"Superstitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people is intoxicated by passion, or carried away by the impetuosity of its ideas, it is checked and stopped by the almost invisible influence of its legal counsellors, who secretly oppose their aristocratic propensities to its democratic instincts, their superstitious attachment to what is antique to its love of novelty, their narrow views to its immense designs, and their habitual procrastination to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... upon by a superstitious parishioner, who asked him to do something for her sick cow. He disclaimed knowing anything about such matters, but could not put her off. She insisted that if he would only say some words over the cow, the animal ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... fear. A length I found that he had altered his route; at first he had followed the London road; but now he changed it, and upon enquiry I found that the one which he now pursued led towards the sea. My dream recurred to my thoughts; I was not usually superstitious but in wretchedness every one is so. The sea was fifty miles off, yet it was towards it that he fled. The idea was terrible to my half crazed imagination, and almost over-turned the little self possession that still remained to me. I journied ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... allowed, or not generally in use, but maintained that the real obstacles to a registration in this country lie not so much in the difficulty of carrying it out, as in the prejudices of landowners, the self-interest of lawyers, and the superstitious dread entertained by John Bull generally of anything to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... "is superstitious, as all mountaineers are. She thinks it unlucky to dine thirteen. It certainly has happened twice (whether from chance or not who can tell?) that we have had to mourn the death of an acquaintance who had, a short time before, made the thirteenth ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... which extraordinary and marvellous effects are ascribed, of evoking and subjecting to the human will supernatural powers, and of producing by means of them apparitions, incantations, cures, &c., and the practice of which we find prevailing in all superstitious ages of the world and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the glint of stars, shall seem a malignant face; I fancy to hear impossible footsteps behind us, some bone that crumbling falls from its shelf makes my heart beat high, her dear hand trembles in my hold, and, full of a new and superstitious awe, I half fear this ancient population of the graves will rise and surround us with phantom array. Now and then, a cold, lonely wind, blowing from no one knows where, rises and careers past us, piercing to the marrow. I think, too, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... from the book he was reading, and stared hard at the Parson; and he—not venturing to withdraw his whole attention from the pad, (who, indeed, set up both her ears at the apparition of Riccabocca, and evinced symptoms of that surprise and superstitious repugnance at unknown objects which goes by the name of "shying,")—looked ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... during their lives to conceal their light under a bushel, whose heads death has withdrawn from the fury of persecutors, and whose cold ashes, consequently, do not hear in the tomb either the importunate and denunciatory cries of the superstitious, or the just eulogiums of the friends of truth; thirdly and lastly, because this curiosity, so unfortunately entertained, may compromise in the most cruel manner the repose, the fortune, and the liberty of the relatives and friends of the authors ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... to the Church of Rome. I know and believe that there are many earnest and conscientious members—of this there cannot be a doubt; yet it is equally true, that the most devoted Papists are to be found among the most ignorant, bigoted, and superstitious of men. The masses of your church are deceived with pretended miracles and wondrous legends, such as the one currently reported respecting the holy house of Loretto, which seems so migratory, and flies hundreds of miles in a night. These marvelous tales are credited by the uneducated; ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... "children" to the charge again and again; and all the while with the sunlight full on her radiant, spirited head, and with the grim, gray raven flying above her, shrieking shrilly its "Tue, tue, tue!" The Army believed with superstitious faith in the potent spell of that veteran bird, and the story ran that, whenever he flew above a combat, France was victor before the sun set. The echo of the raven's cry, and the presence of the child who, they knew, would have a thousand musket-balls ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... all day in slippers on the break of the poop, smoking a long German pipe; Wemyss (pronounced Weems) with its bat-haunted caves, where the Chevalier Johnstone, on his flight from Culloden, passed a night of superstitious terrors; Leven, a bald, quite modern place, sacred to summer visitors, whence there has gone but yesterday the tall figure and the white locks of the last Englishman in Delhi, my uncle Dr. Balfour, who was still walking his hospital rounds, while the troopers from Meerut clattered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the fulling mills," said Don Quixote, "I have never seen Sancho in such a fright as now; were I as superstitious as others his abject fear would cause me some little trepidation of spirit. But come here, Sancho, for with the leave of these gentles I would say a word or two to thee in private;" and drawing Sancho aside ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... verses on Helen, for which he was punished by Castor and Pollux with loss of sight, but on making his recantation in a palinodia, his eyes were graciously restored to him. Lucian has affronted her still more grossly by making her run away with Cinyrus; but he, we are to suppose, being not over superstitious, defied the power of Castor ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... not do well and multiply." The prohibited degrees were more distant than among us. It was a horror of incest that had led to the general custom all over Polynesia of exchanging children for adoption. Only this explanation could reconcile it with the almost superstitious love the Polynesian father and mother have for children. Their feeling surpasses the parental affection prevailing in the remainder of the world, yet adoption is a stronger bond than blood. No child was raised by its own genitors. The Tetuanuis had brought up twenty-five, all freely ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... whip" has served its purpose,—if it ever had any useful purpose,—after a doctrine like that of witchcraft has hanged old women enough, civilization contrives to get rid of it. When we say that civilization crowds out the old superstitious legends, we recognize two chief causes. The first is the naked individual protest; the voice of the inspiration which giveth man understanding. This shows itself conspicuously in the modern poets. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pathetic town of Marbury, there lived a green and scrumptious lady with a wriggling troop of fantastic grandchildren, who made her life miserable. First of all was the eldest, the awful and weird William, who was quite intolerable. Next to him was the cute and sublime Archie, who was always jolly and superstitious. They had a sullen and sarcastic sister, the entrancing Edna, whom they delighted to tease. One summer their delightful and sarcastic cousins, the mournful and flowery Eunice, and the melodious Cricket ["Auntie! you put that there on ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... would capture it "though it were fastened by chains to heaven." But each mad attack of his wild troopers was beaten back from the walls by the desperate townsfolk; and at last, with twelve thousand of his men dead, he retreated from before the stubborn port. A superstitious load was lifted from the minds even of those who pretended to be his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... is not made on purpose to frighten superstitious people into fits of piety and devotion, nor to overwhelm devoted cities with destruction; a volcano should be considered as a spiracle to the subterranean furnace, in order to prevent the unnecessary elevation of land, and fatal effects of earthquakes; and we ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... a very superstitious man, he seemed strongly impressed by what had happened. His voice quite trembled as he called out to Tim Rooney after a moment's pause, during which he was ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of acorns, adorned with the faded branches of the noble oak, and crowned with the mistletoe, a plant which the Druids taught the ancient Britons to hold in superstitious reverence, was now borne into the city, preceded by a band of Druids in their long white robes, and a company of minstrels, singing songs, and dancing before the wain. The king and queen came forth to meet the procession, and, after addressing suitable speeches to the ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... have opened a door that leads us back into the past out of the turmoil of the nineteenth century. And surely for a moment it can do us no harm to leave our striving, hurrying, anxious modern life, and picture to ourselves the days when our forefathers maybe were ignorant and superstitious, but when they knew how to build and how to fight and how to write—the days when England became "a nest of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Simon, who roused his wife, to let her listen to the "superstitious little monkey," whom he would cure ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the sun, moon, fire, earth, and water, and idols made in felt, like human beings. They have little toleration, and put Michael of Turnigoo and Feodor to death for not worshipping the sun at midday at the command of Prince Bathy. They are a superstitious people, believing in enchantment and sorcery, and looking upon fire as the purifier of all things. When one of their chiefs dies he is buried with a horse saddled and bridled, a table, a dish of meat, a cup of mare's milk, and a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... handled by great saints years ago, as having been used in pestilences, as having wrought miracles, as having moved their eyes or bowed their heads; or, at least, as having been blessed by the priest, and been brought into connection with invisible grace. This is superstitious, but ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... air of individual thought and action. We dress, and eat, and follow fashion, though it may be at the risk of debt, ruin, and misery; living not so much according to our means, as according to the superstitious observances of our class. Though we may speak contemptuously of the Indians who flatten their heads, and of the Chinese who cramp their toes, we have only to look at the deformities of fashion amongst ourselves, to see that the reign ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... "By adhering to the principles contained in this Book, greatness has come to Great Britain." China is what she is to-day because she adheres to certain principles taught by her religious teachers, and Africa is still in darkness because led by blind, superstitious, religious teachers. ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... punishable with death throughout a large part of barbarous Africa, and the terrible evil is being abated as fast as the influence of the European governments is extended over new regions. The practice of the arts of fetichism, a kind of chicanery, most injurious in its effects upon the superstitious natives, is now punishable throughout the Congo Free State and British Rhodesia. Arab slave-dealers no longer raid the Congo plains and forests for slaves, killing seven persons for every one they lead into captivity. Slave-raiding has been utterly wiped out in all parts of Africa, except ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... can be ascertained, it has always been customary among the Utes to select sepulchers of this character. From descriptions given by Mr. Harris, who has several times been fortunate enough to discover remains, it would appear that no superstitious ideas are held by this tribe with respect to the position in which the body is placed, the space accommodation of the sepulcher probably regulating this matter; and from the same source I learn that it is not usual to find the remains of more than ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... differ materially from their white brethren of more civilised countries. The ignorant people of many European nations believe in charms. They bow down before statues, certainly more attractive in appearance than the African's fetish god, but still things of stone. The people we met were certainly superstitious in the highest degree, but they nearly all differed in their ideas, as did even the people of the same tribe. As far as we could ascertain, they have no notion of the immortality of the soul, although they ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... magicians, sorcerers and medicine-men, the celebrators of cruel and unholy rites. The priests of Moloch, of Chemosh, of Baal, are the dark and ancient ancestors of the same vocation. All who have trafficked in the terrors of mankind, who have gained power by trading on superstitious imaginings, who have professed to propitiate wrathful and malignant spirits, to stand between men and their dreadful Maker—all these have contributed their share to the dark and sad burden which the priest has to bear. As soon as man, rising out of pure savagery, began to have any conception ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... instance, a man believing that Zeus loves him less than he really does, should become superstitious and self- tormenting. Or, believing that Zeus will guide him less than he really will, he should go his own way through life without looking for that guidance: or if, believing that Zeus cares about his conquering his passions less ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... would take the barrier of rocks which shut it in for the continuation of the cliffs on either side; and as the place had a terrible reputation for dangerous reefs and currents, in addition to the superstitious inventions of the people of the Crag, it seemed highly probable that it had never been approached unless by the unfortunate crew of some doomed vessel which had been battered to pieces and sunk unseen ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... and Martha stared at her in dismay; the characters appearing on the glass filled them with astonishment and superstitious awe, and they thought the handsome lady who knew how to write with a precious stone might after all be a fairy, who, persecuted by some evil sorcerer, had fled thither into the dark forest, and was writing some exorcising words on the window-pane, lest her enemy should ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the course of this work, lived to attain an extraordinary degree of notoriety. He became, under the influence of his brother Tecumseh, a powerful agent in arousing the superstitious feelings of the north-western Indians, in that memorable period of their history, between the year 1805, and the battle of Tippecanoe, in 1811, which dissolved, in a great measure, the charm by which he had successfully played upon their passions and excited them to action. The character and ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... superstitious in regard to dreams," said Clarence, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Go," he asked, faintly, "play me an air, love,—something quick and lively to dispel this. I wish you ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... long—let me speak myself, Since virtue finds no friends—a wife, a true one? A woman, I dare say without vain-glory, Never yet branded with suspicion? Have I with all my full affections Still met the King? lov'd him next Heav'n? obey'd him? Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him? Almost forgot my prayers to content him? And am I thus rewarded! 'Tis not well, lords. Bring me a constant woman to her husband, One that ne'er dream'd a joy beyond his pleasure; And to that ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... is from Geikie's Life and Words of Christ, vol. I, chap. 6: "If the most important figures in the society of Christ's day were the Pharisees, it was because they were the Rabbis or teachers of the Law. As such they received superstitious honor, which was, indeed, the great motive, with many, to court the title or join the party. The Rabbis were classed with Moses, the patriarchs, and the prophets, and claimed equal reverence. Jacob and Joseph were both said to have been Rabbis. The Targum of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... burden of the proof lies on the innovators. They are bound to show that there is a fair probability of obtaining some advantage before they call upon us to take up the foundations of the Indian government. I have no superstitious veneration for the Court of Directors or the Court of Proprietors. Find me a better Council: find me a better constituent body: and I am ready for a change. But of all the substitutes for the Company which have hitherto been suggested, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sunlight only falls on the mountain-top, so that the valley itself gets no good of the sun. Marriages among these unfortunate creatures are not forbidden by law, and in this district they are protected by superstitious notions, of whose power I had no conception—superstitions which I blamed at first, and afterwards came to admire. So cretinism was in a fair way to spread all over the valley from this spot. Was it not doing the country a great service to put ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... moment as though the bitter cold of space, near absolute zero, had penetrated his suit. Beyond the lights from their belts he saw stars, and recognized the constellation for which the space cruiser was named. A superstitious spaceman would have taken that as a good sign. Rip admitted that ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... serious attack. Moreover, it was desirable, from his point of view, to keep them out of the way while he developed his plans against the person of the Child of Kings, for whom these simple-minded men had a hereditary and almost a superstitious reverence. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... singular effects of peculiar conditions of the brain upon the imaginative faculty. For one case we can give our personal testimony. A young man, naturally imaginative, but by no means of weak mind, or credulous, or superstitious, saw, even in broad daylight, spectres or apparitions of persons far distant. After being accustomed to these visits, he regarded them without any fear, except on account of the derangement of health which they indicated. These visions were banished by a course of medical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... not ridiculous, Mr. Jarvis. It was in life-and-death earnestness. I would not have felt that I could truly trust you unless you had gone through that. Remember, I am a product of a different civilization from your own: I am still superstitious, if you please to term it so, in the Old-World sense. I speak your language, and indeed think in it with you. But back in the inner shrine of my being I am a Spanish woman, true to my heredity. You are essentially an American—droll, well-balanced, cynical—and oblivious ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... like superstitious have filled the breasts of the two men who had ceased hunting for gold, for a few minutes, to view the singular apparition; for such a thing had scarcely been dreamed of at that day, by the most imaginative philosophers; much less had it ever entered ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... hand, I had a strong aversion to removing my wedding ring even for an hour or two. Besides being a silent falsehood, the act would seem almost an omen of evil. I am not generally superstitious, but something made ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... while it was still dark. But when I stood ready to be off just before sunrise, the Kafir boy, a servant of the store, who was to have guided me, was not to be found. No search could discover him. He had apparently disliked the errand, perhaps had some superstitious fear of the spot he was to lead me to, and had vanished, quite unmoved by the prospect of his employer's displeasure and of the sum he was to receive. The incident was characteristic of these natives. They are curiously wayward. They are influenced by ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... 12th of May the Emperor made his entrance into Vienna, one month after the occupation of Munich by the Austrians. This circumstance made a deep impression, and did much to foster the superstitious ideas which many of the troops held in regard to the person of their chief. "See," said one, "he needed only the time necessary for the journey. That man must be a god."—"He is a devil rather," said the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise a shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know whether they were disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit. Well, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was the least superstitious of mortals, still here he was face to face with one of these conjunctions of affairs which the credulous accept as manifestations of some hidden power, and sceptics as coincidences and nothing more. All the afternoon he had been thinking of Narcisse, and yearning beyond measure for something ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... lowered his voice to a superstitious whisper. "It's a mystery to the Indians," he declared, "and they avoid the sound like it were an evil spirit. Even the chief could not tell me what it was, although all his life he had heard its tolling. He wasn't so much afraid of it as are the other Indians an' he built ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... instantly revenge it, either with a dagger or a javelin. This a Dutchman had nearly proved to his cost; for having offended one of these viragoes, she set upon him with a javelin, and had surely dispatched him, if she had not been prevented by main force. They are Mahometans, and so very superstitious, that they would rather die than eat of swine's flesh, nor will they keep any of these animals about them. The better sort have a cotton garment from the waist down, with a turban on their heads; but the common people go entirely naked. They continually chew betel and areka, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... MANY superstitious beliefs exist both in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland. Of course the mining population must furnish its contingent of legends and fables to this mythological repertory. If the fields are peopled with imaginary beings, either good or bad, with much more reason ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... minutes they listened without hearing anything—then a hoarse, guttural shout broke the stillness of the night for a few seconds and died away. The men looked at each other, and some of the more superstitious among them grew pale. Again the cry was repeated, somewhat nearer, and again all was still. Some of the oldest hands in the watch stood transfixed and powerless with terror. They would have faced death in any form manfully, but ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... to have been the last of all Shakspeare's works. Even on that account, as Mr. Campbell feelingly observes, it has "a sort of sacredness;" and it is a most remarkable fact, and one calculated to make a man superstitious, that in this play the great enchanter Prospero, in whom," as if conscious, "says Mr. Campbell," that this would be his last work, the poet has been inspired to typify himself as a wise, potent, and benevolent magician" of whom, indeed, as of Shakspeare ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... monster I appear to you," said Rand. "A man may go through life and never encounter the irresistible current. When he does—I am as little superstitious as you, but I tell you I am borne on! All the men and women whose blood is in my veins hurry me on, and there is behind me a tide of circumstance. For all past kindnesses I thank you, sir. I admire you much, reverence you no little, and bid you ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... present, if you gave it to me. I had one, but I broke it. All my luck's left me since then. Are you superstitious?" ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... with no manner of tenderness. What other would he have? He deals out to it no measure of philosophical justice. He accepts the faith of every age but his own. He will accept, as the best thing possible, the trustful and hopeful spirit of dark and superstitious periods; but if the more enlightened piety of his own age be at variance even with the most subtle and difficult tenets of his own philosophy, he will make no compromise with it, he casts it away for contemptuous infidelity to trample on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the stoutest. She certainly could not sympathize with superstitious fears, and neither flickering lights nor possible spectres would have distressed her ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... man in such a state of passive panic. His dark face was blanched to the hue of dirty parchment and his forehead dewed with cold perspiration. I mentally predicted an early resignation in the household of Sir Lionel Barton. Homopoulo might be an excellent butler, but his superstitious Greek nature was clearly incapable of sustaining existence beneath the same roof with a family ghost, hoary though the specter's ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... of his head been injured. The Sagamore of Saco was no ordinary man; and the men of the times, remarkable as they were, felt this; and hence is it, that even to this day his memory is held in remembrance with an almost superstitious awe, and people point out a barrow where lie the ashes of the "Sagamore," and show the boundaries of his land, and tell marvelous tales ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... however, were not equally satisfied by a regulation of trade which worked so manifestly against them, and began to show signs of discontent. Upon this a crafty and unprincipled trader revealed a secret to the Blackbird, by which he might acquire unbounded sway over his ignorant and superstitious subjects. He instructed him in the poisonous qualities of arsenic, and furnished him with an ample supply of that baneful drug. From this time the Blackbird seemed endowed with supernatural powers, to possess the gift of prophecy, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... hard to say exactly what madness is. I fancy Azuma-zi was mad. The incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. At any rate, when the idea of making Holroyd a sacrifice to the Dynamo Fetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strange tumult ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... for the names of heroes, will be unawares wheedled into many evil things, and be guilty of the same folly with those who imitate the crookedness of Plato or the stammering of Aristotle. Neither must he carry himself timorously herein, nor, like a superstitious person in a temple, tremblingly adore all he meets with; but use himself to such confidence as may enable him openly to pronounce, This was ill or incongruously said, and, That was bravely and gallantly spoken. For example, Achilles in Homer, being offended at the spinning out that war ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Helvetius, on the 26th June 1765: 'Do you not see that the whole North is for us, and that it is inevitable that sooner or later those miserable fanatics of the South must be confounded? The Empress of Russia, the King of Prussia, the conqueror of the superstitious Austrian, besides many other princes, have already erected the standard of philosophy.' Again he wrote to D'Alembert, on the 4th June 1767: 'Men begin to open their eyes from one end of Europe to the other. Fanaticism, which feels its weakness and implores the arm of authority, despite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... certain superficial likeness in character between the Prince and his father-in-law, for both appeared unfeeling and unsympathetic men, but what in James was obstinacy, in William was power, and what in James was superstitious, in William was religion, and what in James was pride, in William was dignity. His friends could trust William, but no one could trust James; while William could make immense sacrifices for his ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... this natural phenomenon has followed not so much an inherent change of sentiment as the intimacy of wider knowledge and the death of superstitious influence. One is much struck by the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the matter were quite natural and above discussion, that the few drops of oil which she applied, morning and evening, to Dario's wound, were alone working his cure, so speedy a cure as to be quite miraculous. Pierre, fairly aghast, distressed indeed to find such childish, superstitious notions in one so full of sense and grace and passion, did not even venture ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Kalmuks exhibits no decided peculiarity, apart from the cap, which is invariably of yellow cloth trimmed with black lambskin, and is worn by both sexes. Madame de Hell seems inclined to think that some superstitious notions are connected with it, from the difficulty she experienced in procuring a specimen. The trousers are wide and open below. The well-to-do Kalmuks wear two long tunics, one of which is fastened round the waist, but the usual ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... these, and not the first nor the most important. Fear, said the wise Epicurean, first made the gods. The sun with its regular course, its kindly warmth, its beneficent action, no wise inspires that sentiment. It conjures no phantasms to appal the superstitious fancy, and its place in primitive mythology is conformably inferior. The myths of the Eskimos and northern Athapascas omit its action altogether. The Algonkins by no means imagined it the highest god, and at most but one of his emblems.[142-1] That it often appears ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Lusthah, fer pilin' up sech a heap ob 'plexity on my honey," cried Aun' Jinkey, who was as practical as she was superstitious. "I kin tell you w'at ter do. I doan projeck en smoke in my chimbly-corner fer not'n. W'at kin you do but do ez you tole twel Marse Scoville en de Linkum gin'ral come agin? S'pose you say you woan wuk en woan 'bey, how you hole out agin ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... only. First and foremost comes Demos, 'The People,' typifying the Athenian democracy, a rich householder—a self-indulgent, superstitious, weak creature. He has had several overseers or factors in succession, to look after his estate and manage his slaves. The present one is known as 'the Paphlagonian,' or sometimes as 'the Tanner,' an unprincipled, lying, cheating, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... crew of the jolly-boat, and no trace was ever discovered of Fox and his party. Thus eight men were lost on the first approach to the coast; a commencement that cast a gloom over the spirits of the whole party, and was regarded by some of the superstitious as an omen that boded no good ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... superstitious, you know; so that even my father, who, you know, Montlouis, was an enlightened as well as a brave man, stopped, in spite of my uncle Crysogon, who urged us to proceed, and trembling at the idea of danger to ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... much upset indeed," agreed his father. "It was, you must recall, a superstitious age. Everything that could not be fathomed was attributed to witchcraft. Hence witchcraft was the only explanation of the present miracle. John Faust, of whom the two royal persons had bought the books, must have sold himself to the devil. ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... moan bitterly, as she entreated for admission. The old hag was one of those whose hearts adversity turns to very stone, and obstinately kept her door shut, impelled more probably by general hatred to the human race, than by the superstitious fears which seized her; although she perversely argued that she was startled at the supernatural melody and sweetness of tone, with which the benighted wanderer made her supplication. She admitted, that ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the House of Commons were "the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and dicing-houses." The people take their religion from their minister "by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole"; and "the superstitious man by his good will is an atheist, but being scared from thence by the pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... stepped upon one of the nails and inflicted a painful, although not serious, injury upon himself. It was impossible for him to see clearly the source of his injury. He was greatly frightened and expressed the emotion most vigorously. His behavior strongly suggested a superstitious dread of some unseen danger. It may be that the instinctive fear of snakes, so strong in monkeys, was partly responsible for ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... was made, according to a decree of the pontiffs. The nine days' sacred rite was then performed again, because a shower of stones had been seen to fall in the armilustrum. After the people's minds had been freed from superstitious fears, they were again disturbed by intelligence that an infant had been born at Frusino as large as a child of four years old, and not so much an object of wonder from its size, as that it was born without any certain mark of distinction whether it was male or ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... their trophies included the great Raven standard of the Danes, said to have been woven in one noontide by Ragnar's three daughters. This was a loss that presaged defeat to the Danes, for they were superstitious concerning this standard. If the raven appeared to flap its wings when going into battle, victory seemed to them assured. If it hung motionless, defeat was feared. Its loss ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Denviers, as he saw the momentary panic which his action had caused among the superstitious Tamils. "On to the entry!" We bounded over the guards as they lay prostrate, and a moment afterwards were rushing headlong towards the entrance of the grotto. Our escape was by no means fully secured, however, for as we emerged we found several Tamils ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... astonishment, when Mr. Hall came in, to find he was the same person who had sold him the copy of the magazine containing his first story—that memorable copy at which he had looked, in Westminster Hall, through eyes bedimmed with joyful tears. Such coincidences always had for Dickens a peculiar, almost a superstitious, interest. The circumstance seemed of happy augury to both the "high contracting parties." Publisher and author were for the nonce on the best of terms. The latter, no doubt, saw his opening; was more than ready to undertake ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... people think the father put some sort of a ban on every one who had anything to do with driving the Dominican monks out of the island and with the destruction of the monasteries. I don't know whether he did or not, but they believe he did, which is the same thing, and that superstitious little beast, the President, certainly believed it; he attributed everything that had gone wrong on the island to that cause. Why, if a second cousin of the wife of a brother of one of the men who helped to fire a church falls off his horse ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... place offered every chance to shrewd criminals who might have a motive for playing upon the superstitious ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... walk in when the house took two paces to the rear, and I've been walking after it the whole evening. Most incompatible thing I've ever known. Most incompatible thing that's ever happened to me in my life, Lidderdale. If I were a superstitious man, which I'm not, I should say the house was bewitched. If I had a moment to spare, I should sit down at once and write an account of my most incompatible experience to the Society of Psychical Research, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... he had got together, he set up the Pretender's Standard at Brae-Mar, on the sixth of September, 1715, and there proclaim'd him King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, etc. 'Tis reported, that when this standard was first erected, the ball on the top of it fell off, which the superstitious Highlanders were very much concern'd at, taking it as an omen of the bad success of the cause for which they were then appearing, and indeed, the event has proven that it was no less. Thereafter they went to a small town named Kirkmichael, where having proclaim'd the Pretender, and summon'd the ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... of the people who, being densely ignorant, were correspondingly superstitious and bigoted, and were tools in ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Sister,' said She; 'I have heard many traits of the Domina of St. Clare's character, from a Friend who was educated in the same Convent with her. She reported her to be haughty, inflexible, superstitious, and revengeful. I have since heard that She is infatuated with the idea of rendering her Convent the most regular in Madrid, and never forgave those whose imprudence threw upon it the slightest stain. Though naturally violent and severe, when ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... As in that twilight, superstitious age When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind Seem'd fraught with meanings of supernal kind, When e'en the learned philosophic sage, Wont with the stars thro' boundless space to range. Listen'd with rev'rence to the changeling's tale; E'en so, thou strangest of all ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... highly religious ages were ages of blood and persecution. Man's tenderness for man has vastly increased. The sense of the sacredness of human life has increased as his faith in his gods has declined. He has grown more human as he has grown less superstitious. Science has atrophied his faith, but it has softened his heart. His fear of Nature has given place to love. Man never loved as he does now. He has withdrawn his gaze from heaven and fixed it upon the earth. As his interest in other worlds has diminished, his interest in this has ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... of other fraudulent enterprises are treated. A large role in the campaign would have to be played by the newspapers, but their best help would be rendered by negative action, by not publishing anything of a superstitious and mystical type. The most important part of the fight, however, is to recognize the danger clearly, to acknowledge it frankly, and to see with open eyes how alarmingly the evil has grown around us. No one will fancy that any social schemes can be sufficient to ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... another direction to that where the men were busy! If he could find any of these he might be safe, and he was about to try and search for some means of concealment or escape when a cold shudder of superstitious dread ran through him, and he began to recall all he had read of haunted houses, for from somewhere in the darkness in front of him, he ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... a superstitious notion that it is honorable to make but little display of themselves, and allow their wings to be bound or ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... more to the same effect, and I read it with the utmost indifference. Why do they not search the Romani vault?—I thought gloomily—they would find some authentic information there! But I know the Neapolitans well; they are timorous and superstitious; they would as soon hug a pestilence as explore a charnel house. One thing gladdened me; it was the projected disposal of my fortune. The crown, the Kingdom of Italy, was surely as noble an heir as a man ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... coming of the missionaries the Cayuse Indians and Nez-Perces occupied the elbow of the Columbia, and the region of the musical names of the Wallula, the Walla Walla, and Wauelaptu. They were a superstitious, fierce, and revengful race. They fully believed in witchcraft or conjuring, and in the power to work evil through familiar spirits. Everything to them and the neighboring tribes had its good or evil spirit, or both—the mountains, the rivers, the forest, the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... mean to say they were ignorant? Well, I talked with an old-timer—he was a Professor in some university—and he said it would take us a thousand years before we even caught up with them. Do you think that I'm superstitious? Well, listen to this, now; here's one that he told me, and it comes from a famous Greek play. There was a woman back in Greece that was like Mother Trigedgo, and she prophesied, before a man was born, that he'd kill his own father ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... when they first began to drag. Albert had a sort of vague looking for something, a superstitious feeling that by some sort of a miracle Katy would yet be found alive. It is the hardest work the imagination has to do—this realizing that one who has lived by us will never more be with us. It is hard to project a future ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the South, in America; and among the Hawaiians; we find marked instances of this kind. The negro Voodoo men and women work black magic on those of their race who are superstitious and credulous, and who have a mortal fear of the Voodoo. You see the conditions obtained are much the same as in the case of the German case just cited. Travellers who have visited the countries in which there is a large negro population, have ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... out that superstitious talk, Dailey," broke in Mart impatiently. "He's a shark, and a big one; pirate or not, if I can't get to him I'll put a bullet through ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... on the Ascetic Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of that training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the morbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. "The ascetic exercise of the monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... wax candles, and superstitious mummeries, and painted jackets of the Catholic priests, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... had gained the ice by way of the cleft in the rocks, but the savages, believing that he had leaped over the precipice, attributed his preservation to the Great Spirit and forbore to fire on him. Unconsciously, he had chosen the best possible place to disappear from, for the Indians held it in superstitious regard, believing that spirits haunted the wood and hurled bad souls down the cliff, drowning them in the lake, instead of allowing them to go to the happy hunting grounds. The major reached his quarters in safety, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... swept over it, strewing the contents of a dozen dismantled houses. There were stacks of arms and piles of cooking utensils, knapsacks, half emptied, lay beside the charred remains of fires, and loose fence rails showed red and white glimpses of playing cards, hidden, before the fight, by superstitious soldiers. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... they were comfortable and out of pain, fed and given tobacco to smoke and a tot of rum apiece, they had time to remember superstitious fears kept at bay while they had been running for their life. Both were afraid to show themselves in the open. On one hand, there was the terror of McKeith; on the other, of Oola's husband. Lady Bridget gathered that Oola's husband was a medicine man, and that he had 'pointed a bone ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... these questions also is easy: I will premise that it is almost certain that there once were more various readings than those now recorded. (119) For instance, one finds many in the Talmud which the Massoretes have neglected, and are so different one from the other that even the superstitious editor of the Bomberg Bible confesses that he cannot harmonize them. (110) "We cannot say anything," he writes, "except what we have said above, namely, that the Talmud is generally in contradiction to the Massorete." (111) So that we are nor bound to hold that there never were more than two readings ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... mountains which seemed to me the guardians of my Land of Promise. I hung one of them round my neck by a cord, and got much comfort and spiritual assistance from it. My faith grew livelier as my needs increased; the sacred figure received my confidences and seemed to impart ghostly counsels. I had a superstitious care to keep it always towards Tuscany, twisting the cord round so that the cross was on my back whenever I had occasion to face north instead of south. Before going to sleep I was careful to stand it ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... thee, gentle Mephistophilis, Follow the cardinals to the consistory; And, as they turn their superstitious books, Strike them with sloth and drowsy idleness, And make them sleep so sound, that in their shapes Thyself and I may parley with this [120] Pope, This proud confronter of the Emperor; And, in despite of all his holiness, Restore this ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... were usually read, calling upon all who should march against the English to appear within the space of forty days before the court of the Evil One. Sir Walter Scott says that this summons, like the apparition at Linlithgow, was probably an attempt by those averse to the war to impose upon the superstitious temper of James IV. But the king started at the head of the finest army, and supported by the strongest artillery-train, that had down to that time been brought into the field by any Scottish monarch. He entered England August 22d. without having formed any definite plan of action. He wasted ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, Thou hast redeem'd, and opened us a mine Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line Of masculine expression, which, had good Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood Our superstitious fools admire, and hold Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, Thou hadst been their exchequer.... Let others carve the rest; it will suffice I on thy grave this epitaph incise:— Here lies a King, that ruled as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit; Here lies ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse |
