Quotes & Sayings About Tainted

It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love — Oscar Wilde

The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest. — Emile Souvestre

Nate and me ... we aren't built for truces, for good times, for light jokes and giggles. We're meant for the shadows. For the dirty, ugly, secret parts of our souls, the parts we can't hide because we know each other too well. — Julie Johnson

To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success. — Orison Swett Marden

All were indiscriminately condemned to death; but one out of three only were really executed. Ten cannon were placed on the drilling-ground, a prisoner fastened to each of their mouths, and five times were the ten guns fired, covering the plain with mutilated remains, in the midst of air tainted with the smell of burning flesh. These men, as M. de Valbezen says in his book called "Nouvelles Etudes sur les Anglais et l'lnde," nearly all died with that heroic indifference which Indians know so well how to preserve even in the very face of death. "No need to bind me, captain," said a fine young sepoy, twenty years of age, to one of the officers present at the execution; and as he spoke he carelessly stroked the instrument of death. "No need to bind me; I have no wish to run away." Such was the first and horrible execution, which was to be followed by so many others. At — Jules Verne

The shortest route is not the most direct one, but rather the one where the most favorable winds swell our sails:Mthat is the lesson that seafarers teach. Not to abide by this lesson is to be obstinate: here, firmness of character is tainted with stupidity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The wife of a junior officer cooped up in a horrible canvas partition in steerage for five months wrote:
"I had enjoyed much peace there in the absence of every comfort, even of such as are now enjoyed in jail. I used to say that there were four privations in my situation - fire, water, earth and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set the foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe. Yet, with all these miserable circumstances, we spent many a happy hour by candlelight in that wretched cabin whilst I sewed and he read the Bible to me. — Stephen Taylor

Under a system that sought to stamp out tainted blood for three generations, the punishment would extend to parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins. A lot of people felt if you had one life to give, you would give it to get rid of this terrible regime, but then you're not the only one getting punished. Your family would go through hell. — Barbara Demick

We should know that Allah has created us to live an eternal life with no death, a life of pride and ease with no humiliation, a life of security with no fear, a life of richness with no poverty, a life of joy with no pain, a life of perfection with no flaws. Allah is testing us in this world with a life that will end in death, a life of pride that is accompanied by humiliation and degradation, a life that is tainted by fear, where joy and ease are mixed with sorrow and pain. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

To state it as clearly as I can: I am part of what I criticize. I benefit from time to time by actively participating in the schemes I would like to see ended; it happens as a side effect of doing the things I love to do. However, I don't want to become an academic or remote observer of tech events. My choice is to be engaged even if that means I am tainted. I live with contradictions, in accordance with the human condition, but do my best not to forget what absurdities are involved. What I can offer is being open about what I think. — Jaron Lanier

Imagine waking up in the morning and going to the kitchen and to make yourself some breakfast. You take some soybean grits, mix them with some tainted cattle meat, throw in a few beaks and feathers, smother your concoction with processed sugar syrup and chemicals, then sprinkle on a few preservatives and dyes. Pressure cook the hell out of it, let it cool-and dig in! — Martin Goldstein

Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes. — Margaret Sanger

I'd never blame anyone else who falls for the same brand of seduction. I embrace that we're all similarly flawed. That makes the self-inflicted wounds hurt less. I'd read Tennessee Williams. I just didn't expect to be living my own tainted little version of Suddenly Last Summer. — Dan Skinner

A fall from great innocence
hurts the most to know
that you are now
tainted — Anastasia Wild

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

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer. — Yann Martel

A wish for a future no longer tainted by the past. A future that held joy, not regret. A future that offered love instead of loneliness. — Irene Hannon

...[I]f at the time of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment; and if it is accustomed to hate and fear and avoid what is invisible and hidden from our eyes, but intelligible and comprehensible by philosophy - if the soul is in this state, do you think that it will escape independent and uncontaminated? — Socrates

It's very difficult to look at it in a kind of a free manner, what reality is. That was my first struggle, to see it as it is, rather than tainted by my own previous thoughts. — Muhammad Yunus

For so long, I'd wanted to hear those words fall from her lips. I'd just had no idea that in those words there would be so much sadness, that they would be tainted by years of her sorrow, and that my own thrill in finally hearing her say them aloud would be tarnished by the immense amount of resentment over what she had done. — A.L. Jackson

The process is very gradual, you see. At first there's the tainted stage; they know what will eventually happen to them if they go on but they say, 'Oh God, don't do it to me do it again, please, please.' — Terence Fisher

He had taken a piece of my tainted soul...of my heart...and made him a part of me. He was in my every cell, my conscience. He was simply part of me. — Tillie Cole

As long as you remain in your private vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the One. But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, you become a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds is already tainted with corruption and evil. — Umberto Eco

When women tell me that Skinny Bitch made them go vegan, my appreciation of the book's purpose is tainted by a sadness that their self-worth had to be bartered to make that choice. — Kim Socha

...self-discovery has been so tainted by technology and the fear of loss it creates. The immediacy that the internet and all things digital provide has cut off an arm of real experience, trumping virtual validation over lived reflection. — Emma Bee Bernstein

My choice is to be engaged even if that means I am tainted. I live with contradictions, in accordance with the human condition, but do my best not to forget what absurdities are involved. — Jaron Lanier

Strigoi are the Lost. You're the Tainted because you joined the modern world and left behind their backward ways for your own messed up customs."
"Hey," I retorted. "We're not the ones with overalls and banjos."
"Rose," chastised Dimitri, with a pointed look at the door. "Be careful. And besides, we only saw one person in overalls. — Richelle Mead

I tumbled into the taxi alone, closing the door closed with a dull thud before I could possibly change my mind. Not like this, I remember thinking. Whatever this thing is between us, it could only be tainted and cheapened by a semi-drunken encounter on the night of our first meeting. As the car pulled away I stared back at him. The thought that I might never see him again, that I might never know what it would feel like to be kissed by him, seemed unbearably cruel.
At a crossroads, I had been faced with a choice: two possible versions of my future mapped out ahead of me. But I didn't feel like I had made any sort of decision. All I had done was run away. — Catherine Sanderson

One cannot read Genesis literally - meaning as a literally accurate description of physical, historical reality - in view of the state of scientific knowledge today and our knowledge of ancient Near Eastern stories of origins. Those who read Genesis literally must either ignore evidence completely or present alternate "theories" in order to maintain spiritual stability. Unfortunately, advocates of alternate scientific theories sometimes keep themselves free of the burden of tainted peer review. Such professional isolation can encourage casually sweeping aside generations and even centuries of accumulated knowledge. — Peter Enns

We had not only lost our childhood in the war but our lives had been tainted by the same experiences that still caused us great pain and sadness. — Ishmael Beah

A lot of money is tainted - Taint yours and taint mine. — Xaviera Hollander

Oh little Poupchette, some may tell you that you are nobody's child, a child of defilement, a child begotten in fear and horror. Some may tell you that you are a child of abomination conceived in abomination, a tainted child, a child polluted long before you were born. Do not pay attention to them, my little sweetheart, please do not listen to them; listen to me. I say you are my child and I love you. I sometimes say that out of horror, beauty and purity and grace are born. I say I am your father for ever. I say the loveliest rose can bloom in contaminated soil. I say you are the dawn, the light of all my tomorrows, and the only thing that matters is the promise you represent. I say you are my luck and my forgiveness. My darling Poupchette, I say you are my whole life. — Philippe Claudel

Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people
in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for
although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors. — Ernst Bloch

With a combination of proper lighting and climate control he managed to achieve a different ecological niche in each gallery. In the African section, where the imbrications of Augustine, Mafouz and Okri lay decomposing, he grew sorghum and Dioscorea yams. In the Chinese gallery where the Tao Te Ching and countless Confucian annotations moldered, he grew rice, crab apples and barley. Over the poems of Neruda and Borges himself, he grew potatoes. Each plant in this new Eden he lovingly tainted with the virus of civilization

- from the short story "Resurrection — Victor Fernando R. Ocampo

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

In a book published at the time, a lace manufacturer admitted that he expected his workers to turn a few tricks on the side to make up for his not paying them a living wage. Soon lace, including crocheted lace, began to be seen as morally tainted - it's made by prostitutes! As Donna Kooler suggests in The Encyclopedia of Crochet, this may even explain how the word "hooker" came to have such wayward connotations. — Debbie Stoller

Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We were decadent in our intimacy. Leaving no inch of skin untouched lest a moment of rapture slip through our grasp. Thrusting and plunging, in dazed euphoria, the exquisite cravings for those carnal delights ravaged our souls until shamelessly, gasping lust tainted air, we discovered insatiability... — Virginia Alison

It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. — Oscar Wilde

A child isn't born bitter. I point no fingers as to who tainted the clean, pure pool of my childhood. Let's just say that when I realized that I didn't want to grow up, the damage was already done. Knowing that being grown up was no swell place to be means that you are grown up enough to notice. And you can't go back from there. You have to forge another route, draw your own map. — Hiromi Goto

His smell - the scent of a demon, cinnamon incense, amber musk - wrapped around me, filled my lungs. I felt like I could breathe again, without every breath being tainted by the stench of dying cells. The smell of him seemed to coat my abused insides with peace, and flow down into the middle of my body to spread through my veins. I filled my lungs again. While I could, before what was undoubtedly a hallucination vanished. — Lilith Saintcrow

Every step you take - everywhere you stand - the ground beneath your feet is tainted by some kind of casualty. It's an inescapable fact. Nothing is untouched by death. Nothing. — J.M. Darhower

I usually accept bribes from both sides so that tainted money can never influence my decision. — Francis Bacon

I never had trouble eating or sleeping when I thought of her in danger. I didn't want to tear my heart out when she looked sad. I'm tainted, I know as much. Just let me stay near you, Dru. Please. - Christophe — Lili St. Crow

Perhaps this was the greatest genius of the cyber jihadis: the monopoly they clinched on information. They realized how helplessly addicted the population had become to knowing in this information age. So what if news was tainted or unreliable? - people needed their daily fix. — Manil Suri

A mattoid is a miscreant who seeks to elevate himself by destroying society. Examples include the Rothschilds, David Rockefeller, Franklin Roosevelt, Meyer Lansky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Hamilton, and Josef Stalin. Often mattoids are of high intelligence, tainted geniuses, despite their flawed character and lack of any morality. — Oliver Cromwell

You know how much Annie loved pearls. She owned some incomparable specimens ... the most marvelous, I believe, that ever existed. You also remember the almost physical joy, the carnal ecstasy, with which she adorned herself with them. Well, when she was sick that passion became a mania with her ... a fury, like love! All day long she loved to touch them, caress them and kiss them; she made cushions of them, necklaces, capes, cloaks. Then this extraordinary thing happened; the pearls died on her skin: first they tarnished, little by little ... little by little they grew dim, and no light was reflected in their luster any more and, in a few days, tainted by the disease, they changed into tiny balls of ash. They were dead, dead like people, my darling. Did you know that pearls had souls? I think it's fascinating and delicious. And since then, I think of it every day. — Octave Mirbeau

I'd rather have your lifeblood tainted than spilled on a forest floor.'
He said no more, just held her. 'I'm not worth it,' she whispered at last.
'Who says so?'
'I do.'
'Then you don't know what love is. — Kate Furnivall

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

I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. We can do anything, it seems, and come away clean.
We point to the Germans and Poles and Ukrainians who did and did not know of the atrocities around them. We like to think they were inwardly marked by the after-effects of that special form of ignorance. We like to think that in their nightmares the ones whose suffering they had refused to enter came back to haunt them. We like to think they woke up haggard in the mornings and died of gnawing cancers. But probably it was not so. The evidence points in the opposite direction: that we can do anything and get away with it; that there is no punishment. — J.M. Coetzee

To me she looks like a big black ant - a big black ant in an original Christian Lacroix - eating a urinal cake and I almost start laughing, but I also want to keep her at ease. I don't want her to get second thoughts about finishing the urinal cake. But she can't eat any more and with only two bites taken, pretending to be full, she pushes the tainted plate away, and at this moment I start feeling strange. Even though I marveled at her eating that thing, it also makes me sad and suddenly I'm reminded that no matter how satisfying it was to see Evelyn eating something I, and countless others, had pissed on, in the end the displeasure it caused her was at my expense - it's an anticlimax, a futile excuse to put up with her for three hours. — Bret Easton Ellis

The recommended daily allowances are based on arbitrary, unscientific, and tainted standards. — William Proxmire

The curse had not tainted her, had not made her a tortured soul like Tristan, or a hopeless romantic like Gabriel, or a lonely heart like Nate. Heather still had a chance at being bright. — Chelsea Fine

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

To Lovecraft, a tainted past is the rotten core from which present-day horror germinates. — Silvia Moreno-Garcia

How does it happen that in life as in literature, rebellion, however pure, has something false about it, whereas resignation, however tainted with listlessness, always gives the impression of authenticity — Emil Cioran

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

The heart is sometimes tainted with the songs of yesterday. Sing a new song today. — Steven Aitchison

I hope, my African brothers and sisters that you will understand, Not because you live in a Europe makes you a European. I hope, my African brothers and sisters that you will understand, Not because you live in North America makes you an American. I know, the picture of Africa is tainted, that's what you were led to believe. But you can't continue to hate the root and continue to love the tree. — Peter Gracey

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

In all the things I've gone through as a politician, I have seen that in this system it is really very difficult to make any headway without being somehow tainted. And let me say, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.' — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

The noblest part of a friend is an honest boldness in the notifying of errors. He that tells me of a fault, aiming at my good, I must think him wise and faithful
wise in spying that which I see not; faithful in a plain admonishment, not tainted with flattery. — Owen Feltham

She Blinded Me With Science.'"

"What?" Sydney asked.

"That could be our song."

She laughed outright, and I realized I hadn't heard that sound in a very long time. It somehow managed to make my heart both ache and leap. "Well," she said. "I guess that's better than 'Tainted Love. — Richelle Mead

All you have to do is stretch out your hand, Mason." Pressing my palm against my chest, I whispered, "I'm right here."
He shook his head. "I can't. I'm tainted. — Linda Kage

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. — William Shakespeare

Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism. — Louis Pasteur

In our culture, guilt is a tainted word, but it's probably one of the building blocks of conscience. — Susan Cain

Know DEEPLY who you are in Christ or everything else will be tainted. — Floyd McClung

A dream is a vision of the future, in light of the past, tainted by imagination. — Dana Lamon

Even though I knew I had a snowball's chance in Hades with you." She sniffed and wiped a tear with the back of her hand. "I just ... I just wanted to give you something pure. It's all I have. Had. Everything else about me is tainted by demon blood. But I had that. And it's always been yours."
-Gem to Kynan
Excerpt From: Larissa Ione. "Desire Unchained." iBooks. — Larissa Ione

Far beneath the tainted foamThat frets above our peaceful home,We dream in joy and wake in loveNor know the rage that yells above. — John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

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

His grandparents lived on an old farm. Like he should have considered that psycho teenage girls might be leaving tainted steaks for his dog to find. If you hurt him, I'll kill you. — Brigid Kemmerer

The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations. — Dani Shapiro

Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for its possessors are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence every thing seems to be purchasable by it. — Aristotle.

I didn't recognize it as such then, because I was only thirteen years old, but later I found it a bit ironic that my first time seeing a woman in all her form and glory and saggy drug-tainted tits, arrived at the same exact time as my first introduction to death. — Dave Matthes

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence - legitimately - our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature - by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse - we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature - natural selection - gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. — Robert Wright

That was a version of history reliant on a narrow range of official summaries and gubernatorial archives created and archived by the most dubious sources - southern whites who engineered and most directly profited from the system. It overlooked many of the most significant dimensions of the new forced labor, including the centrality of its role in the web of restrictions put in place to suppress black citizenship, its concomitant relationship to debt peonage and the worst forms of sharecropping, and an exponentially larger number of African Americans compelled into servitude through the most informal - and tainted - local courts. — Douglas A. Blackmon

I do need to explore my faith, because it has got lost over the years and it has been kind of tainted through experience. But I also know it's enriched my life, my dad being a Catholic. — Johnny Vegas

Priming works best when you are on autopilot, when you aren't trying to consciously introspect before choosing how to behave. When you are unsure how best to proceed, suggestions bubble up from the deep that are highly tainted by subconscious primes. In addition, your brain hates ambiguity and is willing to take shortcuts to remove it from any situation. If there is nothing else to go on, you will use what is available. When pattern recognition fails, you create patterns of your own. In the aforementioned experiments, there was nothing else for the brain to base its unconscious attitudes on, so it focused on the business items or the clean smells and ran with the ideas. The only problem was the conscious minds of the subjects didn't notice. — David McRaney

Peasants and princes, bailiffs and bakers' boys, merchants and mermaids, the figures were all immediately familiar. I had read these stories a hundred, a thousand, times before. They were stories everyone knew. But gradually, as I read, their familiarity fell away from them. They became strange. They became new. These characters were not the colored manikins I remembered from my childhood picture books, mechanically acting out the story one more time. They were people ... The stories were shot through with an unfamiliar mood. Everyone achieved their heart's desire ... but only when it was too late did they realize the price they must pay for escaping their destiny. Every Happy Ever After was tainted. — Diane Setterfield

I wondered if joy could ever be felt by itself without being tainted with fear and confusion, or if some level of misery was a universal constant, like the speed of light. — Meredith Russo

Most people, including Ma, preferred to brush unpleasantness away, as if, by sweeping it outside with the dust, it could be forgotten. As if, by acknowledging the existence of something unsavory in their community, they might be tainted by it themselves. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

I hold myself to a very high standard, and I hold my contributions to that same high standard. I will not accept any contributions that are illegal, inappropriate or tainted. — Kevin Shelley

I loved the audacity of that American principle which says. When life gets tainted or goes stale, junk it! Leave it behind! Go West! — Jonathan Raban

It is the whole modern concept of love which should be re-examined, such as is commonly but transparently expressed in phrases like 'love at first sight' and 'honeymoon'. All this shoddy terminology is on top of that tainted with the most reactionary irony. — Andre Breton

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

But stop thinking what you think I'm thinking because you're wrong. Pike's just pissed I won't go play in his sandbox. Well, my sandbox is full. No room for more than one and he's already here. -Grace from Tainted (Fey Court Trilogy) Book 2 Release July 2012 — Cyndi Goodgame

For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be. — William Shakespeare

Terror builds inside him. The reality that tonight will be his last leaves a sour taste in his mouth. The Tainted will eat him, or on a more terrifying note - if that's even possible - maybe turn him into one of them. He'd rather die. But first, he'll take as many of those bastards out as he can. He throws his pack into the throng and jerks the blade from his belt. With a thudding heart, he slices through them. Blood arcs over him, onto him. — Laura Kreitzer

This was the thing that terrified me the most - more than the victim, more than the demon, more even than the dark thoughts. It was the fact that the dark thoughts were mine. That I couldn't separate myself from evil, because most of the evil in my life came from inside my own head.
How long could I live like this? I was trying to be two people - a killer on the inside, and a normal person on the outside. I made such a show of being a good, quiet kid, who never caused problem and never got into trouble, but now the monster was out, and I was actually using him - I was actively seeking out another killer. I'd given in. I was trying to be John and Mr. Monster at the same time.
Was I fooling myself, thinking that I could split my life like this? Was it possible to be two people, one good and one bad, or was I forced to be a mix of both - a good person forever tainted by evil? — Dan Wells

Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it - and were often tainted by it. — Daniel Suarez

But the man who is aware of his own unworthiness and the unworthiness of his brother is tempted with a subtler and more tormenting kind of hate: the general, searing, nauseating hate of everything and everyone, because everything is tainted with unworthiness, everything is unclean, everything is foul with sin. — Thomas Merton

Do you believe in the concept of forgiveness? In the possibility of redemption? In the value of every human life, no matter how tainted or corrupted?" "Fuck no," Bull said. "I think it is entirely possible to go so far into the red you can't ever balance the books." "Sounds — James S.A. Corey

The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument. — Newt Gingrich

Brush strokes write poetry harmonized through the cords of an artist's imagination.
Color, contrast, simple compassion splattered across paper leaves tainted with the melody of the silent wind.
Gasping, grasping, simply glancing at the souls of those who were not blessed with the visionary sight of inspirational artistry. — Laura S. Al Bast

The point is that all of the known nations and peoples resulted from the blessing God had established from the beginning. National and ethnic diversity was not an aberration. There is no room for the concept that there is one pure race while others are tainted, somehow the result of sin or corruption. — John H. Walton

Real good luck would be to abandon life without ever encountering dishonesty, or hypocrisy, or self-indulgence, or pride. But the "next best voyage" is to die when you've had enough. Or are you determined to lie down with evil? Hasn't experience even taught you that - to avoid it like the plague? Because it is a plague - a mental cancer - worse than anything caused by tainted air or an unhealthy climate. Diseases like that can only threaten your life; this one attacks your humanity. — Marcus Aurelius

For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or-to put the thing less cynically-we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice. — E. M. Forster

Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception. — R.A. Lafferty