Word: taints
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...attributes of aristocracy in working condition." Prime Minister Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, was dedicated to the principle that a nation should be ruled by its "natural" leaders -those with fortune and position so secure "that the struggles for ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed." His successor was his nephew, Arthur Balfour, a languid genius with so exquisitely balanced an intellect that once, arriving for an evening party at a house whose staircase was split into two curves, he stood for 20 minutes at the bottom trying to find a logical reason for ascending...
...arrival in Pago Pago, the group was thrown into quarantine because of a measles epidemic. Maugham added a tropical rain season to the measles, and made the confrontation of missionary and whore into a classic contest between righteousness and sin. What man (or clergyman) has not felt the visceral taint of the sensual in his ostensibly selfless concern for a pretty sinner's soul...
Only conscious or unconscious racists claim that Germans carry a hereditary taint. But all examinations and self-examinations of Germany must sooner or later lead to the legitimate questions: How did Hitler happen? How could Nazism seize a civilized country? Despite all the words expended on the subject, the phenomenon essentially remains a mystery. But part of the answer had to do with national identity. Though Hitler behaved like a nationalist possessed. Germany's sense of nationhood was always a fragile and insecure state of mind. In 1871, Bismarck belatedly forged German unity under Prussian hegemony from the anachronism...
Before the fight I had fervently hoped that no matter who won--even if my quarter on Liston in the fifth in the CRIMSON pool went down the drain--the fight would be freed of the taint of the Miami affair. What happened last was worse than anyone's most horrid dreams. Somehow, the whole thing seemed too blatantly fallacious to have been a fix unless Sonny, Casslus, and Blinky Palermo have been watching too many Grade D fight films on the late show...
Roosevelt: I have charged the present administration with government by tantrum because, among other reasons, its actions and decisions, affecting every citizen of our city, often seem to be arrived at on the spur of the moment and with the taint of political expediency. It is as if the mayor of the moment, after four years of junketing and bickering, has finally realized he needs to present a record to the voters...