"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swelling with high hope. He would live to see all his ambitions realised in Roderick. He sat up very late that night and when he went to bed and remembered how the Lad had promised to help rid Peter of the drink curse, he could not sleep until he had sung the long-meter doxology. He sang it very softly, for Kirsty was asleep and it might be hard to explain to her if she were disturbed; nevertheless he sang it with ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... heavens for confirmation of what he had said: and with that there came words and fire out of the mountain under which poor Christian stood, that made the hair of his flesh stand up. The words were thus pronounced: 'As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... living picture, and what a warning to man! One "fault" may be a mortal one to him, for, like the Biblical curse, it transmits itself to generations, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the Yankee officer who could curse a prisoner so gallantly ordered two soldiers to take charge and carry me to their lines, no doubt believing that the Confederates would succeed in recapturing the "Crater." We had to cross a plain five hundred and ten feet ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... ourselves fortunate in having been able to return." "How!" said the princess, "do you not bring me the Water which dances, the Apple which sings, and the Bird of Truth?" "Alas! my poor sister, a young knight who was a stranger to us carried them all away—curse the rascal." The old king who had no children (or rather, who believed he had none) loved the two brothers and the sister very much and was highly delighted to see them back again. He caused a grand feast to be prepared, to which he invited princes, dukes, marquises, barons, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... pathos in the mild And settled sorrow of the quiet eyes, Than in the tumults of the anguish wild, That made her curse all things beneath the skies; No question, no reproaches, no complaint, Hers is the holy calm of some ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... a cruel death facing Ainnle and Ardan in the woods? NAISI — frantic. — They'll not get a death that's cruel, and they with men alone. It's women that have loved are cruel only; and if I went on living from this day I'd be putting a curse on the lot of them I'd meet walking in the east or west, putting a curse on the sun that gave them beauty, and on the madder and the stone-crop put red upon their cloaks. DEIRDRE — bitterly. — I'm well pleased there's no one in this place to make a story that Naisi was a ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... great as ever,—his approach could not humiliate her. His love brought no shadow of shame; it was proudly white and clean. Ah! he had forgotten that she did not know,—that his lips were sealed until his mother's should be opened to the world. The curse was not to be shaken ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... her breath against the worst that he could do, being well prepared for him to lose first his color and then the temper which he had never lost since she had known him; to fly into a fury, to curse her up hill and down dale—in a word, to behave as her first husband had done more than once, but this one never. What Rachel did not anticipate was a smile that cloaked not a single particle of surprise, and the little cocksure bow ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... my own case," observed Jim Halloween sadly, "no woman yet has ever let me come with kissin' distance—the nearer I git, the further an' further they edges away. It's the curse of my luck, I reckon, for it seems as if I never open my mouth to propose that I don't put my ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... through clenched teeth, and beat his fists upon the marble mantelpiece. "Curse your explosives! And curse your inventions! And curse you for taking her first!" Then he dropped into a chair, and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God forgive me!" he whispered, brokenly. "But there is a limit to what a man ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... whether she would or no, she was his now irrevocably; struggle against it as she would, she belonged to him, body and soul, for life or for death. She had not sought it, she had not desired it. The spell was laid upon her. Was it a blessing? Was it a curse? It was all one; she was his, indissolubly, for evil or ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... to shiver into a thousand pieces on the table edge. With a furious curse he flung himself back in his chair, and leaned there, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... those that drink wine and all them that sell it: for some men say, that he slew once an hermit in his drunkenness, that he loved full well; and therefore he cursed wine and them that drink it. But his curse be turned on to his own head, as holy writ saith, ET IN VIRTICEM IPSIUS INIQUITAS EJUS DESCENDET, that is for to say, 'His wickedness shall turn and ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... sons of earth! O ransomed seed of Adam, sing! God liveth, and we have a King! The curse is gone, the bond are free— By Bethlehem's star that brightly beamed, By all the heavenly signs that be, We know that Israel is redeemed— That on this morn The Christ is born That saveth you ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... stolen by two white thieves and their black hound? Never! I would have killed you all had time been granted to me, but in that I failed, and I am glad that I have failed, for now I will deal you a bitterer blow than any death. May the curse of Jal and Aca cleave to you, you dogs without a kennel! May you live outcasts and die in the dirt, and may your fathers and your mothers and your children spit upon your bones ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... fired the towers of Troy Fade, and the darkness at Oenone's prayer Close upon her that closed upon her boy, For all the curse of godhead that she bare; And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair; And his love smitten in their dawn of joy Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear; And one in flowery coils Caught as in fiery toils Smite ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... whose manhood you have broken will loathe you and will be always brooding and scheming to strike a fresh blow. The children will be taught to curse you. The infant being moulded in the womb will have breathed into its starved body the vitality of hate. It is not they—it is you who are blind Samsons pulling down the pillars of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... it well remembered, is the curse which Stepmother Nature placed upon The Dog, when he elected to turn his back on his own kind, and to become the only one of the world's four-footed folk to serve Man of his own accord. To punish the Dog ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... really loved his only sister, as proud, selfish men love those of their own lineage who have never disputed their supremacy, and derogated from their importance. He said something under his breath before he called her, but the curse was not ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... visitor along the next apartment, which is a large one, filled with cattle in all positions. One is lying in a hammock, with her feet on the window, reading the Chicago Times article on "Oleomargerine, or Bull Butter," at intervals stopping the reading to curse the writer, who claims that oleomargarine is an ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him; and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... instinct that it is just such accidental and irrational wealth that is the doom of all peasantries? Perhaps he dimly felt that the boy's pirate tales are true; and that buried treasure is a thing for robbers and not for producers. Perhaps he thought there was a curse on such capital: on the coal of the coal-owners, on the gold of ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... The brutal mob, however, howled for their blood, and made such an uproar that the weak Governor, a youth of eighteen, surrendered them to a cruel death, as he had done the others. These two, like their brethren, refused to curse ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... out a Catholic king and dethroned an ancient line, were guilty of the double sin of heresy and of treason. To the Jesuit enthusiast in Canada not only were they infidel devils in human shape upon whose plans must rest the curse of God; they were also rebels, republican successors of the accursed Cromwell, who had sent an anointed king to the block. It would be a holy thing to destroy this lawless power which ruled from London. The Puritans of Boston were, in turn, not less convinced ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... homage to their freedom from the despicable vice. In those days, when in the civil struggle it was so difficult to distinguish friends from foes, there was one proof of unimpeachable orthodoxy that was rarely disputed. He must be a good Catholic who could curse and swear. The Huguenot soldier would do neither.[278] So nearly, indeed, did the Huguenot affirmation approach to the simplicity of the biblical precept, that one Roman Catholic partisan leader of more than ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... breakfast I felt very like a red Indian or a pirate, creeping through the jungle to the sack of a treasure train. So I wormed on towards the noise. As I came near to it, I went more cautiously, because in one of the pauses of the noise, I heard a muttered curse, which told me that the unseen noise-maker was a man. If I had been wise I should have stopped there; for I had learned all that I came out to learn. But I was excited now. I wished to see everything, before creeping away unseen to make my report. Perhaps ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... for all He thus taught: 'If ye love them which love you what new thing do ye? for even the fornicators do this; but I say unto you, pray for your enemies, and love them which hate you, and bless them which curse you, and offer prayer for them which despitefully use you.' And that we should communicate to the needy, and do nothing for praise, He said thus: 'Give ye to every one that asketh, and from him that desireth ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... me for an answer. I'm only a lousy fifth-rate psychology teacher, as of the day you brought Timmy into my life. And the curse of Freud be on you for that kindly act of professional assassination. The answer is obvious, of course ... Timmy didn't and couldn't do what we've seen him do with our own wide-open, innocent eyes. We are the ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... madness, when I think On the proud victor—ev'ry time he's named, Pharsalia rises to my view!—I see Th' insulting tyrant, prancing o'er the field, Strew'd with Rome's citizens, and drench'd in slaughter; His horse's hoofs wet with patrician blood! Oh, Portius! is there not some chosen curse, Some hidden thunder in the stores of Heav'n, Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man Who owes his greatness to his ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... understand," stated the hunchback with dignity. "It was but a manifestation of the wanderlust, at once the curse and the blessing of my misshapen existence. Behold in me, sir, the rover, the argonaut, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... According to an oft-repeated tradition, eighteen peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have disturbed divine service on Christmas Eve by dancing and brawling in the church-yard, whereupon the priest, Ruprecht, inflicted a curse upon them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without ceasing. This curse is stated to have been completely fulfilled, so that the unfortunate sufferers at length sank knee deep into the earth, and remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... may curse you for your unasked-for care of him. I have heard my poor mother—and she was as pretty and delicate a creature as you are—cursed for showing tenderness when it was not wanted. Now, be persuaded by an old man like me, who ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Thy salvation bring, Cast the salt into the spring, In my heart Thy love reveal, Nature's bitter waters heal; Let the principles of grace Bring forth fruits of righteousness: Then the barren curse is o'er, Sin and ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... agree with me at the end that the book is really an enlarged Christmas tale, and would gain by being reduced to magazine dimensions. I have I not yet told you what it is all about. Very briefly, there is a family and a curse. This curse—with regard to the exact details of which I still find myself a little vague—used to express itself by causing murders from time to time among the brothers and sisters of the House. The tale is told in a detached and purposely elusive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... fool I have been! Shall I shoot myself through the head, or embrace her on the spot? Lord St. Jerome, too! He seems mightily pleased. And my family have been voting for two centuries to emancipate this fellow! Curse his grinning face! I am decidedly anti-Catholic. But then she is a Catholic! I will turn Papist. Ah! there is Lucy. I ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... vulture soaring over the field of corpses, or the one mourner lamenting over the red ruins of the devastated village, that devastation is not felt to be complete. The anathema of the prophet does not wholly leave the curse of loneliness upon the mighty city, until he tells us that "the satyr shall dance there." And, if desolation, which is the destruction of life, cannot leave its impression perfect without some interruption, much less can ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... believe, he said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had been the curse of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... long for; and yet, by every Southern statesman and philosopher, it is regarded as the one irremediable evil possible to their country. What miserable economy! what feeble foresight! What principle of political economy is better established than that a monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest possible price. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... quoted might not be found written in the book. He was a capital shot, and kept a pair of the fleetest hounds, and often hauled in his shingle and hunted week in and week out, leaving business to follow suit. He made light of religious and sacred things; he could curse the sky when it thundered, and swear the lights blue with the boldest voluble tongue; and yet he would appeal to God to judge him in a plea, and silence, and exclude a witness for any unpopular religious belief. He rose to an extensive business in the towns about, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... neighbors!" at last he cried,— "What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin, To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,—I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... "The Social Curse, and other Poems," Alexander Macansh, was born at Dunfermline in 1803. At the age of eleven apprenticed to a flaxdresser, he followed this occupation during a period of thirty-eight years, of which the greater portion was spent in Harribrae factory, in his native ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... innumerable superstitions. On the first of May all the witches dance here at midnight; and those who go may see their own ghosts walking up and down, with a little billet on the back, giving the names of those who had wished them there; for "I wish you on the top of the Brocken," is a common curse throughout the whole empire. Well, we ascended—the soil boggy—and at last reached the height, which is 573 toises [1] above the level of the sea. We visited the Blocksberg, a sort of bowling-green, enclosed by huge stones, something ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... threaten us? And when our ancestors had at last driven him away, there comes a fellow like this and brings the heathen from Constantinople upon us. The Mongols were once in Silesia, and would have destroyed Western Europe if we Russians had not saved it. Charles XII is dead, but I curse his memory, and I curse everyone who seeks to hinder me in my laudable endeavour to raise Russia from a Western Asiatic power to an Eastern European one. I shall beat everyone down, whoever he may be, who interferes with my work, even though ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... are killed add hundreds of thousands that survive with feeble constitutions, and millions not so strong as they should be; and you will have some idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring, by parents ignorant of the laws of life. Do but consider for a moment that the regimen to which children are subject is hourly telling upon them to their life-long injury or benefit, and that there are ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... return of Valentine's regiment beat with a fire and enthusiasm to which the tramp of victorious squadrons might well keep step. The wicked music of Mephistopheles in the sarcastic serenade, the powerful duel trio, and Valentine's curse are of the highest order of expression; while the church scene, where the fiend whispers his taunts in the ear of the disgraced Marguerite, as the gloomy musical hymn and peals of the organ menace her with an irreversible ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... was a glowering one. The captain had little to say, and that little of a sharp sort, while the mate only rumbled out a curse now and then at the boy who served us; and I myself was in a bitter bad humor as I thought how hard it was on me to be shut up at sea in such vile company, and how I had only myself to blame for getting into it—and ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... then? Come, His universe, Come, crown me Him a king! Pluck rays from all such stars as never fling Their light where fell a curse. And make a crowning for this kingly brow!— What is my word?—Each empyreal star Sits in a sphere afar In shining ambuscade: The child-brow, crowned by none, Keeps its unchildlike shade. Sleep, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... upon the throne, uninformed, ignorant, and unacquainted with the inclinations and true interest of his people, weak, capricious, transported with unbounded ambition, and possessed with insatiable warice. I hope such a case will never occur; but, as it possibly may, could any greater curse happen to a nation than such a prince on the throne, advised, and solely advised by such a minister, and that minister supported by such a parliament? The nature of mankind cannot be altered by human laws; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... world's trade went on as before: only, night and day, its ships lay-to, to pay rent with threat and curse: in all only thirteen ships being sunk ere sea and earth had ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... impulse was to take the next train for St. Andrew. Her heart went out to the lonely girl, deprived of her only protector, wretched under the triple load of poverty, friendlessness, and the curse of race. She remembered vividly those two men in the church whose bearing expressed more forcibly than any words the canker that had blighted their manhood. And this girl bore no visible mark of the ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... more deeply in love even than the princess, thought to himself, "There surely must be some reason for this very sudden attraction which I feel towards her. She must have been my beloved wife in a former existence. Perhaps a curse was laid upon us; and now that is removed. If so, the recognition ought to be mutual; at all events I will try what I can do to produce the same feeling in her which exists in ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... coorage, or the life itself, of yees, or thim as is dear to yees, ud sarve him or plaze him,—I bid yees now to give it him free an' willin' as ye'd give it to God. An' so ye mind me, it's my blissin' an' the blissin' uv yer dead father that's iver wid ye; an' so ye fail me, it's the black curse uv disobedience, an' yer moother's brukken heart, that shall cling to yees for iver and iver, while life shall last. Do ye ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... spear. There was a mousquetaire that had it round his neck—such a big mousquetaire, as big as General Webb. I called out to him to surrender, and that I'd give him quarter: he called me a petit polisson and fired his pistol at me, and then sent it at my head with a curse. I rode at him, sir, drove my sword right under his arm-hole, and broke it in the rascal's body. I found a purse in his holster with sixty-five Louis in it, and a bundle of love-letters, and a flask of Hungary-water. Vive la guerre! ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... her. She went away when I stood in the sorest need of a little talk with her—she went away, and left me to my loneliness and my suspense. I am a poor deformed wretch, with a warm heart, and, perhaps, an insatiable curiosity as well. Insatiable curiosity (have you ever felt it?) is a curse. I bore it until my brains began to boil in my head; and then I sent for my gardener, and made him drive me here. I like being here. The air of your library soothes me; the sight of Mrs. Valeria is balm to my wounded heart. She has something to tell me—something that I ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... for help brought Scraggs around to a fuller realization of the enormity of the disaster which had overtaken him. In his agony, he forgot to curse his navigating officer for the latter's stubbornness in refusing to turn back when the fog threatened. He clutched Mr. Gibney by the right arm, thereby interrupting for an instant the dismal outburst from the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... engravings has made the ancient mariner an old decrepit man. That is not the true image; no! he should have been a growthless, decayless being, impassive to time or season, a silent cloud—the wandering Jew. The curse of the dead men's eyes should not have passed away. But this was, perhaps, too much for any pencil, even if the artist had fully entered into the poet's idea. Indeed, it is no subject for painting. The "Ancient Mariner" displays Mr. Coleridge's peculiar mastery over ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... year ago, and bought a farm. I saw him the other day. 'Payson,' said he, with an air of satisfaction, 'I haven't seen a bank notice this twelvemonth.' He's a happy man! This note paying is the curse of my life. I'm forever on the street financiering—Financiering. How I hate the word! But come—they'll be waiting dinner for us. Mrs. Payson is delighted at the thought of seeing you. How long is it since you were here? About ten years, if I'm not mistaken. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... "Continental Europe yearly sends to our shores subjects to be developed into citizens. Emancipation has given us millions of new citizens, and to them our influence and example should be a blessing and not a curse." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... they waged a cold or payed of ther purse; An if it were a beggar had breed in his bagge, He schulde be right soone i-bid to goo aboute; And if the pore penyless the hireward would have, A hood or a girdle and let him goo aboute. Culham hithe hath caused many a curse I' blyssed be our helpers we have a better waye, Without any peny for ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... released them somewhat from their awful tension. Jake felt that he could move now, and was about to let forth his imprisoned breath when he felt the touch of icy fingers trailing over his cheek, and started back with a curse. It was Mrs. Quimby feeling about for him in the impenetrable darkness, and in another moment he ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... remember the clear fountains of Galilee where he was wont to refresh himself; the vine and the fig-tree under which he had reposed, and the young maidens who, perhaps, would have consented to love him? Did he curse the hard destiny which had denied him the joys conceded to all others? Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his greatness, did he mourn that he had not remained a simple artisan of Nazareth? We know not. For all these internal troubles evidently were a sealed letter to ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... eye too many thoughts. It was Henriette's intellect and soul and heart that were here devouring with swift flames a body without stamina; for Jacques had the milk-white skin and high color which characterize young English women doomed sooner or later to the consumptive curse,—an appearance of health that deceives the eye. Following a sign by which Henriette, after showing me Madeleine, made me look at Jacques drawing geometrical figures and algebraic calculations on a board before the Abbe Dominis, I shivered ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... wi' his hand, He garr'd the red wine spring on hie— "Now Christ's curse on my head," he said, "But avenged of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... That the same curse of extravagance extends to the judiciary in Ireland one would expect from the fact that the number of the High Court Judges is greater than in Scotland, though, as we have seen, the population is smaller and the crime is less. According to a statement ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery can not go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Mariner" is Coleridge's chief contribution to the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, and is one of the world's masterpieces. Though it introduces the reader to a supernatural realm, with a phantom ship, a crew of dead men, the overhanging curse of the albatross, the polar spirit, and the magic breeze, it nevertheless manages to create a sense of absolute reality concerning these manifest absurdities. All the mechanisms of the poem, its meter, rime, and melody are perfect; and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... farmer's wife to market rode, And, jogging on, with thoughtful care Summed up the profits of her ware; When, starting from her silver dream, Thus far and wide was heard her scream: 'That raven on yon left-hand oak (Curse on his ill-betiding croak) Bodes me no good.' No more she said, When poor blind Ball, with stumbling tread, 30 Fell prone; o'erturned the pannier lay, And her mashed eggs bestrewed the way. She, sprawling in the yellow road, Railed, swore and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... greeting. We shook hands and commended the weather. When the alien attendant had departed, he began to curse London. It was a hole for sick dogs, not for sound men. He ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... young professional men during the first ten years of their career? They hope and wait, doubt and wait, curse and wait, labor to wait, and in the mean time a wheezing old lawyer, with no more enthusiasm than a brickbat, takes the cases which Justice, if she were not blind, would have sent to his starving younger brethren, and pockets fat fees, a tenth of which would have lifted loads from many a heavy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... The Quicks had seen about as much of the doubtful and seamy side of seafaring life as men could, and all of us could contribute something. Also, the Quicks had money, safely stowed away in banks here and there—they used to curse their fate, left there apparently to die, when they thought of it. And it was that, I think, that led me to tell, one night, about my adventure with the naughty bank-manager at Blyth, and of the chests of old monastic treasure which I'd planted up here on this ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... reading the funeral service over them. I saw Tesse and told him of the scene I had witnessed, and demanded vengeance. He laughed in my face. Senor, I persisted, and he got angry and told me that, were it not for my cloth, he would hang me from the steeple. I called down Heaven's curse upon him, and left him and came home. Do you wonder, senor, that I found it hard to spare those Frenchmen for whom you pleaded? Do you wonder that I, a man of peace, lead out my villagers ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... For why are ears of corn produced? Is it not that they may become dry? And do they not become dry that they may be reaped? for they are not separated from communion with other things. If then they had perception, ought they to wish never to be reaped? But this is a curse upon ears of corn to be never reaped. So we must know that in the case of men too it is a curse not to die, just the same as not to be ripened and not to be reaped. But since we must be reaped, and we also know ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... apartment. To him probably, even in his youth, it had been a woman's gewgaw, useless, but allowable as tending to her happiness. Now the door was never even opened before his eye. His last interview with Carry had been in that room,—when he had laid his curse upon her, and bade her begone before his return, so that his decent threshold should be no longer polluted by ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... last night. I was haunted by her face when she came to the hospital. She looks forty, but she told me she was only twenty-six." Miss Brent paused to steady her voice. "It's the curse of my trade that it's always tempting me to interfere in cases where I can do no possible good. The fact is, I'm not fit to be a nurse—I shall live and die a wretched sentimentalist!" she ended, with an angry dash at the tears ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... bones, defrauded of a regal tomb And common turf, lie naked on the plain, Or doom'd to welter in the whelming main. Should he return, that troop so blithe and bold, With purple robes inwrought, and stiff with gold, Precipitant in fear would wing their flight, And curse their cumbrous pride's unwieldy weight. But ah, I dream!-the appointed hour is fled. And hope, too long with vain delusion fed, Deaf to the rumour of fallacious fame, Gives to the roll of death his glorious name! With venial freedom let me now demand Thy name, thy lineage, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the first, John Willows, ever since I came to this mill as a boy. You've been a tyrant and a curse to all the poor, struggling people who spent their days under you, not as your servants, but ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... who had devastated France returns to France alone, without any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man they cursed the day before and will curse again ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... mumble-toothed and terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their decay than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, which rise up proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient art into palaces and chapels, battlements ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... with the terrified expression of a mediaeval wrongdoer, writhing under an ecclesiastical curse. He ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the Virgin's trophies, Who for us our Maker bore; For the curse of old inflicted, Peace and blessing to restore. Sing the songs of praise unending Sing the world's majestic Queen. Weary not nor faint in telling All the gifts she ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... sweet revenge! 'twere virtue here. [Aside] It must be near the dawn. Go on, I'll follow. Life's now a curse; death then my ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... a jolly nice sort of a game," said Bob to himself! "How am I to make him understand? What a jolly fool old Johnson is. Now, my sun-brown-o cockywax, comment vous portez-vous? as we say in French. Me no understandy curse Malay's lingo not at all-oh. Bismillah! wallah! Come oh! and have a bottle oh! ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... cop, eh?" Her eyes left the wallet and examined Malone from head to foot. It was perfectly plain that they didn't like what they saw. "Cop," she said again, as if to herself. It sounded like a curse. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... her! listen to how she spits on her mother's grey hairs! Oh, may you live to have your own daughter tear and trample on you as you have trampled on me. And you will: you will. No woman ever had luck with a mother's curse on her. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... name of Durvasa and was well-acquainted with the hidden truths of morality. Gratified with her respectful attentions, the sage, anticipating by his spiritual power the future (season of) distress (consequent upon the curse to be pronounced upon Pandu for his unrighteous act of slaying a deer while serving its mate) imparted to her a formula of invocation for summoning any of the celestials she liked to give her children. And the Rishi said, 'Those celestials that thou shall summon by this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Sacred is the duty of a parent, and heavy must be the account of those who desert their children, and are required by Heaven to render up an account of the important trust. Couldst thou, oh! father, but now behold thy son! God Almighty!—but I will not curse you, father! No, no"—and I burst into tears, as I leant against the ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... her then), and I wasn't afraid of their abuse or even of their praise. I'm not afraid now either. Mais parlous d'autre chose.... I believe I have done dreadful things. Only fancy, I sent a letter yesterday to Darya Pavlovna and... how I curse myself for it!" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... consternation and clamour. The unlucky fellow who had slipped the leash, waving his wrist, sought to induce the bold robber to alight, but his cries were scarcely heard above the vociferation of the throng, and he was fain to tear his beard and curse the day of his birth. But as neither lamentation nor rage could restore the treasure, cooler heads dispatched a party of horsemen with falcons and lures ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... were repeated to Chrysippus, he exclaimed impatiently, "Curse on the folly which philosophers dignify with ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... one flutter before we're done. Stiffen your lip and stand, my son; We'll take this bloomin' circus on: Ball-cartridge load! Now, steady!' With a curse and a prayer the two faced round, Dogged and grim they stood their ground, And their breech-blocks snapped with a crisp clean sound As the ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and giving in marriage out of the heads of all concerned." And she comprehended also how the meaning of the fragmentary conversation she had overheard between her lover and his companion, as they approached her from the house: "You have brought the curse of Cain upon me." "It could not be helped." "If the old man had not squealed ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... his lordship shrilly; "I dare you!" He turned his horse's head for home and moved off a yard or more. "Whoa! Curse you! This is the demdest horse to manage I've ever owned. Stand still, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... sunny corner of the uninhabited rooms up-stairs she spent her days, toiling at such sewing as was needful, and silent as the dead, save as her life appealed to God from the ground, and called down the curse of Cain upon a head she would have shielded from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... came upon her the lot which still befalls her favourite plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and ignorant passers-by would curse those dismal flowers before they knew them. Affrighted by their questionable hues, they shrink back, keep far aloof from them. And yet among them are the comforters (Solaneae) which, when discreetly employed, have cured so many, have lulled ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... her way; Knew not was it night or day; Sprang up the bank, tore through the furze, Threaded copse and dingle, And heard her penny jingle Bouncing in her purse,— Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran As if she feared some goblin man Dogged her with gibe or curse Or something worse: But not one goblin skurried after, Nor was she pricked by fear; The kind heart made her windy-paced That urged her home quite out of breath with haste And ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... young married woman, going about the slums of New York with my husband, I used to come home and look at my two babies as they lay in their little cots, and say to him, 'What are we going to do to keep these children from selfishness—the curse of the world?' ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Nebo-baladan lives the piece of ground, the house, the slaves, and all the rest of his property shall continue in his own possession, according to the terms of this his will. Whoever shall attempt to change them, may Anu, Bel, and Ae curse him; may Nebo, the divine scribe of -Saggil, cut off his days! This will has been sealed in the presence of Sula, son of Bania, son of Epes-ilu; of Bel-iddin, son of Bel-natsir, son of the priest of Gula; of Nebo-sum-yukin, son of Sula, son of Sigua; of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... people, we of the South and West—and especially we Southerners, with our poverty of invention, our one staple, our otherwise helpless habits, incident to the institution which, however it may be our curse, is still our wealth, and to which, for the present time, we are bound, Ixion-like, by every law of necessity. What does this tariff promise? Where will the profit rest? Where will the loss fall crushingly? The slow torture of which we read in histories of early times was ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... would probably have failed in accomplishing it; and Captain Crawford, thinking money the best way to the heart of the poor, would never have tasted the joy of soothing sad hearts by kindness. Alas! little Sixpence, that you who have been such a blessing to-day, should become a curse to-morrow; that you who have gone forth on errands of mercy to-day, should dwell in scenes of drunkenness and ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous |
