"Superstition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since reason, histories, experience, anything that is intelligible, will confirm this for a truth; namely, that a people whose profession is directly in opposition to the devil and Antichrist, and to all debauchery, inhumanity, profaneness, superstition, and idolatry, when suffered to be invaded by the dragon, the beast, the false prophet, and whore, must needs taste of these cups, and drink thereof, to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... after those words had been spoken! Was the woman of the mysterious warnings and the wild black eyes still thousands of miles away in America? Or was the march of events taking her unexpectedly, too, on the journey to Venice? Agnes started out of her chair, ashamed of even the momentary concession to superstition which was implied by the mere presence of such questions as these ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... was the haunted house of Father Red-cap, and called to mind the story of Peechy Prauw. The evening was approaching, and the light, falling dubiously among the woody places, gave a melancholy tone to the scene well calculated to foster any lurking feeling of awe or superstition. The night hawk, wheeling about in the highest regions of the air, emitted his peevish, boding cry. The woodpecker gave a lonely tap now and then on some hollow tree, and the firebird[1] streamed by them with ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... town on the frontier, and with it is coupled a whisper of "Castine!" a fort has been surprised, he is there! Some of Church's men have fallen in an ambuscade; the baron has planned it, and furnished the arms and ammunition by which the deed was consummated! Superstition invests him with imaginary powers; fanaticism exclaims, 'tis he who had taught the savages to believe that we are the people who ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Joan said stoutly. "I like to laugh at superstition. You'll pull through and come out the big end of the horn. The ill luck can't last for ever. I am afraid, though, the Solomons is not ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... I knew no better, I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times; to wit, to go to church twice a day, and that too with the foremost; and there should very devoutly, both say and sing as others did, yet retaining my wicked life; but withal, I was so overrun with a spirit of superstition, that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all things, both the high place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else belonging to the church; counting all things holy that were therein contained, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from having their wills drawn on the score that they would be likely to die if they did. While I have no sympathy with this superstition, I must confess that a formal celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of your wedding-day has always seemed to me to savor of willingness to have your account with life audited, with a view to being able to sink quietly and becomingly into your grave ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Christians to exercise, not charity toward each other, but common decency and decorum. But it is a fact nevertheless, and will remain apparent to all so long as priestcraft takes the place of New Testament Christianity and superstition supplants religion." ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... roadside inns, we found huge, coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. It could not have diminished their sufferings any to be so uncouthly represented. We were in the heart and home of priest craft—of a happy, cheerful, contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently: it suits these people precisely; let them enjoy it, along with the other animals, and Heaven forbid that they be molested. We feel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her; but dear mamma said it was "quite ridiculous to make such a fuss about a kitten"—and never herself lost a chance of picking it up and fondling it in her arms. The rest of the family were described by their cousin Charley, who lived over the way, as "sunk in the Persian superstition," and even as "addicted to nigger worship"—an allusion ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... death" on the desert plains of Ethiopia? And while thou hast heard the lady president plead so eloquently for those nations, who, groaning in their self-forged chains, bow to the great Moloch of superstition and idolatry, as to "draw tears of blood," as it were, from the eyes of her rapt and devoted listeners, hast ever marked a pale, trembling child of want totter to the door, and ask for the "crumbs that fall" from this humane society's tea-table, and heard the answer, "Begone! this ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... they had in the city [797]. But the enemy breaking in, and the temple being set on fire, he hid himself all night with the sacristan; and next morning, assuming the disguise of a worshipper of Isis, and mixing with the priests of that idle superstition, he got over the Tiber [798], with only one attendant, to the house of a woman who was the mother of one of his school-fellows, and lurked there so close, that, though the enemy, who were at his heels, searched very strictly after him, they could not discover him. At last, after the success ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... There was but one exception which interested me: a yellow Buddhist monk inquired, what they thought of English missionaries, who in time of famine distributed bread to the poor, but only on one condition, that they adopted the Christian superstition (indifferent whether honestly or not). The so-called 'Ethical Culture Societies' were not admitted by the committee to their congress of many religions. Max, it was pitiful to listen to the tittle-tattle that was read. None had learned beforehand what he wanted to say. Dicere de scripto is a shame ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... superstition, so I will not be ashamed of it," she told him. "We have always believed that white roses bring happiness, especially if they come accidentally at ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the stillness of stagnation than the tranquillity of content. Without a press, without any semblance of popular representation, there hardly remained other alternatives than tame submission or open mutiny. By hereditary habit and superstition the Canadians were trained to the first, and by weakness and want of energy they were ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to empty a bottle of rum at a draught. It was not to be supposed that a king addicted to such habits should conceive any projects of utility or advantage for his people; he wished, however, to distinguish himself by some effort in their favour, or at least to relieve them from the trammels of superstition. He was a freethinker in a bad sense. He hated the religion of his country, because it laid some restraints upon his inclinations, and he determined to overthrow it; not for the purpose of introducing a better, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... to the worst of fear,—to superstition. But whether that, or fondness of a wife, (The more unpardonable ill) has seized you, Know this, the Grecians think you fear Achilles, And that Polyxena ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... amid the flaming meteors. They seemed like creatures in agony, tossing their arms, bewailing in their attitudes the awful fate that had overtaken them, and fairly chilling my blood with the pantomime of torture which they exhibited. I thought of an old superstition which I had often heard about the earth, and exclaimed: "Yes, surely, this ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Sandy to rush forward. He had the childish fear that many country children have of the extremes of Nature, and superstition swayed his every thought. Gathering his loose coat about him and clutching his money close, he made for The Way, and ran with all the strength remaining in him, for ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... said that, Superstition is, in many cases, the cloak that keeps a man's religion from dying of cold; possibly the same may be said of Spiritualism ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... Vagabond;—these are the three chief branches which unite and intertwine to make the poetic crown of Beranger in his best days, and they had their root in passions which with him were profound and living,—hatred of superstition, love of country, love of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... exultant mood. That morning his horse had stumbled and later, while dressing for the evening, a bat flitted in and out of his room through the open window. The fact that these two signs of ill omen did not affect a mind ordinarily subject to the influence of superstition, showed the state of his confidence. He drank freely of the wine and laughed and talked incessantly. What an opportunity to spring the trap he had laid ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... partially dismantled of its once flowing arras, and the lights set upon the table feebly illumined its dreary extent. Tradition marked it out as the chamber in which many of the hapless dames of Rookwood had expired; and hence Superstition claimed it as her peculiar domain. The room was reputed to be haunted, and had for a long space shared the fate of haunted rooms—complete desertion. It was now tenanted by one too young, too pure, to fear aught unearthly. Eleanor seemed, nevertheless, affected by the profound ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said to have been discovered by Don Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain, who fled there after his defeat by the Moors. There was the island of the Seven Cities, which is sometimes identified with this Antilia, and was the object of a persistent belief or superstition on the part of the inhabitants of the Canary Islands. They saw, or thought they saw, about ninety leagues to the westward, an island with high peaks and deep valleys. The vision was intermittent; ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... application of knowledge to the practical purposes of life. Fostered by the spirit of freedom, which goes before to disenthral the mind from that state of servitude in which its powers had been made to minister to ignorant and wayward ambition, or still more cramping and perverting superstition, it promises to gain an universal ascendancy, and to render all that influence which had been arrayed against it, henceforth subservient ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... of reasoning.] Intuition. [False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] Sophistry. — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology[obs3]; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy[obs3], perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet[obs3], quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c. adj.; nonsense &c. 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was absurd and that any one with ordinary intelligence soon got to know a meadow mushroom when he saw one. But sometimes, Olga insisted, they were death cups. If you ate a death cup you died, and nothing could save you. I tried to convince her that this was just a peasant superstition, but she announced that she had seen death cups, many of them, and had seen people who had been killed by them. And then brokenly, and with many heavy gestures of hesitation, she ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... crime, it would be rather for a mistress than a doctrine. The last act of his reign, growing out of his impatience in having his designs on the Princess of Conde baffled, showed that lust could urge him into an unjust and unprincipled war, where religious superstition ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... and modern belief and superstition hinges on the feeling of power in thought and therefore in words. Thought CAUSES things as any other power does. Think something hard, use the appropriate word, and presto,—what you desire is done. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... power of superstition over the minds of negroes; for though this man had resided seven years in England, it was evident that he still retained the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger? [Would that this was so:—error, superstition, mysticism, authoritarianism, pseudo-science all have a tenacity that survives inexplicably. D.W.] I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... "Superstition festers in their very bones! The giant bird, they believed, would ruin their date crops; and, besides, they thirsted for the blood of the Franks. As a matter of fact, my Captain, these people do sometimes drink a little of the blood ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... he might the more easily inflict punishment and torture upon the innocent. One of these was called Praetor of the People, whose nominal duty it was to deal with thieves; the second was called the Commissioner, whose function it was to punish all cases of paederasty, buggery, superstition and heresy. If the Praetor found any articles of value amongst stolen goods, he handed them over to the Emperor, declaring that no owner could be found for them, and in this manner Justinian every day got possession of something of very great value. The ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... ha'nts. When she 'spected[FN: inspected] us once a week, you better not have no charm 'roun' yo' neck, neither. She wouldn' even 'low[FN: allow] us wear a bag o' asfittidy[FN: asafetida]. Mos' folks b'lieved dat would keep off sickness. She called such as dat superstition. She say us was 'lightened Christian Presbyterians, an' as ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... begins by saying that the play is so well known that it is needless to give an account of it. "But what is the meaning," he exclaims, "of this bold and poetic mixture of clowns and fairies, of mythology, and superstition, of high and low, of the earthly and the supernatural? And the scene is neither Athens nor Greece, but Shakespeare's own England; it is his own time and his own spirit." We are transported to an English grove in early summer ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... the question, May not this, after all, be God's work? May He not, for wise ends, have doomed me to this lot? A contest had been going on in my mind for years, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible errors of superstition; between the wisdom of manly courage, and the foolish weakness of timidity. The contest was now ended; the chain was severed; God and right stood vindicated. I was A FREEMAN, and the voice of peace and joy ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... consider Revelation a superstition, and Jesus either an enthusiast or a deceiver. To this class belong Wuensch and Paalzow, but no divine. The second class do not allow that there was any divine operation in Christianity in any way, and refer the origin of Christianity ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... direction from the Persian Gulf to Formosa and Japan, and in the other from the wastes of Siberia to the Gulf of Siam. Scarce any of the other forms of heathenism darken so large a portion of the map as Buddhism,—a superstition which is estimated to include within its pale nearly one third of ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... moment the boy's flesh crept on his bones, and the hair of his head seemed to rise up from his scalp. The groping of those phantom hands against the wall just beside him was enough to fill the stoutest heart with terror, in an age when superstition was always rife. He strove to call to his brothers; but his voice was no more than a whisper, and his throat felt dry and parched. Failing in making himself heard by his companions, he cowered down and drew ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Hercules of the new world. He sauntered slowly back to his aunt's, husbanding his cigar a little, and looking up at the moon now and then,—not to admire the marvel of her shining, but to think yet again what a fit type of an effete superstition she was, in that she retained her power of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... cruel, because our old ideals are only dying, they are in extremis, they are virtually defunct, but they are above-ground—we trip and stumble on them. We shall eventually lay them tidily away. This is a bad moment, because it's a moment of transition, and we still miss the old superstition, the bravery of execution, the eloquence of the lips, the interpretation of character. We miss these things, of course, in proportion as the ostensible occasion for them is great; we miss them particularly, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... of general ignorance and superstition, the announcement of a great scientific or philosophic truth may produce commotion, persecution, and discord. But it is evident that these are the results of ignorance and not of knowledge—of unenlightened ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... race is yet barbaric, and as a people we fail utterly to touch the hem of the garment of Divinity. We have been mired in the superstition that sex is unclean, and therefore honesty and free expression in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the expedition of Legaspi and the Augustine monks visited the shores of the Visayan islands were the natives subjugated, and the finding of the Santo Nino (Holy Child) brought this about. Since then the monks and friars, playing on the superstition of the islanders, have managed to control them and to mold them to their purposes. In 1568 a permanent establishment was made at Cebu by the bestowal of munitions, troops, and arms, brought by the galleons of Don Juan de Salcedo. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... cloathed, and poverty and superstition lord it wide. The wines of this place, from a late improvement in the vines, are equal to the second kind of Madeira, and I cannot pass over this subject without making honourable mention of the candour of ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... amusing the Devil, and giving him an abundance of work, all directed to destroying the happiness of God's finest creation—man. Treating the Devil from a Darwinian point of view, we may assert that he developed himself from the protoplasm of ignorance, and in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething mass of moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice among its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, rising up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory VII, could he have beheld the representative ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... always, fascinated by the mammoth trays of bread, the enormous flood of sustenance produced as the result of his energy and ability. Each loaf was shut in a sanitary paper envelope; the popular superstition, sanitation, had contributed as much as anything to his marked success. He liked to picture himself as a great force, a granary on which the city depended for life; it pleased him to think of thousands of people, men, women and children, waiting for his loaves ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... felt as though it shivered. I stood motionless till the last and least sound had reverberated through the now silent court, and there was nothing to be heard but the beating of my own heart. There I stood fixed like a statue, afraid to stir, even to heave my chest to sigh—this, then, was superstition. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... any augury of an ancient traditional order, such as had won faith for centuries, applied to a fate so interesting as that of the ship to which he was on the point of committing himself. Other causes might be assigned, causative of nautical superstition, and tending to feed it. But enough. It is well known that the whole family of sailors is superstitious. My brother, poor Pink, (this was an old household name which he retained amongst us from an incident of his childhood,) was so in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... they first sprung into existence, will desolate unhappy Europe. My hopes appear to you too bold,—I read it in your doubting countenances; but listen to me whilst I explain. Religious disagreements will give rise to these frenzies. Then first will Fanaticism, the wild son of Hatred and Superstition, untie all the bonds of nature and humanity. The father will murder the son, and the son the father; kings will joyfully dip their fingers in the blood of their subjects, and place the sword in the hands of bigots, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... Wales, his brother-in-law). And this year came a fleet from Norway. It is tedious to tell how these matters went." These were the normal phenomena of a reign which seemed, to the eyes of monks, a holy and a happy one; because the king refused, whether from spite or superstition, to have an heir to the house of Cerdic, and spent his time between prayer, hunting, the seeing of fancied visions, the uttering of fancied prophecies, and the performance of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the face of a civilised human being. The Wandering Chukchis had soon found out their situation and frequently visited them on reindeer-sledges, and brought them fresh meat, and blubber which they used for lamp-oil; but these natives, on account of a superstition which I have previously mentioned, refused to sell them any living reindeer, so that all their efforts to procure transportation were unavailing. The party originally consisted of five men—Macrae, Arnold, Robinson, Harder, and Smith; but Macrae ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of a coterie ascribe to her interest in me her pitiless judgment of Lilian. Strangely enough, with the image of this archetype of conventional usages and the trite social life, came that of the mysterious Margrave, surrounded by all the attributes with which superstition clothes the being of the shadowy border-land that lies beyond the chart of our visual world itself. By what link were creatures so dissimilar riveted together in the metaphysical chain of association? Both had entered into the record ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chair, and covered Bobby's mouth with her hand. "Hush!" she said, and stared about her with frightened eyes. The door into the dining-room was open, and the governess sat there with a book. Then, in a whisper: "They are everywhere. No one knows who they are, nor where they meet." The superstition of her mountains crept into her voice. "It is said that they have the assistance of the evil one, and that the reason the police cannot find them is because they take the form of cats. I myself," ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... vast arch above. Resplendent amidst the throng rose the Pleiades, the mythological seven hailed by the Greeks as an augury of safe navigation. And the Dyaks—one of the few remaining savage races of the world—share the superstition of the people who fashioned all the arts and most ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary life of Slavery everywhere,—injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror, degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great political party—counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles, the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... away both of us were looking down in the snow around the beech tree, and around the snow man, and sure enough there were horse's tracks, the kind of tracks that showed that the horse had shoes on. And even while I was scared and wondering "What on earth!" there popped into my red head the crazy superstition that if you found a horseshoe and put it up over the door of your house or one of the rooms of your house, you would have ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... convinced of the errors of the Romish church, and the vileness of its monastic agents, he determined to expose them. In public lectures he lashed their vices and opposed their follies. He unfolded a variety of abuses covered by the darkness of superstition. At first he began to loosen the prejudices of the vulgar, and proceeded by slow advances; with the metaphysical disquisitions of the age, he mingled opinions in divinity apparently novel. The usurpations of the court of Rome was a favourite topic. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and trifled with the secret of success and happiness when he said it: "There's only a dollar's difference between the man who works and the man who pays, and the man who pays, gets that." There is an old superstition that somewhere on the earth, under the earth or in the sea, there is a stone called the "philosopher's stone" and whoever finds it will be "chiefest among ten thousand." The same superstition prevails with many today; only the name of the stone is turned to "luck," and thousands of young men are ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... not always safe to trust too implicitly in the genial old faith that Providence helps those who help themselves; though the complementary theory, that Providence does not help those who do not help themselves, may be pretty generally correct. Maybe I was too complaisant. (If I have a superstition to-day, it is that a jealous Nemesis keeps ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... death," said Caesar, "there is nothing," and all the world agreed with him. The hour, too, in which three thousand gods had not a single atheist, had gone, never to return. Old faiths had crumbled. None the less was Rome the abridgment of every superstition. The gods of the conquered had always been part of her spoils. The Pantheon had become a lupanar of divinities that presided over birth, and whose rites were obscene; an abattoir of gods that presided ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... commencement of the voyage, believed in the prospect of an easy and rapid success, when the appearance of a brilliant comet on eight consecutive days struck the ignorant and simple minds of the sailors with terror; they considered it must be a bad omen, and for this once events appeared to justify superstition. A fearful storm arose, waves mountains high broke over the ships, whilst the wind blew furiously and rain fell without ceasing. When the sun at length succeeded in piercing the thick curtain of clouds which almost entirely intercepted his rays, a horrible ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... The folly, superstition, and ignorance of men had dared to assume then, as they have done lately, that the world would soon come to an end. My mind, however, remained perfectly tranquil, because I reasoned thus with myself firmly and definitely:—Mankind will not pass from the world, nor will the world ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... her dead boy To a Dove Fall of Superstition The Infant St. John the Baptist Shelley's Obsequies The Fountain Revisited Death of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Chaillot, the scourge with which he had vigorously avenged her wrongs upon his own shoulders. Nothing but Catharine's absence could put an end to this struggle between an ignoble love and an ignoble superstition. James wrote, imploring and commanding her to depart. He owned that he had promised to bid her farewell in person. "But I know too well," he added, "the power which you have over me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep my resolution if I see you." He offered her ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... especially a prefect with a scorn for superstition, does not like to admit herself baffled. Geraldine thought the matter over, took Loveday into her confidence, and went to Miss Todd. As the result of her interview she resolved to set what she called "a very neat little spook-trap". ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... town is surrounded by groves of trees, which are the residence of innumerable apes, whose propensity to mischief is increased by the religious respect paid to them in honour of a divinity of the Hindoo mythology, who is represented as possessing the body of an ape. In consequence of this superstition, such numbers of these animals are supported by the voluntary contributions of pilgrims, that no one dares to resist or ill-treat them. Hence, access to the town is often difficult; for should one of the apes take a dislike to any unlucky traveller, he is sure to be assailed by the ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... stronger thing than the tie of a common worship for which the tribe had to go to another part of the country, and to come in contact with a multitude of other cults. Worship therefore became more and more a superstition: a thing, that is to say, whose real sacredness was in the past, and which was only kept up from pious habit; it did not supply the inspiration of ordinary life nor guide the more active ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the old man's superstition, Flint climbed the stairs to his own room, as softly as possible, lest Brady's wrath at being waked descend upon him. Having closed his door cautiously, he sat down by the open window, enjoying the soothing dampness of the fog ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the owner of the 'bicycle face' has his features set in lines of deadly resolution; the 'golf face' displays fanatical enthusiasm and a puzzled look resulting from a struggle with the vocabulary of the game; the 'poker face' shows immobility and superstition; the 'telegraph face,' according to a well-known New York professor, is 'vacant, stoic and unconcerned,' but the 'telephone face' stands out among all of these in a class peculiar to itself. There are traces of a battle and defeat marked on it; the stamp of hope deferred and resignation, ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... and spend his life trying to give her pleasure. That is what ought to happen, so of course it won't. Instead, Philip will go and marry some uncomfortable sort of person with a mission. Oh, dear! what if it should be—? There, I will not allow my mind to turn in that direction. I have a sort of superstition that thinking too much about any unfortunate thing helps to bring it about. I think it must be this city life which makes me feel so blue and discouraged. The fact is, I do not like New York. In the first place, because it is not Boston; and in the second place, because ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... gentlemen, were conscientiously and immovably fixed in opposition to any concession at all, some refusing to regard the question in any but a purely religious light, and objecting to associate in the task of legislation for those whom they regarded as adherents of an idolatrous superstition; while those who mingled political reasoning with that founded on theology dwelt also on the danger to be apprehended to the state, if political power were given to those whose allegiance to the King was divided with another ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... trend of the ground, for some time, sooner or later, we shall do well to have it in our mind's eye when we are considering the ancient traditions and superstitions, and are trying to find the rationale of them. Each legend, each superstition which we receive, will help in the understanding and possible elucidation of the others. And as all such have a local basis, we can come closer to the truth—or the probability—by knowing the local conditions as we go ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... hope it won't be real," Mr. DeVere said, "But—Oh, well, I suppose I may as well admit the truth. You'll probably call me fussy and all that, and laugh at the superstition of an old actor. But you know we have our traditions, though I am free to confess that I have lost many of them since entering on this moving picture work. But I had a dream about this same shipwreck, and that was before I knew ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... Bottazzi and his assistants brought to bear on the medium. No more worship here, no awe, no hesitation, no superstition. Among other things, he put into the cabinet a small table weighing about fifteen pounds, and on top of it arranged a hair-brush, a hen's feather, a bottle full of water, and a very thick glass. These articles and the table were the only objects that ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... rusty in the habits and the ignorance of many years, complain that the times are worse; at the sight of a higher civilisation, they complain of "the luxury and the pride of the world now-a-days;" as superstition dies out, they complain of "human incredulity, and the downfall of religion." "The day of judgment," ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... shout of weird exultation. The man, ridden by his racial superstition, stared open-mouthed at the tiny demon who screeched defiance ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... cries Superstition, who settled long since in the country, near a church yard on a "rising ground," "any ghostesses! Ay, man, lots on 'em! Bushels on 'em! Sights on 'em! Why, there's one as walks in our parish, reglar as the clock ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... guise of religion. Preachers as jealous of the power slipping from their hands as ever was primate of England! A poor gentleman hounded to his death because he practised the sciences! Millions of victims all the world over burned for witchcraft, sacrificed to a Moloch of superstition in the name of a Christ who came to let in the light of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... of an infidel from Lyons, who sometimes amused himself with the Breton's superstition, told him with a grave face, that the splinter belonged not to him, but to the sutler, and, though so small, was doubtless a necessary part ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... accommodate him, and confirm the crew in the whistling superstition, the breeze did increase at the moment, and sent the lifeboat, as one of the men said, "snorin'" over the wild sea ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... decline from their ancient simplicity, much farce and grimace are introduced. Superstition, the manners of a people, and their situation, influence the modes of salutation; as may be observed from the instances ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... upon deck. The 21st of October was a festival in his family; because on that day his uncle, Captain Suckling, in the Dreadnought, with two other line of battle ships, had beaten off a French squadron of four sail of the line and three frigates. Nelson, with that sort of superstition from which few persons are entirely exempt, had more than once expressed his persuasion that this was to be the day of his battle also; and he was well pleased at seeing his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Parliament had begun to sell the pictures at York House. On the 23d July in that year votes were passed ordering the sale, for the benefit of Ireland and the North, of all such pictures at York House 'as were without any superstition.' Pictures containing representations of the Second Person in the Trinity, or of the Virgin Mary, were judged to be superstitious, and ordered to be burned forthwith. Immediately after the King's death, votes were passed for the sale of all his pictures, statues, jewels, hangings, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... an interesting fact, bearing on the popular superstition that Wall Street is peopled by unprincipled worshippers of the dollar who are incapable of those finer qualities of character which are confined exclusively to other walks of life, that there is no ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... London Missionary Society is already a long one. As far back as 1871, the Revs. A. W. Murray and S. McFarlane sailed from Mare, one of the Loyalty Islands, with eight native teachers, inhabitants of that group, with whom to begin the campaign against sin, superstition, and savagery in New Guinea. The first station occupied was Darnley Island, and Mr. Murray gives an incident that well illustrates the spirit in which these men, themselves trophies of missionary success, entered upon their work. Speaking about another island, the natives, ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... wife mentioned of his being a tale-teller, as well as a musician, now occurred to me; and as you know I like tales of superstition, I begged to have a specimen of his talent as we ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... his person for his temerity either with a dreadful stomach-ache that would not permit him to eat his Christmas dinner, or would suffer a pest of boils. He confessed that he always had wished to test practically this superstition, but that his faith in it had been too strong to suffer ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... bursting boisterously into my little bedroom in quest of top or ball, checked myself, with a feeling more akin to superstition than to reverence, on finding Aunt Judy on her knees beside the pretty cot she had just made up so snugly and tenderly for me, pouring her ever-brimming heart out in clear, refreshing springs of prayer. Led by these still waters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... fourteen, but one guest had failed her. It was apparent that something must be done, and this was cleverly solved by the hostess sending for her mother, who joined the party, and the dinner proceeded. I do not think all the guests believed in this absurd superstition, but they were all very uncomfortable. I do not believe I met a society woman in Washington or New York who would walk through a cemetery or graveyard at midnight alone. I asked several ladies if they would do ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... the night before he had appeared totally subdued. Never once did he venture a comment. And ever Donnegan was conscious of big, bright eyes watching him in a reverent fear not untinged by superstition. Once, in the middle of the night, he had wakened and seen the vast shadow of George's form leaning over the sack of money. Murder by stealth in the dark had been in the giant's mind, no doubt. But when, after that, he came and leaned over Donnegan's bunk, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... astonished at these things that he had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening had not been natural! Was that an old man's senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... it Genius defies the laws of perspective Hope deferred maketh the heart sick I never greatly envied anybody but the dead In the long analysis of the ages it is the truth that counts Just about enough cats to go round Moral bulwark reared against hypocrisy and superstition The coveted estate of silence, time's only absolute gift We went outside to keep from getting wet What a pleasure there is in revenge! When in doubt, tell the truth When it is my ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they should all be out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have been the most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not help noticing, even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters' clothes, than in the steaks. This collation disposed of at a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not charged for), we went back to Barnard's ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour superstition sets apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest. At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature, and ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... because the Bible was full of it, and that witches should be punished with death. This made an impression upon me, because it was an instance, rare to me then, but common enough now, of how minds, otherwise exceptionally able, may have a spot so encankered with creed, bigotry, and superstition as to render their judgments respecting certain classes of phenomena erroneous ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... fish within the river and fruit upon the palm, none shall starve and none shall hoard. Superstition and dogma, fear and cruelty, shall have no place with us. We understand—you and I; and what we know we shall teach. And nothing shall survive of the world that was, save such things as were good. For the old order has passed away—and the new day shall ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... you in the words of a favorite author of the day. He says, 'It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of traveling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old, even in youth, among—old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... find that many of these small phalli were worn for personal decoration; and here we come to a still lower decadence in sex worship,—the period of superstition. A phallus was worn as a charm, somewhat as a fetish to ward off disease. Such charms were supposed to bring good luck and prosperity to the owner and they were used particularly as a charm against barrenness in women. A sign which ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... her, and she proceeded to search confusedly among the endless pages of names, a little strengthened and cheered by her brief interview with the publisher. It seemed that she was in a lucky vein: trouble is always conducive to superstition. When visible hope fails, poor human hearts turn to the invisible ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... into this vigorous exercise. He began a long series of like documents with a tract entitled "Truth Exalted." The intent of it was to show that Roman Catholics, Churchmen, and Puritans alike were all shamefully in error, wandering in the blackness of darkness, given over to idle superstition, and being of a character to correspond with their fond beliefs; meanwhile, the Quakers were the only people then resident in Christendom whose creed was absolutely true and their lives ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... has undergone no material change since we have any record of it; and to use any other word than "beauty" for what we mean by beauty, or than "goodness" for what we mean by goodness, would seem a mere superstition of originality. The interpretation offered, in what follows, of the existence of these experiences is sufficiently startling to require no assistance from novelty of phrasing to give it interest and poignancy. That our souls are actually able to touch, in the darkness which ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the others who died? One specific case appeals to the reader more effectually than the report of the death of unknown thousands. Brunswick's father had been a noted general in the war with Napoleon. Explain, "Death's prophetic ear". This refers to a common superstition that "the veil of the future is lifted to those near to death". Show how the poet has broken the order of succession of the pictures. Brunswick's death is recorded before the breaking up ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... she said at last, in a very oracular tone, "I mean superstition. And I call that story of yours a piece of superstition and ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... like this, sir," he answered at last, with the shamefaced air of the intelligent laboring man who confesses to a superstition. "We Cornish are old-fashioned, and we has our ideas. The Tyrrels are new people like, in Cornwall, as we say; they came in only with Cromwell's folk, when he fought the Grenvilles; but it's well beknown in the county bad luck goes with them. You see, they're descended ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... moment, and then described his vision in the wood the morning of his wife's death. It made a deep impression on his hearers. There was scarcely a man in the assembly who was not tinged with the superstition of the age; and all listened, not lightly or sceptically, but in awe, as if it brought them to the threshold ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... A similar superstition supposes that the sole of the left shoe of a person of the same age, but opposite sex, to the patient, reduced to ashes is a cure for St. Anthony's fire. I have seen it applied with success, but suppose its efficacy is due to some astringent ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... grew only more puzzled—and more puzzled. He could have understood a moral shrinking from the enterprise on which they were both embarked—the betrayal of the city that gave them shelter. He could have understood—he had superstition enough—a moral distaste for alchemy and those practices of the black art which his mind connected with it. But this superiority of the scholar, this aloofness, not from the treachery, but from the handicraft, was beyond him. For that reason ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... trust. He was not the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there was something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... among other causes, contributes to the backwardness and barbarism of Ireland. Its debasing superstition, childish ceremonies, and the profound submission to the priesthood which it teaches, all tend to darken men's minds, to impede the progress of knowledge and inquiry, and to prevent Ireland from becoming as free, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Has earth a clod Its Maker meant not should be trod By man, the image of his God, Erect and free, Unscourged by Superstition's rod To bow ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... a sort of superstition that life is a goodly gift which must not be cast aside for a whim; and why should you despair of finding peace? There is so much that is delightful ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... exploded the Indians retreated, taking with them their dead and wounded and did not come back any more that, night. An Indian will risk his life rather than leave a dead member of his band in the white man's possession. It is an old superstition that if a warrior loses his scalp he forfeits his hope of ever reaching the "happy hunting ground." Col. Willis and Kit Carson camped there until two o'clock in the morning when they went down off of the stone ridge out onto the open prairie ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... green, some withered, heaped about three feet high. Above them rose the top of a wooden cross, painted black. In several of the Corsican cantons, especially those among the mountains, a very ancient custom, connected, it may be with some pagan superstition, constrains every passer-by to cast either a stone or a branch on the spot whereon a man has died a violent death. For years and years—as long as the memory of his tragic fate endures—this strange offering goes on accumulating ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... mere superstition; I made wagers with myself—and gained them; I went down on the esplanade of Princes Street, walked and stood there, alone and conspicuous, looking across the garden at the old grey bastions of the fortress, where ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an obstacle in our way. We must hold that to be no crime which advances our common objects. Mesh upon mesh we must entangle the future monarch in our web: thou, by the nets of pleasure; I, by those of superstition. The day that sees Philip the Fourth upon the throne, must be a day of jubilee for the Brotherhood and the Inquisition. When thou art prime minister, and I grand inquisitor—that time must come—we shall have the power to extend the sway of the sect of Loyola to ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in placing the tomb of Mahomet at Mecca.—Astl. I. 100. d.—Christian travellers are debarred from visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. At Mecca the grand object of pilgrimage is the Caaba or holy house, containing a black stone, the remains of the ancient Pagan superstition of the Arabians: Perhaps the same with the Lingam or Priapus ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... which the Greek women performed their devotions, and the men in the latter. Two doors, one on either side of the passage in which we now were, opened into a third gallery, where I was told stood the "gates of heaven and hell." They are of marble, but the origin of this superstition I could not learn. The floor of the mosque was covered with beautiful carpets, and the ornaments resembled those I saw in that of Soliman the Magnificent, which is considered a much finer building. St. Sophia is also surpassed in beauty by the mosque of Sultan Mehemet, which may ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... There lay no sufficient answer in me. I felt what she felt, though with differences. No conclusive explanation lay within reach. Nothing happened. Eager as I was to shoot the entire business into the rubbish heap where ignorance and superstition discharge their poisonous weeds, I could not honestly accomplish this. To treat Frances as a child, and merely "explain away" would be to strain her confidence in my protection, so affectionately claimed. It would further be dishonest to ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... inherited or preconceived ideas may seem as infallible to us as any so-called axiomatic or intuitive truths. This delusion of the mind has led to multitudes of errors and has held people in bondage to ignorance and superstition in all centuries and in all countries. It has ever been the greatest hindrance to progress. Closely allied to this and reinforcing it is the inertia of the mind, through which it naturally continues to run in the grooves in which it has been running. ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... her afraid that she was turning into a suspicious creature, like jealous brides she had read about. She determined to be silent as a self-punishment, and firmly steered the Monarchic into a backwater of her thoughts, while Knight talked of the Valley House party and their credulous superstition. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... terrific peal of thunder. He rose at once, pale and evidently agitated, and, whispering hoarsely, "Wait till Christmas; they are angry," he hurried away. I have seen many such evidences of the deep influence of this superstition on them. ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... shall be recognised ungrudgingly, But a journalist of my democratic tendencies cannot let such an opportunity as this slip. The bubble of official infallibility must be pricked. This superstition must be destroyed, like ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... good regulations with respect to burials. In the first place, to take away all superstition, he ordered the dead to be buried in the city, and even permitted their monuments to be erected near the temples; accustoming the youth to such sights from their infancy, that they might have no uneasiness from them, nor any horror for death, as if people were ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... clock, called West Africans Cokkerapeek Cock-speak. All the world over it is the subject of superstition: see Giles's "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" (i. 177), where Miss Li, who is a devil, hears ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Placentia, in Estremadura. He entered this retreat in February, 1556, and died there on the 21st of September, 1558, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. The last six months of his existence, contrasted with the daring vigor of his former life, formed a melancholy picture of timidity and superstition. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... out the superstition I have mentioned, a few days subsequently a death, or rather two deaths, did actually take place; they were the twins and only children of a Scottish shepherd and his wife, both on board. Pretty little girls of eight, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Roman Catholics this idea remains an indisputable religious truth of the highest import. Those of a different creed may think fit to dispose of the whole subject of the Madonna either as a form of superstition or a form of Art. But merely as a form of Art, we cannot in these days confine ourselves to empty conventional criticism. We are obliged to look further and deeper; and in this department of Legendary Art, as in the others, we must take ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Reformation, when the Christian world was enveloped in Popish darkness and superstition, when the existence of fairies and other spectres was not questioned, and when such a swarm of idle people, under the names of minstrels, poets, begging friars, etc., were permitted to ramble about, it may be supposed ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... superstition whole systems of philosophy have been elaborated and taught; all politics are based on this principle; and each politician, whatever his colours, comes forward and says to the people, "Give my party the power; we can and we ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... (Vol. iii., p. 141.).—There is no question of Matt. Paris alluding here to the old prophecy which forbade a king's wearing his crown in Lincoln, or, as some think, even entering the city. Although he makes John the first to break through the superstition, yet the same is attributed to his predecessor Stephen, who is described by H. Huntingdon as entering the city fearlessly—"prohibentibus quibusdam superstitiosis." This was after the great disasters of Stephen's reign; but as the succession ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... the birds alone, over a surface covered with mounds and inequalities, he constructed a new wagon on which the colossal statue was dragged along by more than 150 Indians, in turn, who, in their fanatical superstition, asserted that, during the late hours of the night there came from the mouth of the figure the words "Conex! Conex!" which signifies in their language, "Let us go! Let ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... considerable treasure which is concealed in a statue called the White Lady. The traditions affirmed that this lady was the protectress of the Avenels. All the clan were believers in the story, and the villagers declared they had often seen her in the neighborhood. Gaveston, however, does not share their superstition nor believe in the legend, and some time after the departure of the Laird he announces the sale of the castle, hoping to obtain it at a low rate because the villagers will not dare to bid for it through fear of the White Lady. The steward is led to do this because he has heard the Laird ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... sent the manager three great, large tragedies. He knew the aversion a theatrical manager has to read a manuscript play, not recommended by influential folk; an aversion which always has been carried to superstition. So he hit on the ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... a stream of electricity passed through the company. Their mirth was extinguished, for none could wholly free their minds from the superstition of their age. The good Doctor sat down, and wiped his moistened eye-glasses. He would tell no more to-night, he said. He had really gone too far, making jest of earnest and earnest of jest, and begged pardon of Jumonville for complying with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Providence, good men of various denominations have planted mission stations within the hallowed enclosures of the proud monarch of that great empire, and in the midst of superstition and abomination planted ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... has become a fixed fact in New Zealand, as it is in the Fijis and in Torres Strait. Superstition is no doubt partly to blame, but cannibalism is certainly owing to the fact that there are moments when game is scarce and hunger great. The savages began by eating human flesh to appease the demands of an appetite rarely satiated; subsequently the priests regulated ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... perhaps because the elements of superstition still lurked in the mind of Colonel Harris, he decided not to stop any more at the Hotel Waldorf. It had brought him ill-luck, so his party was driven to the tall Hotel Plazza ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Is "tanging" a superstition or not? People learned in bees ought to know, but I never happened to meet one who had settled the question. It is curious how such beliefs or superstitions fix themselves in the popular mind of a countryside, and are held by wise and simple alike. David the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... vulgar and even counterfeit incredulity; the one gross vice of German philosophy, not less determinate or less misleading than that vice which, heretofore, through many centuries, had impoverished this subject, and had stopped its discussion under the anile superstition ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey |
