the irresponsibility of writing fiction and I've thrown out a lot of writing that I think was ultimately tainted by that kind of self-awareness.

  Ben Lerner

  Writing, Thinking, Self

  Interview with Tao Lin, www.believermag.com. 2014.

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• I would love to be fooled. The innocence of child for the first time, seeing something and being in wonder is something that I long for because I'm tainted.

  Criss Angel

  Children, Long, Firsts

  "Criss Angel Creates Phenomenon!". Interview with Evan Jacobs, movieweb.com. October 14, 2007.

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• The recommended daily allowances are based on arbitrary, unscientific, and tainted standards.

  William Proxmire

  Arbitrary, Allowance, Standards

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• Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods, appear to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  People, Sick, Ignorant

  Interview with Alvin Toffler, reprints.longform.org. January 1964.

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