the law of Nature as well as by the rules of the office. Laziness, which lies in wait round all human labor-offices, will in that case infallibly leak in, and vitiate the doing of the work. The work is but idle; if the doing of it will but pass, what need of more? The essential problem, as the rules of office prescribe it for you, if Nature and Fact say nothing, is that your work be got to pass; if the work itself is worth nothing, or little or an uncertain quantity, what more can gods or men require of it, or, above all, can I who am the doer of it require, but that it be got to pass?英文原著 · 《Latter-Day Pamphlets》
"The trial by fire is no less certain: the fire evaporates and disperses all that is innocent and pure, leaving only acrid and sour matter which resists its influence. The effect produced by poisons on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; it burns and scorches all the inner parts with a strange, irresistible fire.英文原著 · 《Marquise de Brinvilliers》
Wherefore I pray the Mind, in which begin
Thy motion and thy virtue, to regard
Whence comes the smoke that vitiates thy rays;英文原著 · 《Paradiso》
Step out, my lad. Did you refuse to grind those blades?"
"Ay," said the greyhound-man sullenly. "Then put on your coat, and leave my premises this minute."
"He is entitled to a week's warning, Mr. Cheetham," said one of the decent workmen, respectfully, but resolutely; speaking now for the first time. "You are mistaken, sir," replied Mr. Cheetham, in exactly the same tone. (No stranger could have divined the speakers were master and man.) "He has vitiated his contract by publicly refusing to do his work. He'll get nothing from me but his wages up to noon this day.英文原著 · 《Put Yourself in His Place》
"I tell you that I have not. I am old because I never take air. There is nothing that vitiates the life of a man more than the
atmosphere of a cafe." I could not believe him.英文原著 · 《Selected Writings of guy de maupassant》
snuff ... Monsieur Chauvelin here had--if I may be allowed to say so--so vitiated a taste in snuff that he prefers it with an admixture of pepper ... Is that not so, Monsieur ... er ... Chaubertin?"
"Chauvelin, Sir Percy," remarked the ex-ambassador drily. He was determined not to lose his temper and looked urbane and pleasant, whilst his impudent enemy was enjoying a joke at his expense. Marguerite the while had not taken her eyes off the keen, shrewd face. Whilst the three men talked, she seemed suddenly to have lost her sense of the reality of things.英文原著 · 《The Elusive Pimpernel》