"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moreover, it cannot be denied that the influence of the classical authors is in the highest degree moral, while, unfortunately, with the study of the natural sciences are associated the false and noxious doctrines which are the curse of our day." ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... striding to the threshold, turning the key energetically, and flinging the door wide open. The quiet light burning in the quiet hall produced something in the nature of a shock. He stepped into the hall to wipe his brow and curse himself. He could never win his own pardon for the madness of the past quarter of an hour. Neither, probably, could he ever win Claude's, though he must go back ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Telemachos. "Living or dead, my father is in distant lands, and if I should dismiss his wife of my own will, I should invite the hatred of the gods on my guilty head. She would call upon the Furies to haunt me; all men would curse me; and her father would demand ample satisfaction of me. I will never speak the word to send her forth. Now, get you gone and cease squandering my riches or I will call down the wrath of the ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... scornful retort. "What does it matter what happens to Davenham? He's absolutely useless to the House, rotten at games and spends his whole time reading about fossils. Who cares a curse about Davenham!" ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... made with Noah; when He said, "I will not again curse the earth any more for man's sake, neither will I smite any more everything living as I have done. While the Earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and Winter and Summer, and day and night shall not cease. I will establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... refused, perverted, crushed, cast aside by those who need it most,—the city which is Not set on a hill, the candle that giveth light to None that are in the house:—these are the heaviest mysteries of this strange world, and, it seems to me, those which mark its curse the most. And it is true that the power with which this Venice had been entrusted, was perverted, when at its highest, in a thousand miserable ways; still, it was possessed by her alone; to her all hearts have turned which could be moved by its manifestation, and none without ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to his own home at Sletty on the Boyne, for there he lived after he had given up the kingdom to his son Cairbry. But the druids of Erinn came together and consulted over this matter, and they determined solemnly to curse Cormac and invoke the vengeance of their gods upon him lest the people should think that any man could despise and reject their gods, and ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... detaining hand and called him by name, one of the group in civilian dress gave sudden, instant start, sprang round the corner, but, tripping on some obstacle, sprawled full length on the hard stone pavement. Despite the violence of the fall, which wrung from him a fierce curse, the man was up in a second, away, and out of ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... for a wise and discreet use of liberty, as a vulgar person may be for the management of a great estate unexpectedly inherited: there is a great deal in this, and, in my opinion, there are cases in which to force liberty down a people's throat is presenting them, not with a blessing, but a curse. I shall send your luggage on immediately; it is very probable that I may be in town at the end of the week, for a short time. I wish much to see and to consult you, and therefore hope that you will not leave ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Life, as Scott and Shakespeare; or even ridden, shot, drunk, and played the Devil, as Byron, he would have done much more, and talked about it much less. 'You know,' said Scott to Lockhart, 'that I don't care a Curse about what I write,' {116} and one sees he did not. I don't believe it was far otherwise with Shakespeare. Even old Wordsworth, wrapt up in his Mountain mists, and proud as he was, was above all this vain Disquietude: proud, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... is a brave young man!" sighed Eliza; "and then—I cannot betray father's secret to him. If the Austrians did not come after all, and I had told Ulrich von Hohenberg what father and the other Tyrolese intend to do, would I not be a traitress, and would not father curse me?" ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... "you shall have the picture back—curse you! But listen. If I were you and had wife, or daughter, or sweetheart like this "—he touched the photograph almost reverently—"why, I'd go through fire and water but I'd keep myself decent; ain't you a silly old fool, now? We've made our piles, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... how this sin took place— This myst'ry we could never scan, That sin has sunk the human race, And all brought in by the first man. 'Tis said this is our heavy curse— ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... exclaimed Harcourt, after a moment; "I can't hold them, and we are near the top of a long hill with two sharp turnings on the side of a steep bank, and there's a bridge at the bottom. Whoa! curse you, whoa!" ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... bended, bent bereave bereaved, bereft bereaved, bereft blend blended, blent blended, blent bless blessed, blest blessed, blest burn burned, burnt burned, burnt cleave, stick cleaved (clave) cleaved clothe clothed, clad clothed, clad curse cursed, curst cursed, curst dive dived (dove) dived (dove) dream dreamed, dreamt dreamed, dreamt dress dressed, drest dressed, drest gild gilded, gilt gilded, gilt heave heaved, hove heaved, hove hew hewed hewed, hewn lade laded laded, ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... saw, she threw up her hands and moaned a little about the curse that was on the house, and she helped him to scrub the stones as quickly as possible. When that was done, and when they had flooded the whole pavement under the arch, in order to conceal the fact that it had been washed in one place, it occurred to them ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Ruth answered, "Do not urge me to leave you or to go back, for wherever you go I will go, and wherever you stay I will stay; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; I will die where you die and be buried there. May Jehovah bring a curse upon me, if anything but death separate you and me." When Naomi saw that Ruth had made up her mind to go with her, she ceased urging her ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... all. She saw more than the acute Spaniard. Firstly, because she was a woman. Secondly, because she loved Fitz. Thirdly, because the inken curse was hers in a small degree, and people who dabble in ink often wade deep into ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Slavery is the curse of all these countries. My Soudan servant, Amankee, would not come with me to Zinder, on account of his longing desire to see his mother and brother and sisters; and yet, although these feelings are deep in the bosoms of all the blacks, they can see their neighbours torn away from their ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... "No, curse it! I wish she would speak. But she never does. She scorns me, and holds her tongue. She keeps off from me, as if I was a pestilence. By George! she was fond enough of her pestilence once. And when I came a-courting, you would see miss blush—blush red, by George! for joy. Why, what do you think ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... great itching for fighting. A curse on love and those darned girls, who will be tasting it, and then look as if butter would not melt in ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... an oath broke from his lips. He made a movement to spring from the well, but as the girl started back, the pistol held in her hand was discharged aimlessly in the air, and the report echoed throughout the courtyard. With a curse Starbuck drew back, instantly disappeared in the well, and Polly fell fainting on the steps. When she came to, her father and Larry were at her side. They had been alarmed at the report, and had rushed quickly to the patio, but ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... call for help brought Scraggs around to a fuller realization of the enormity of the disaster which had overtaken him. In his agony, he forgot to curse his navigating officer for the latter's stubbornness in refusing to turn back when the fog threatened. He clutched Mr. Gibney by the right arm, thereby interrupting for an instant the dismal outburst from the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... renouncement which had to finish the drama; he could only have avoided that by completely remodelling his characters. So Guntram rejects Freihild's love. He sees he has fallen, even as the others, under the curse of sin. He had preached charity to others when he himself was full of egoism; he had killed Robert rather to satisfy his instinctive and animal jealousy than to deliver the people from a tyrant. So he renounces his desires, and expiates the sin of being alive by retirement from the world. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... brick and mortar breed filth and crime, With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats; And men are withered before their prime By the curse paved in with ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... A bitter curse followed by a groan of pain was the answer to his shot. Then, where that break in the shadowy line of light had been, now the line ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... pluck threescore years from that fond man, That I may kill him, and not stain mine honour; It is the curse of Souldiers, that in peace They shall be brain'd by such ignoble men, As (if the Land were troubled) would with tears And knees beg succour from 'em: would that blood (That sea of blood) that I have lost in fight, Were running in thy veins, that it might make thee Apt to say less, or able to ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Emperor was not always like this. There was a time when he loved the people. It is that devil, whom God curse, Prince Paul Maraloffski who has brought him to this. To-morrow, I swear it, I shall plead for the people ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... out, in the height of their exultations, "This will deserve the thanks of posterity!" And when their adversaries, as it much more frequently falls out, have outnumbered and overthrown them, they will say, with an air of revenge and a kind of gloomy triumph, "Posterity will curse ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... truth, And you shall find Sir, you have kist and tows'd me, Handled my legg and foote, what would you more, Sir,? As for the rest, it requires youth and strength, And the labour in an old man would breed Agues, Sciaticaes, and Cramps; you shall not curse me, For taking from you what you cannot spare, Sir: Be good unto your selfe, y'ave tane alreadie All you can take with ease; you are past threshing, It is a worke too boisterous for you; leave Such drudgerie to Andrew. ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... with a bullet, he told himself again. After all, what would it matter? Who would care? Last night he had thought instantly of Marion and his mother, and he had felt that two women would grieve for him. Tonight he thought of Marion and cast the thought away with a curse and a sneer. As for his mother—would his mother care so very much? Had he given her any reason for caring, beyond the natural maternal instinct which is in all motherhood? He did not know. If he could be sure that his mother would grieve for him—but ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... secured. Without money one can do nothing. Cecil Rhodes had had the natural wealth of Rhodesia at his back. McKeith had set himself the task of opening up the fine country out West, which he knew only needed a system of irrigation by Artesian Bores to defy drought, the squatters curse. That object once accomplished—he gave himself with luck and good seasons five or six years—there would be nothing to stop his becoming a patriot and ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years, not perniciously, but beneficially; not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that He enables me to disregard 'the fear of man which bringeth a snare,' and to speak His truth in its simplicity and power." * ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... scrannel^, weedy, niggardly, scurvy, putid^, beggarly, worthless, twopennyhalfpenny, cheap, trashy, catchpenny, gimcrack, trumpery; one- horse [U.S.]. not worth the pains, not worth while, not worth mentioning, not worth speaking of, not worth a thought, not worth a curse, not worth a straw &c n.; beneath notice, unworthy of notice, beneath regard, unworthy of regard, beneath consideration, unworthy of consideration; de lana caprina [It]; vain &c (useless) 645. Adv. slightly &c adj.; rather, somewhat, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... long ceased to look to the eldest son as the rightful heir. There is, in fact, a curse on the first-born of France. Napoleon's son, the King of Rome, died in exile, an Austrian. The Duc de Bordeaux, born eight years after him, never wore the crown, and died in exile, childless. The Comte de Paris, born also at the Tuileries, was exiled when ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... hurled us back in confusion and disgrace with a hundred empty saddles. At first her tone was one of simple amaze and horror. It softened afterwards into wonder and perplexity, and the oft-repeated rebuke or curse was on its last recurrence spoken with more of pitying tenderness ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... so disgusting that he generally wrapped himself in a great-coat and lay upon four chairs with a leathern portmanteau for a pillow; but we cannot admire a man who is embittered by the fact that he cannot get milk to put in his tea, and is continually thrusting his head out of the window to curse at the post-boys, or pulling out his post-book to read to an inn-yard with savage vociferation the article which orders that the traveller who comes first shall be ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... at the Hummums, now I sit, but after many a curse and vow, Never to see the madding City more; Where barrows truckling o'er the pavement roll: And, what is sorrow to a tuneful soul, Where asses, asses greeting, love songs roar: Which asses, that the Garden square adorn, Must lark-like be the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... With a muffled curse he swung on his heel, and made to cross the gravel path and plunge into the shrubbery. But Desmond was too quick for him. Springing upon his back, he caught his arms, thus preventing him from using his pistol. He was a powerful man, and Desmond alone would have been no match for him; but before ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... curse Pamela with her pray'rs, Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares; The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state, And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate. She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring— A vain, unquiet, glitt'ring, wretched thing! Pride, pomp, and state, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "You, the patriarch of this sacred city, would tear me from the sanctuary of its holiest altar? Oh! then, indeed shall the curse fall upon it and you. Hence, they say, our sweet Lord was haled to sacrifice by the command of an unjust judge, and thereafter Jerusalem was taken by the sword. Must I too be dragged from the spot that His feet have hallowed, and even in these weeds"—and she pointed to her white robe—"thrown as ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... to dig and curse, and affected great delight when he dug up a root and discovered that it was ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... He was always both insolent and cowardly, and thus often irritated some strong-minded auditor, and got himself into some pickle where he had to sneak out, which he did with much ease. In his seedy days the landlord of a hotel in whose bar-room he used to preach and curse, put him down when he grew too abusive, by coolly and sternly telling him to go to bed. Mr. Folger himself had one or two brief intervals of sense, in one of which, angered at some insolence of Matthias, he seized him by the throat, shook him well, and flung him down upon a sofa. The humbug ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... incorporated in the religious creeds derived from Judaism, teaching that woman was an afterthought in creation, her sex a misfortune, marriage a condition of subordination, and maternity a curse, are contrary to the law of God as revealed in nature and the precepts of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... always had been, always would be, a frequent visitor, for she was devoted to the family in her own peculiar way; what therefore could Nancy be proposing to do with the Carey Curse? ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... landed, and visited the Esquimaux in their tents. Many heathen were at this place, to whom he preached the gospel, and invited them to believe in Jesus, as the Saviour of men, who would deliver them from the love, power, and curse of sin, having shed His blood, and died on the cross, to redeem their souls. He was heard with great attention. A venerable old man, with hair as white as wool, particularly attracted our notice. He ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... in the soft and quiet sea, while this devilish pother went on. There is a buoy adrift! No, it is a sodden cask, perhaps of spoiling meat, while the people in the town yonder are starving; and still the huge iron, gluttonous monster bursts its foam of blood and death, while the surly crew curse and think of mothers and babes at home. Better to look at the bay, the idle, pleasing summer water, with chips and corks and weeds upon it; better to look at the bubbling cask yonder—much better, captain, if you only knew it! But the reluctant, heavy iron turret groans and wheezes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... men of the place who attended us that it was singular Tughlak's buildings should be so rude compared with those of Iltutmish, who had reigned more than eighty years before him.[14] 'Not at all singular,' said he, 'was he not under the curse of the holy saint Nizam-ud-din?' 'And what had the Emperor done to merit the holy man's curse?' 'He had taken by force to employ upon his palaces several of the masons whom the holy man was employing upon ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... am thankful that our people make a better use of their money. Here in Belgium, as in most countries of Europe, poverty is the curse of the people. They do not receive the reward of their labor. The government and the church take the lion's share of their earnings, and thus keep them down. This Cathedral was commenced in 1352, and finished in 1411, though another spire was to have been built. Nearly sixty ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... turned abruptly from him, and went on with his story. "Mistress," said he, "though I'm a loser by it, no matter. The Lively Peggy and her cargo are safe and sound in Plymouth, at this very time being, and we have her mate in limbo, curse him. We made a prize of him, coming from America, for he was under French colours, and a fine prize we thought we'd made. But her cargo belongs to a British subject; and there's an end to our prize money: no matter for that. There was ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... they simply pass into a Greater Unknown. Their places are filled with fresh victims—innocents, whom Passion begets with a caress and Cupidity buys with a curse. Children they are—tots—and why should they know that they ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... mesa and down across a sandy treacherous plain, then over a grassy stretch where prairie dogs barked, then hid below, and on came Jo, but there to see, could he believe his eyes, the Stallion's start grown longer still, and Jo began to curse his luck, and urge and spur his horse until the poor uncertain brute got into such a state of nervous fright, her eyes began to roll, she wildly shook her head from side to side, no longer picked her ground—a badger-hole received her ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... he pursued, lightly lowering his voice, "that to have any genuine insight to-day, any special human feeling to-day, means perforce to devote these gifts to the social problem, instead of to art and to beauty. That is the curse of being born into this Age. The gigantic ghastliness of modern Western civilisation successfully engulfs every superior brain that comes to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... there was one person of her own blood recalled to whom she had been a curse, and of whom, for a single moment, she could not bear to think. She had driven him from her presence—the one who, through all her childhood, had been her companion, her admirer, her loyal follower. He had dared to love and marry one whom she did not approve, and she had angrily banished ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... social distinctions may well be looked on as a curse in Australia, and it's only the Crown's advisers that really know what a trump card they hold in having an abundant supply always on hand ready to be distributed at the slightest notice. Should it enter the minds ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... of sheep in Australia, as great a curse in his own way as the merino—namely, the cross-bred, or half-merino-half-Leicester animal. The cross-bred will get through, under, or over any fence you like to put in front of him. He is never satisfied with his owner's run, but always thinks other ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the rest so lightly held of within." A footman—an ordinary Jeames, with large calves and aspirated vowels—answers the door-bell, and the opportunity is seized to tell you that he was a "type of the large class of pampered menials, who follow the curse of Cain—'vagabonds' on the face of the earth, and whose estimate of the human class varies in the graduated scale of money and expenditure. . . . These, and such as these, O England, be the false lights of thy morbid civilization!" ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... curse and Damm Governor Vetch and all his friends, he is now served himself in the same manner."—Adams ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... among their lords. An American traveller has said, "A common bullock-driver on horseback, delivering a message, seemed to speak like an ambassador to an audience. In fact, the Californians appear to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of every thing but their pride, their manners, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... from my position, by which I should lose all hope in my chosen profession. Nor would the cause of education gain anything, but the opposite, for everybody would take the curate's side, they would curse me and call me presumptuous, proud, vain, a bad Christian, uncultured, and if not those things, then anti-Spanish and a filibuster. Of a schoolmaster neither learning nor zeal is expected; resignation, humility, and inaction only are asked. May God pardon me if I have gone against my conscience ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... know, this 'pro... missiousness' didn't please me, and I went and told her: 'Look here, Maria, this isn't right at all, and what you ought to do is get out.' She understood me, and went away, and went to her uncle the monk, and the two of them formed a 'cohabit.'... Curse her! I went after them; and if I ever find them, I'll kill them. All very well for the poor child to make a false step... or two false steps; but this thing of getting into a 'cohabit' with a monk, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... my dear friend, my complaint is quite of an opposite nature, and I have so many arrangements to make, so many difficulties to combat, so many enemies to deal with, that I am much of a General as will make me a historian of misfortunes, and nail my curse upon the ruins of what good soldiers are pleased to call the army in Virginia. There is an age past since I heard from you. I acknowledge that on my part, I have not written so often as I ought to have done, but you will excuse this silence in favor of my very embarrassing circumstances, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... rejoiced with joy exceeding and emptying her cup, gave Tohfah an hundred thousand ducats. Then up sprang Iblis (whom Allah curse!) and cried, "Verily, the dawn lighteneth;" whereupon the folk arose and disappeared, all of them, and there abode not one of them save the Songstress, who went forth to the garden and entering the Hamman made her Wuzu-ablutions and prayed whatso lacked her of prayers. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the alarm came, and I had not caused it! Polter ripped out a startled, rumbling curse and sat upright. Under the curve of his leg I saw Babs had been momentarily neglected. She ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... a poem by Tennyson, in four parts. Pt. i. tells us that the lady passed her life in the island of Shalott in great seclusion, and was known only by the peasantry. Pt. ii. tells us that she was weaving a magic web, and that a curse would fall on her if she looked down the river. Pt. iii. describes how Sir Lancelot rode to Camelot in all his bravery; and the lady gazed at him as he rode along. Pt. iv. tells us that the lady floated down the river in a boat called The Lady of Shalott, and died heart-broken on the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... death. The governor granted him a few moments, that he might once more speak to and bless him. "What, I! I bless a traitor!" exclaimed the enraged Russian, and, turning to his son, with a horrid voice and gesture he pronounced a curse upon him. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... he is, d—n his eyes!" holding out a twelve-pound shot in his ladle; "here's the thundering thief that's spoilt our dinner, Captain Williams, stowed away in the bottom of the copper, as snug as a flea in a soger's blanket. The curse of the twelve geese that eat the grass off o' Solomon's grave upon you!" With these words he threw the shot overboard, and turned to Captain Williams with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... bird's neck? Not for a million paid out o' hand! Without crushing my fine gentleman down into powder? Not for all the blunt of every one o' the Rothschilds! Curse his woman's face! I've got to keep dark now; but when he's crushed, and smashed, and ruined, and pilloried, and drove out of this fine world, and warned off of all his aristocratic race-courses, then I'll come ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Canterbury hastened unto Sir Mordred, and rebuked him for wishing to marry his uncle's wife. 'Leave such desires,' said the Bishop, 'or else I shall curse you with bell, book, and candle. Also, you noise abroad that my lord Arthur is slain, and that is not so, and therefore you will make ill work in the land.' At this Sir Mordred waxed very wroth, and would have killed the Bishop had he not fled to Glastonbury, where he became ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... on hands and knees, swinging from tree and bush, any way, any how, but always onward, never backward, they surge up over the mountain-top, deadly volleys crashing right in among them, and set on the Rebels with a wild hurrah! and the hearts below beat faster, and rough lips curse the blinding smoke and fog that veil all the crest, and on a sudden a shout,—such a one as the children of Israel gave, when the high-piled walls of water bent and swayed and came waving and thundering down on Pharaoh's hopeless hosts,—for there, high up in heaven, streaming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... at all. You were never meant to work. Your curse is the curse of Eve, not Adam. You ought to have a child. You wouldn't be wasting your soul out on a man then. You'd take every farthing that Traill's left you, as it's only right you should. You don't see any ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... all due to that blasted hombre from Texas!" he groaned. "I wish I had him here, curse him! It would've all gone smooth enough if he hadn't meddled. Well, he'll pay! The boys will get him. And when they do——" Hardy thumped the bar with his fist ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... parts. Two thoughts led me to prepare the chapters under the head of PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. First, The defenders of slavery and the traducers of the Negro built their pro-slavery arguments upon biblical ethnology and the curse of Canaan. I am alive to the fact, that, while I am a believer in the Holy Bible, it is not the best authority on ethnology. As far as it goes, it is agreeable to my head and heart. Whatever science has added I have gladly appropriated. I make no claim, however, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Christine; she has always warmly returned the affection of our parents, as a daughter should love the authors of her being, while I fear I have been repining when I should have loved. Our origin is a curse entailed by the ruthless laws of the land, and it is not to be attributed to any, at least to none of these later days, as a fault; and such has ever been the language of my poor sister when she has seen a merit in their wishes to benefit us at the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... than women. I was bred a warrior; my father never knew fear, and I am his son.' Then we behold them surrounded with flames, their flesh torn from their bones, the skin of their head peeled off, coals heaped thereon, and sharp thorns driven into their flesh. The thought of such scenes makes us curse our own existence, and shudder at the thought of bringing children ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... at the pigeon-hole, trying to persuade the much-enduring clerk to restore a lucky sixpence she had given him by mistake, and was quite unable to describe. Mr. Bultitude would have given much just then to go up and shake her into hysterics, or curse her bitterly for the mischief she had done; but he refrained, either from an innate chivalry, or from a feeling that such an ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... she will soon be a mother." She feels convinced, however, that the king's neglect is due to the action of a saint who had cursed Sakuntala because she had not waited on him promptly. "Like a drunkard, her lover shall forget what has happened," was his curse. Relenting somewhat, he added afterward that the force of the curse could be broken by bringing to the king some ornament that he might have left as a souvenir. Sakuntala has her ring, and relying on that she departs with a retinue for the royal abode. On the way, in crossing ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... with post-horses already harnessed to it. . . . When he left this post they found in his cabinet 900 letters which he had not opened. He was an eccentric lunatic, amusing enough sometimes, but a curse to everything which depended on him." (Memoirs of the Duc de ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... trying to devise some scheme whereby he could find a place where no one could molest him or try to steal his gold. 'They will get it yet,' he kept saying, 'unless I can go where no one can find me.' Then he would curse his kind. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... Rochepommier. Finding, at last, that the peasant-girl had—purposely or not—led him astray, he determined to return to Boiscoran through the woods. But he was in very bad humor at having thus lost an evening which he might have spent with his betrothed; and this made him swear and curse, as ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... a blinding rage. He wanted to take a revolver and blow his brains out, then and there. He—a man supposed to have a mind! He—counted a master of those very things! And now, what? Manhood, power, himself gone. Stumbling through his days! Useless!—a curse to himself and everyone else. Groping about in the dark—a thing to be pitied and treated well for pity's sake! Cared for—looked after—helped! That beat down the bounds of control. He did things then which he never remembered ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... from the curse of too much ability. He has both genius and talent, but the talent, instead of acting as a counterpoise to the genius, blows it yet more windily about the air. He has almost all the qualities of a great writer, but some perverse ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and I was kneeling by his dying bed. "My father, my father, I have murdered you!" After some moments it was impressed upon the old man that his penitent son was by his side. I almost looked for the curse that I deserved; but a peaceful light was on his face as he said,—"I'm sorry I hid the books from you, child. I meant well,—I meant well,—I erred. If I can help you from up there, I will." Life departed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... filios,—excommunicatos, anathemizatos, maledictos, aeterni supplicii reos," etc., etc. "Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,—but nothing to this. For my own part I could not have a heart to curse my dog so." ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him—not, indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... who call them friends—but Christ will not suffer us to stop there. "Bless them that curse you," He said; "pray for them that despitefully use you." So He spoke, and on the Cross He made the great word luminous for ever by His own prayer for His murderers: "Father, forgive them; for they know not ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... with my king," she whispered, and the look that she gave him made Barney Custer curse the fate that had failed to make him a ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... control, though his brain was hot as if he wore no turban, under the blaze of the sun. "I will leave things as they are while we are in this black Gehenna," he determined. "What is written is written. Yet who has seen the book of the writing? And there is a curse on all this country, till the M'Zab ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 'You will curse me, but after a time you will forgive. I could not go on. Taranne found me in the forest, just half an hour after you left me. I looked up and saw him coming across the grass. He did not see me at first, he was looking about for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Curse it all, I must tell her. Half knowledge is always dangerous, and is sure to lead to blunders, and there must ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... to which the theologians would fain have pledged the truth of Scripture was an error in the astronomical province. I need scarce refer to the often-adduced case of Galileo. The doctrine which the philosopher had to "abjure, curse, and detest," and which he was never again to teach, "because erroneous, heretical, and contrary to Scripture," was the doctrine of the earth's motion and the sun's stability. But to the part taken by our Protestant divines in the same controversy,—men still regarded as authorities ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... own nobility will stay with you, the way it will not weigh so heavy on you to be in the shape of birds. And go away out of my sight now, children of Lir," she said, "with your white faces, with your stammering Irish. It is a great curse on tender lads, they to be driven out on the rough wind. Nine hundred years to be on the water, it is a long time for any one to be in pain; it is I put this on you through treachery, it is best for you to do as I ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... madness will bring upon her. Let her die;—if it be God's will. I can follow her without one wish for a prolonged life. Then will a noble family be again established, and her sorrowful tale will be told among the Lovels with a tear and without a curse." ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... "On this expedition I went all the way to Jordan and swam across the river. On the edge of the river there is a bush of willows, and there I twisted a knot of willows, and said this knot thou shouldst untie, brother, or take the curse ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... who can say Where lies the boundary? What solid things That daily mock our senses, shall dissolve Before the might within, while shadowy forms Freeze into stark reality, defying The force and will of man. These forms I see, They may go with me through eternity, And bless or curse with ceaseless company, While yonder man, that I met yesternight, Where is he now? He passed before my eyes, He is gone, but these stay ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... consoled mankind," and so "we may hold aloof from the churches and yet bow ourselves before Jesus. We may be suspicious of the clergy and refuse to have anything to do with catechisms, and yet love the Holy and the Just who came to save and not to curse." And in fact Amiel's whole life and thought are steeped in Christianity. He is the spiritual descendant of one of the intensest and most individual forms of Christian belief, and traces of his religious ancestry are visible in him at every step. Protestantism of the sincerer and nobler ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shelf, fixed in the corner, was our tinware. Although called tinware, it really was zinc, and was susceptible, through much hard work, of a high polish, but this "polishing tinware" was a fearful curse to the poor prisoner. It consisted of a jug for water and a bowl for washing in and a pint dish for gruel. There were strict and imperative orders, rigidly enforced, that this tinware should be kept polished, the result being that the men never washed themselves, and never ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... know Sheppard. It never occurred to me that Sheppard existed. Probably he is a myth of totemistic origin. All I know is that you can get a bit of saddle of mutton at Sheppard's that has made many an American visitor curse the day that Christopher Columbus was ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... happened to think of my last visit with you, and my state of mind returned, my feeling of dependence and the gloomy Thanksgiving dinner. The shock of contrast between my old and my new self stopped me short in the road. In a flash I saw the lying materialism on which the world is based, the curse of dollar worship that keeps opportunity away from the young, at the same time it keeps the old in a prison of loneliness and suspicion. If we worshipped life instead of metal disks, we would see that the young are not really the heirs of the old, but the old are heirs of the ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... going to that blessed retreat familiarly known as 'Murray's den,' where, secure from feminine intrusion, as if in the cool cloisters of Coutloumoussi, I surrender my happy soul to science and cigars, and revel in complete forgetfulness of that awful curse which Jove hurled against all mankind, because ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... principally due to cigarettes!" he broke forth, savagely, emphasizing his words with his fist and speaking more excitedly. "Just look at me and behold a splendid example of the cigarette curse. Why, I was naturally bright; I might have been a man to honor. But a bad habit, uncontrolled, soon ruins one. My nerves are gone. I am only a fit companion for jailbirds and criminals. I cannot even look an honest man in the face, yet I am not naturally bad ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... "Curse you, Jack Dalton!" he says. "Unhand that woman, or you shall feel my power, eh?" He sticks his chin close to Adams's face. "Take the air!" he growls. "Where d'ye get that leadin' man stuff? If I see you around here any more this afternoon, I'll fire ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... as a whole. First, that "the seed of the woman" does not refer to the Messiah, but to the human race, which is to bruise the serpent's head. Second, that the serpent engaged in seducing Eve, and here placed under the curse, does not ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... their brows, their faces set Toward the eternal night of restless shapes, They walk in awful splendour, regal yet, Wearing their crimes like rich and kingly capes.... Curse them or taunt, they will not hear or see; The Kings are passing deathward: ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... scene I had witnessed, and demanded vengeance. He laughed in my face. Senor, I persisted, and he got angry and told me that, were it not for my cloth, he would hang me from the steeple. I called down Heaven's curse upon him, and left him and came home. Do you wonder, senor, that I found it hard to spare those Frenchmen for whom you pleaded? Do you wonder that I, a man of peace, lead out my villagers ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... term of imprisonment. It seemed to us that we had never really lived before. The past was a dream, and an evil dream. We had moved in a world of bad enchantment, like phantoms, barely conscious of ourselves. We had now recovered proprietorship in our own lives. Work, that had been a curse, was a blessing. Life, that had gone on maimed feet, was now virile in every part. This mere fulness of health was in itself ample compensation for the loss of a hundred artificial pleasures which we had once thought necessary ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... men—if we can name them men at all. These we took from a tomb of the star race who held Topaz when our world was only a hunting ground of wild men wearing the skins of beasts and slaying mammoths with stone spears. They are from a tomb and are cursed, a curse we took upon ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... I missed the opportunity of seeing Rachel, just as I missed many other opportunities of more importance. Oh! when I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break. The curse for me has not been plucking forbidden fruit, but the refusal of divine fruit offered ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford |
