"Superstitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... platform of the German Socialists, adopted at Dresden, "No religious instructions of any kind shall be given to children under the age of sixteen; after that they can select their own religious tenets and teachings, as they please. Superstitious religious notions that are current among the less educated classes are to be eradicated through ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... of the Yonne. It was as if the disturbing of that time-worn masonry let out the dark spectres of departed times. Deep down, at the core of the central pile, a painful object was exposed—the skeleton of a child, placed there alive, it was rightly surmised, in the superstitious belief that, by way of vicarious substitution, its death would secure the safety of all who should pass over. There were some who found themselves, with a little surprise, looking round as if for a similar pledge of security in their new undertaking. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... growing, not by receiving any foreign impulse from without, but like a vigorous tree, whose roots traverse new layers of a fertile soil. All truth comes naturally to the centre of truth as to its rallying-point; and to the universal prayer must be gathered all the pure accents gone astray in the superstitious invocations which rise from the banks of the Ganges or from the burning regions of Africa. The day will come, when our planet, in its revolutions about the sun, shall receive on no point of its surface the rays of the orb of day, without sending ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... country, but during those years Garibaldi led crusade after crusade. He wore the simple costume of an Italian peasant, with a red shirt which was copied by all his men. This red-shirted army swept the enemy out of Sicily and Naples, drove them back through the Alps, won so continually that the superstitious Neapolitans believed that their leader must be in league with the Evil One. But the people of Italy worshiped this general beyond all their ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... again and again it has proved to be false. You know one particular case especially, when a man, who was condemned to die on circumstantial evidence, was three times brought to the scaffold, and three times the rope broke, and then, because of what may be called the superstitious feelings of the community at large, that sentence was reduced to penal servitude for life. I say you know, my lord, that although that circumstantial evidence seemed complete, when a renowned thief and murderer ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... but she would not allow her ideas of that future state to be modified by the notions of judgment and retribution. From this sketch, it is sufficiently evident, that the pleasure she took in an occasional attendance upon the sermons of Dr. Price, was not accompanied with a superstitious adherence to his doctrines. The fact is, that, as far down as the year 1787, she regularly frequented public worship, for the most part according to the forms of the church of England. After that period her attendance became less constant, and in no long time was wholly discontinued. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... with the confidence and affection bestowed on her so freely, but awe-struck by the impression which the boy had avowed, and marvelling how it should be treated, so as to render it a blessed and salutary restraint, rather than the dim superstitious terror that it was at present. At least there was hope of influencing him, his heart was affectionate, his will on the side of right, and in consideration of feeble health and timid character, she would overlook the fact that he had ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... oak trees," said Lewis. "Do you know why I didn't want to land?" he asked abruptly. "I am not superstitious, you know, but as I got into the boat I distinctly heard a voice calling ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... into Lisbon after the famous Convention of Cintra. Upon this occasion, I understand, it broke down and became the cause of much wit among the generals as to whether it was their personal weight or the weight of their dignity that caused their fall. Had they been superstitious, they might have feared that it was ominous ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... illogical people on earth.'' But a Chinese gentleman, who was educated in the United States, justly retorts: "Behold the American as he is, as I honestly found him—great, small, good, bad, self-glorious, egotistical, intellectual, supercilious, ignorant, superstitious, vain and bombastic. In truth,'' he adds, "so very remarkable, so contradictory, so incongruous have I found the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... during the hour that he had remained there? The idol she knew, was buried in a clearing in the timber clump; she did not know just where, for she had looked at the diagram only once, when Calumet's father had shown it to her. She had a superstitious dread of the idol and would not, under any circumstances, have examined the diagram again. But she did not connect Calumet's visit to the timber clump with the diagram, for the latter was concealed in a safe place, under a board in the closet that led off her room; she had looked at it only once ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... military results, but by the moral effect which it produced; and when it is considered from this standpoint its far-reaching consequences can hardly be over-estimated. "It roused at once the fierce instinct of combat in America ..., and dispelled ... the almost superstitious belief in the impossibility of encountering regular troops with hastily levied volunteers ... No one questioned the conspicuous gallantry with which the provincial troops had supported a long fire from the ships and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... suggested that she be confined somewhere. "You never can tell about her kind," he had said; he had a superstitious fear ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the savages. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is even more binding than they would be. Through custom's irresistible sway has been forged the chain that binds in iron fetters a people, who might otherwise be said to be without government or restraint. By it, the young and the weak are held in willing subjection to the old and the strong. Superstitious to a degree they are taught from earliest infancy to dread they know not what evil or punishment, if they infringe upon obligations they have been told to consider as sacred. All the better feelings and impulses implanted in the human heart by nature, are trampled upon by customs, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... stimulated thought, and gradually the perplexity cleared from her mind. Stephen La Mothe was not a fool, that counted for much. He was honest, that counted for much more. The King was notoriously ailing and, being superstitious, might well repent; no high motive, but a probable one. Philip de Commines' visit to Amboise was not by chance, and nothing less than his master's orders would have kept him so long from Valmy. If Stephen La Mothe was right, then these ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Tennessee, or Jonathan Going, of Ohio, warned men against the wrath to come and the fiery furnace below, whose surging flames were ever ready to swallow up and consume stiff-necked, yet never-dying sinners. The simple and superstitious minds of the neglected West flocked to these little churches or to great camps where revivalists, like James McCreary, of Kentucky, or the later Bishop Soule, of Ohio, preached for weeks in succession and seemed to work miracles hardly less wonderful ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... witch," he muttered. "Her spells are no jokes. But I will investigate her case like an old-time Salem inquisitor. With more than Yankee curiosity, which was at the bottom of their superstitious questionings, I will pry into her power. But she will find that she has a wary sceptic to convince. I have seen too many saints and sinners to be again ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Beattie states that once, after riding thirty miles in a very high wind, he passed a night of dreams which were so terrible, that he found it expedient to keep himself awake, that he might no longer be tormented with them. "Had I been superstitious," he observes, "I should have thought that some disaster was impending; but it occurred to me that the tempestuous weather I had encountered the preceding day might be the cause of all these horrors." Other and less obvious causes ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... looked at each other with amazement. Alas! there was no fear of God in that house. Elsie might cross herself when she spoke of spirits, but that was only as a superstitious sign that she had been told ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... covered the rough ground, as she saw the pale facade of the temple confronting her in the pale sands, backed by the almost purple sky, she remembered the carven face of the goddess, and a fear that was superstitious stirred in her heart. Why had Nigel suggested that they should seek the blessing of this tragic Aphrodite? No blessing, surely, could emanate from this dark dwelling in the sands, from this goddess ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... very superstitious. They even believe in luck, though not in Puck. Some of them have faith in what the almanac, and the patent medicine may say, and in planting potatoes according to the moon, but they scout the idea ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... of an event or of a name which has had influence enough to send one echo through all the forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create legend within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is popular imagination more oddly naive and superstitious; nowhere are facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into unrecognizability; and the forms of any legend thus originated become furthermore specialized in each separate locality where it obtains a habitat. On tracing back such a legend or tradition to its primal source, one feels amazed at ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... that he was left alone. Surprised, and chilled by the sudden silence of the chamber, he rose, withdrew his hands from his face, and again he saw that countenance so mute and solemn. He cast his gaze round the dismal room for Arthur; he called his name—no answer came; a superstitious tremor seized upon him; his limbs shook; he sank once more on his seat, and closed his eyes: muttering, for the first time, perhaps, since his childhood, words of penitence and prayer. He was roused from this bitter ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for Popery of any description, writes in this strain: 'Avarice was the other dispatcher which hath made an end both of our libraries and books . . . to the no small decay of the commonwealth. A great number of them who purchased those superstitious mansions [monasteries], reserved of these Library-books, some . . . to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots; some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small numbers, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... food. As a peasant he had been industrious, observant, clever at his work, and naturally self-controlled, polite without any effort, and attentive not only to the wishes but also the opinions of others. His widowed mother, an illiterate, superstitious, old peasant woman, was still living, and Nabatoff helped her and went to see her while he was free. During the time he spent at home he entered into all the interests of his mother's life, helped her in her work, and continued his intercourse with former playfellows; smoked cheap tobacco with ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Taghairm. Scott says here: "The Highlanders, like all rude people, had various superstitious modes of inquiring into futurity. One of the most noted was the Taghairm, mentioned in the text. A person was wrapped up in the skin of a newly-slain bullock, and deposited beside a waterfall, or at the bottom of a precipice, or ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... or can be maintained at the same pitch continuously through life. A life spent in prayer and alms giving is really as insane as a life spent in cursing and picking pockets: the effect of everybody doing it would be equally disastrous. The superstitious tolerance so long accorded to monks and nuns is inevitably giving way to a very general and very natural practice of confiscating their retreats and expelling them from their country, with the result that they ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... in the showings of science, a more serious danger than any of these. Comets were once regarded as most terrific objects, but only in a superstitious way, perplexing nations with fear of change, and shaking pestilence from their horrid hair. During an intermediate enlightened time, these notions passed away; and we have even come to think, that such a visitant of our skies may exercise a beneficial ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... had from an old inhabitant of Burnley, to whom it had been handed down by his grandfather:—In the days of Webster's fanaticism, during the usurpation, he is stated, in the zealous crusade then so common against superstitious relics, to have headed a party by whom the three venerable crosses, now set up in the churchyard of Whalley, commonly called the Crosses of Paulinus, and supposed to be coeval with the first preaching of Christianity ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... passion, that is to say the energy and intensity which coloured everything they did, everything they felt and believed. For whether in bemoaning Tammuz, or in making tear-bottles, or in trading with the Gauls and Britons, the Phoenicians were the same superstitious, honest, passionate, energetic people. And do not forget, you who are now enjoying the privilege of setting down your thoughts in words, that on these shores of Syria written language ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... as possible, and they hastened to unstrap the unfortunate little beast, which, upon being released and laid upon its side, convulsively stretched out its limbs, and lay a strangled rhinoceros. The aggageers gazed with dismay at their departed prize, and, with superstitious fear, they remounted their horses without uttering a word, and rode away; they attributed the sudden death of the animal to the effect of my "evil eye." We turned towards our camp. My Tokrooris were delighted, and I heard them talking and laughing together upon the subject, and remarking upon ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... reject all such superstitious views of the power of mere words, while we reject all false meaning and all no meaning, it is proper to think that there may be some substantial truth in these Orthodox opinions concerning the atonement. Let us endeavor to find ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... so far as can be ascertained, it has always been customary among the Utes to select sepulchres 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 sepulchre probably regulating this matter; and from the same source I learn that it is not usual to find the remains of more than ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... vain of them, and mortified in his ambition, checked as it has been, after attaining the last step to the summit; timid in great perils, tortuous in his paths; born in Europe, disguising and yet betraying a superstitious prejudice of European superiority of intellect, and holding principles pliable to circumstances, occasionally mistaking the left for the right handed wisdom." Against this judgment, Gallatin's estimate of Adams may be here set down. It was ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... repress the vigour of the mind? Have we not cause for triumph when we see Ourselves alone from idol-worship free? Are not this very morn those feasts begun? 35 Where prostrate error hails the rising sun? Do not our tyrant lords this day ordain For superstitious rites and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... I trust you will not suffer me to cause any interruption. I am not quite so superstitious," he added, smiling, "as to fear contagion from accidentally witnessing forms, which are not altogether agreeable to ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... beach of some sort or other; while, on the last, the waves of the Pacific rose and fell as against a precipice, marking their power merely by a slight discoloration of the iron-bound coast. Those superstitious and ignorant beings naturally would connect all these unusual circumstances with some supernatural agencies; and Heaton early, gave it as his opinion that Waally, of whom he had some personal knowledge, was hesitating, and doubtful ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... particularly interesting nor beautiful, and we did not visit it further than to inspect the ancient observatory built by Jey Singh, with its huge sundial, whose gnomon stands 80 feet above the ground! What we are pleased to call a superstitious attention to times lucky or unlucky has given to astronomical observations in the East an unscientific importance which they have not had for centuries in Europe.[3] A slight attack of fever prevented me from going to Amber; ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the leaden image of the saint, which he wore round his neck. The string which held it cracked, and broke with the pull he gave it. This slight circumstance affected his terrified and superstitious mind more than all the rest. He imagined that at this moment his fate was decided; that Saint Januarius deserted him, and that he was undone. He precipitately followed the firework-man the instant he left the shop, and seizing hold of ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... of the citizens, of Cheapside Cross, Charing Cross, and other such street-monuments of too Popish make. At the same time the anti- Sabbatarian "Book of Sports" had been publicly burnt. Then followed (Aug. 27) an ordinance for removing out of churches all "superstitious images, crucifixes, altars," &c.; the effect of which for the next few months was a more or less rough visitation of pickaxing, chipping, and chiselling in all the parish-churches within the Parliament's bounds that had not already been Puritanized by private effort. Then, again, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... cutter evidently gains; a glimpse of blue sky is apparent at the back of her steerer; it increases; the slanting beams of the setting sun shines full in our eyes. It is noticed by the crew—sailors are superstitious, and their hopes sink with the sun; "But it will rise again! Give way, boys, give way! we'll beat them yet!" Again they put forth all their power, and the bow oars nearly touch. But the wind increases, the sea rises, a heavy swell ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... this room, I am sure there are in the country, many persons who hold a superstitious traditionary belief that, somehow or other, our vast trade is to be attributed to what we have done in this way, that it is thus we have opened markets and advanced commerce, that English greatness depends upon the extent of English conquests and English military renown. But I ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... acceptance of it; and secondly, they make their continuance therein depend upon their repeated acts of devotion. They live and walk by their own works, not by faith in the finished work of Christ. What shall I say to these things? Shall I denounce them as delusions, or superstitious legality? No. I would far rather that people should be even thus religious than be without religious observances—far rather that they should be subject to the Prayer-book teaching than be the sport of their own vain imaginings. If men have ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... dealt with the New Testament very much as he had formerly dealt with the Elizabethan poets. He would have no appeal to the vulgar by aggressive rationalists. Let rationalism filter down in the course of time; the vulgar were not prepared for it as yet. It was bad that they should be superstitious, but worse, far worse, that they should be brutally irreverent, and brutal irreverence inevitably came of atheism preached at the street corner. The men who preached it were themselves the very last to guide human souls; they were of coarsest fibre, without a note of music in ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... safe within a palisaded village at night came as a distinct shock to them. That an enemy could enter into the midst of their camp and kill their sentry with bare hands seemed outside the bounds of reason, and so the superstitious Manyuema commenced to attribute their ill luck to supernatural causes; nor were the Arabs able to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... conversation, which has passed, concerning the probable state of departed souls; remembered, also, the solemn music she had heard, and to which the tenderness of her spirits had, in spite of her reason, given a superstitious meaning. At these recollections she wept again, and continued musing, when suddenly the notes of sweet music passed on the air. A superstitious dread stole over her; she stood listening, for some moments, in trembling expectation, and then ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... pregnant to her brain, order and truth flashing out of wandering and fantasy. No one of the girls refused, but sat there, some laughing nervously, some silent; for this mad maid had come to be surrounded with a superstitious reverence in the eyes of the common people. It was said she had a home in the hills somewhere, to which she disappeared for days and weeks, and came back hung about the girdle with crosses; and it was also said that her red robe never became frayed, shabby, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... informed me, made George Sand's acquaintance in 1837, their connection was broken in 1847, and he died, as everyone knows, on October 17, 1849. In each of these dates appears the number which Chopin regarded with a superstitious dread, which he avoided whenever he could-for instance, he would not at any price take lodgings in a house the number of which contained a seven—and which may be thought by some to have really exercised a fatal influence ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... his familiar freend William Marshall to go thither with it in his stead. Moreouer when he perceiued present death at hand, he first confessed his sinnes secretlie, and after openly before sundrie bishops and men of religion, and receiued absolution in most humble wise. [Sidenote: A strange kind of superstitious deuotion, if this report of our author be true.] After this, he caused his fine clothes to be taken from him, and therewith a heare cloth to be put vpon him, and after tieng a cord about his necke, he said vnto the bishops and other that stood by him; "I deliuer my selfe an vnworthie and greeuous ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... his head in amazement. A Burman, and particularly one who chases the wild elephants in their jungles, is intensely superstitious, and for an instant it seemed to him that the wild trumpeting must have some secret meaning, it was so loud and triumphant and prolonged. It was greatly like the far-famed elephant salute—ever one of the mysteries of those most mysterious ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of ignorant or superstitious people have at various times been alarmed by the different phenomena of so-called blood, ink, or sulphur rains. Ehrenberg very patiently collected records of the most prominent instances of these, and published them in his treatise on the dust of trade winds. Some, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... would be for him to become a contented part of Chinese home life; and not only was she uncomfortably cramped and sick on shipboard, but he doubted whether he could persuade his crews to sail with her. Superstitious able seamen balked at the presence of even a normal wife aft; and a Chinese would be regarded as a sign ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of their houses and laid heavy taxes upon them, and forced them for a time to live in the caves and wild places and catacombs of the Aventine, and they became dealers in spells and amulets and love philtres, which they sold dear to the ever-superstitious Romans, and Juvenal wrote scornful satires on them. Presently they returned, under Trajan, to their old dwellings by the Tiber. Thence they crept along the Cestian bridge to the island, and from the island by the Fabrician ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... said, the wretched cagots were formerly permitted to enter the church. The figures which flitted near, pausing, occasionally, to inspect my work, habited, as they were, in the long cloak and capuchon of the country, might well have passed for contemporaries of the superstitious fear which excluded the unfortunate victims of disease from an equality of rights with their fellow-men; but the cagot himself is no longer visible. Here I loitered, till it was too dark to draw another line; and then wended back ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... form which the fancy of Man has not sometimes detected in the clouds,—chains of mountains, splendid cities, storms at sea, flights of birds, groups of animals, monsters of all kinds,—and our superstitious ancestors often terrified themselves by fantastic visions of arms and warriors and battles which they regarded as portents of coming calamities. There is hardly a day on which Clouds do not delight and surprise us by their forms ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... methods were adopted the unbridled imagination roamed through nature, putting in the place of law the figments of superstitious dread. For thousands of years witchcraft, and magic, and miracles, and special providences, and Mr. Mozley's 'distinctive reason of man,' had the world to themselves. They made worse than nothing of it—worse, I say, because ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... serve to call the attention of unscientific people to scientific facts, and teach them to observe the wonders of the universe, it really seems a shame that such marvels should be used as bogies to scare the ignorant and superstitious. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... their leader, as well as their laws: the laws for the desert wanderers, and a decalogue for all humanity. He was equal to any emergency, and he had no scruples. He almost succeeded in making a great nation out of a horde of superstitious robbers. Had he succeeded the record would have thrown civilization back a thousand years. Happy it was for the world that the triumph of crime was brief. The cement of bloodshed that kept the kingdom of Israel together for a time soon dissolved. Captivity followed ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... that siege. The marques demanded when and how Malaga was to be taken. He replied that he knew full well, but he was forbidden to reveal those important secrets except to the king and queen. The good marques was not more given to superstitious fancies than other commanders of his time, yet there seemed something singular and mysterious about this man; he might have some important intelligence to communicate; so he was persuaded to send him to the king and queen. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and overwhelmed it. What a change in a few hours! He, who then could only conjecture, was now made acquainted with truth; was himself become one of the departed! As she listened, she was chilled with superstitious awe, her tears stopped; and she rose, and went to the window. All without was obscured in shade; but Emily, turning her eyes from the massy darkness of the woods, whose waving outline appeared on the horizon, saw, on the left, that effulgent planet, which the old man had pointed ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... provision for the newly baptized to be signed "with the sign of the Cross in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the Faith of Christ crucified," and it is thought that if it be neither wrong {73} nor superstitious on this occasion, it cannot be at ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... that they had this increasingly favourable wind on their very first day showed that they were specially smiled on by the great natural forces. The superstitious feeling that only slumbers in most breasts, that Mother Nature is still a mysterious being, who has her favourites whom she guards, her born enemies whom she baulks, pursues, and finally overwhelms, the age-old childishness stirred pleasantly in ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... themselves free and sovereign, when we made them take such an oath as we thought fit, as a test to give them the right of voting? How could they believe themselves free, when openly despising their religious worship, which religious worship that superstitious people valued beyond their liberty, beyond even their life; when we proscribed their priests; when we banished them from their assemblies, where they were in the practice of seeing them govern; when we seized their revenues, their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... enough to me. But you can never tell what will affect the superstitious, and, to my wonder, George Merry was ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affairs, the same spirit is alike deleterious. We live as society directs, each according to the standard of our class. We have a superstitious reverence for custom. We dress, and eat, and live, in conformity with the Grundy law. So long as we do this, we are "respectable," according to class notions. Thus many rush open-eyed upon misery, for no better excuse than ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... or rather the same faculty came upon him. He was lifted up, with no will or conscious exertion of his own. Now, our evidence as to the power of Pythagoras to be "like a bird, in two places at once," is exactly as valuable as that about Abaris. It rests on the tradition repeated by superstitious philosophers who lived eight hundred years after his death. "To Pythagoras, therefore," as Herodotus has it, "we now say farewell," with no further knowledge than that vague tradition says he was "levitated." The writer now leaves ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... welcome the frame house, the sugar and syrup, the flour and beans, the tools and clothing which come to them from this source. They feel the pressure of the white population crowding upon them from every side. They see their wild life is a thing of the past, and while there are selfish, vicious, superstitious and conservative influences strongly at work against the change, still the change goes on. Their more thoughtful men, perceiving the necessity of the change and recognizing its advantage, are urging ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... from much guessing, with astonishing results, she had grown to half believe in what she was doing. Patricia aided her in this. Patricia had a superstitious streak and took to fads as she took to her ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... told me their tale the old woman heaved a sigh of relief, "Es wird bald gut gehen: Die da, Sie versteht," and I saw her later paying a farewell visit to the great understanding Mother whom she could trust. Superstitious misapprehension if you will, but also the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... made of fasting, to which the Gospel and the Apostolic epistles exhort us, but concerning the choice of foods, which Christ openly sets at naught in the Gospel, and the Pauline epistles not seldom condemn; especially that which is Jewish and superstitious. Some one will say, this is to accuse the Roman Pontiff who teaches that which the Apostle condemns. What the Gospel teaches, is perfectly plain. The Pontiff himself must declare with what intention he commands what the Gospel does not require. Yet no one there says—what I ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... she said. "I am not superstitious, as you know, but I can't help feeling as if it must mean something. I don't know what to make of it else—except it be that I haven't got over the fever yet. And, indeed, I am afraid my head is not quite right, for I can't be sure sometimes, ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... religion of the Mexican peon causes him to people his daily surroundings with the presence of the saints, so does his superstitious mind assign supernatural causes to things not easily explained, and bid him see evil spirits and hobgoblins in strange or unfrequented places. Naturally, much of this superstition has come down with the traditions of his Aztec forbears, whose polytheistic ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... . . . He composed and had painted a special prayer to his 'Good Virgin.' This prayer is a masterpiece of unintentional irony, of Norman wit, in which jest is blended with fear of the saint and with the superstitious fear of the secret influence of something. He has not much faith in his protectress, but he believes in her a little through prudence, and he is considerate of her ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of late so marred his character; and though he naturally felt severely at times the fatigue of travel, yet we had no longer to dread any relapse into that state of lethargy or stupor which had so often baffled every effort to counteract it at Posilipo. Some feeling of superstitious aversion had prompted me to give orders that the Stradivarius violin should be left behind at Posilipo. But before parting my brother asked for it, and insisted that it should be brought with him, though I had never heard him play a note on it for many weeks. He took an interest in all the ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... 1468—Capt. Bertie, 6 May 1706.] again, was essentially a creature of contradictions. Notorious for a "swearing rogue," who punctuated his strange sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his credit at his ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... "in much the same convulsionary and transitional state" as the Highlands and Islands after 1745. He was always haunted, and in popularity retarded, by History. He wanted to know about details of savage custom and of superstitious belief, a taste very far from being universal even in the most highly cultivated circles, where Folklore is a name of fear. He found among the natives such fatal Polynesian fairy ladies as they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Englishman this attitude seems somewhat superstitious. The period of opposition to a measure is not ended when it has passed Parliament and received the royal assent. The question is whether it will receive the assent of the people. Can it get itself obeyed? If it can, then its future is ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the 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 ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... smile, "your mother's talisman was worth more than mine. I have kept the lake pebbles she gave me, and death has passed me by; but the opals of the agraffe did not bring happiness to your mother. It is said that those stones are unlucky. Are you superstitious?" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which every grown man has a direct interest in the stability of the national government. So abstinent are they by habit and principle from any abnormal intervention with the machine of administration, so almost superstitious in adherence to constitutional forms, as to be for a moment staggered by the claim to a right of secession set up by all the Cotton States, admitted by the Border Slave States, which had the effrontery to deliberate between their plain ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism. Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of the race which was once distinguished for the most complete and superstitious worship of the letter of the law. Spinoza in his 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus' led the way in this path, and in our own day I need only mention the writings of Salvador, Kalisch, and Darmesteter and the remarkable Hibbert ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... guide or direct those changes and developments as to render them no longer a menace to this country. If such a case could be established, would not adherence to a formula established under eighteenth century conditions have the same relation to sound politics that the incantations and taboos of superstitious barbarians have to sound religion? And I think such ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as we love life; and this accounts for all those ceremonies which to me were so abhorrent, especially the scenes of the Mista Kosek. To them a dead human body is no more than the dead body of a bird: there is no awe felt, no sense of sanctity, of superstitious horror; and so I learned, with a shudder, that the hate of life is a far worse thing than the fear of death. This desire for death is, then, a master-passion, and is the key to all their words and acts. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... muttered the superstitious Irishman, whose expression of countenance showed that he was not by any means ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... forth; Miriam the prophetess did it. Another, by Mr. K.'s argument, might have done it as well. Thus degrades he the prophetess, that he may get favour with the ordinary women, and prompt them on to a work that he has a superstitious affection for. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... afford to marry their daughters, for weddings cost a great deal, and according to the notions of the country everybody must be married. Often it ruins a man to get his daughters married, and he lives in poverty all the rest of his life. Then very ignorant and superstitious parents sometimes sacrifice their children to please their gods, and as girls are not as much thought of as boys, it is frequently the girls who are killed. But, as I told you, the Government does not allow such doings, and when people are found breaking ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... commons were every day assuming, they issued orders for demolishing all images, altars, crucifixes. The zealous Sir Robert Harley, to whom the execution of these orders was committed, removed all crosses even out of streets and markets; and, from his abhorrence of that superstitious figure, would not any where allow one piece of wood or stone to lie over another ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... severe weather. We had little sleep, and started before break of day, without having been observed by them. We stopped to breakfast at the Standing Stone, where the Indians had deposited bits of tobacco, small pieces of cloth, &c. as a sacrifice, in superstitious expectation that it would influence their manitou to give them buffaloes and a good hunt. Jan. 27th. soon after midnight, we were disturbed by the buffaloes passing close to our encampment: we rose early, and arrived at Qu'appelle ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... this, shrunk with a superstitious dread entirely new to her, and could scarcely conceal ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... their interests are bound up in the modern, and that they have no time to devote to the study of the antiquities of past ages or the things that were fashionable in times long past. Yet most people, when their secret longings are analysed, are found to have an admiration for the old; if not a superstitious veneration, at any rate a desire to perpetuate the memory of their ancestors and to keep in mind the things with which they were familiar. The wealthy man of to-day, who may have sprung from the people, secretly, if not openly, endeavours to surround ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... on his heel and marched downstairs, leaving Mark with a superstitious fear at his heart at his last words, and some annoyance with Holroyd for having exposed him to this, and even with himself for turning craven ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... admir'd, by the least knowing Men. That Law, Physick and other sciences bring honor and riches to those who practice them; Finally that its good to have examin'd them all even the falsest and the most superstitious, that we may discover their just value, and preserve ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... the prejudice which attaches luck to an odd number, I'll have a sixth to show that I am not superstitious." ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... moreover, of a romantic vein, and exceedingly superstitious. He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions which abound in Ireland, all which he professed implicitly to believe. Under his tuition Goldsmith soon became almost as great a proficient in fairy lore. From this branch of good-for-nothing knowledge, his studies, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... galleyes. Ere the officers come to extend, Ile bestowe a hundred pound on a doale of bread, which Ile cause to bee kneaded with Scorpions oy le that may kill more than the plague. Ile hire them that make their wafers or sacramentarie gods to minge them after the same sort, so in the zeale of their superstitious religion, shall they languish and droup like carrion. If there be euer a blasphemous coniurer, that can call the windes from their brazen caues, and make the cloudes trauell before their time, Ile giue him the other hundred pounds to disturbe the heauens a whole weeke together ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... the diamonds wouldn't be hard to get, that there were altar idols and ornaments in a big cave which was hollowed out of the face of a rock cliff, and that there was a bridge over to it, and that the cave wasn't guarded because the tribe had a superstitious fear of the priests who had charge of the idols and things, and that the people didn't care for gold and diamonds, anyway, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not appear to be governed by fixed and solid principles of religion, such as the Christian faith, produced by conviction or reason. They have a superstitious reverence for certain ceremonies, rights, and ancient customs, which have prevailed for ages; and these serve, in many respects, to cover various vices and habits which are prevalent. They seem, however, to believe ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I was a boy, that diabolized my imagination,—I mean, that gave me a distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the neighborhood where I was ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Indian of his American possessions. In passionate appeals he aroused the vengeance and superstition of his people and warned them that the white man's civilization was poisoning and annihilating the red race. In his dramatic way he related to the superstitious Indians a dream wherein the Great Spirit sent his message that they were to cast aside the weapons, the utensils of civilization, and the "deadly rum" of the white men, and, with aid from the Great Spirit, drive the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... 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 by self-imposed punishment the sinners ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... better companion, the father and son were induced to accept her services; but still Katy was not wanting in some qualities which made her a very tolerable housekeeper. On the one hand, she was neat, industrious, honest, and a good manager. On the other, she was talkative, selfish, superstitious, and inquisitive. By dint of using the latter quality with consummate industry, she had not lived in the family five years when she triumphantly declared that she had heard, or rather overheard, sufficient to enable her to say ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 could have! I returned to my ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... this was the very spot which had been made accursed a few hours before by the execution of the Quakers, whose bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave, beneath the tree on which they suffered. He struggled, however, against the superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and compelled himself to pause ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of a thinker, apart from matters concerning cattle, and his brain worked slowly! He was sorely puzzled. Here was a wizard, who could make him rich, and he did so love to jingle gold in his pockets. But then he was superstitious. He feared that this sorcerer derived all his uncanny knowledge from demons, and Taffy, being rather much of a sinner, feared these very much. Meanwhile, his new acquaintance ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... than England's Koh-i-noor, and more important to the country and the crown that possess it. The legend runs, does it not? that Mauravania falls when the Rainbow Pearl passes into alien hands. An absurd belief, to be sure, but who can argue with a superstitious people or hammer wisdom into the minds of babies? And that has been lost, that gem so dear to Mauravania's people, so important ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... which as yet did not rightfully belong to the Traders was now in the Queen's strong-room and her crew were pledged by the strongest possible tie known in their Service to set down on Sargol once more before the allotted time had passed. The Free Traders did not like it, there was even a vaguely superstitious feeling that such a bargain would inevitably draw ill luck to them. But they were left with no choice if they wanted to retain their influence with ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... cautious and experienced breeders, though not averse to a single infusion of foreign blood, were almost universally convinced that the attempt to establish a new race, intermediate between two widely distinct races, was hopeless: "they clung with superstitious tenacity to the doctrine of purity of blood, believing it to be the ark in which alone true safety could be found."[207] Nor was this conviction unreasonable: when two distinct races are crossed, the offspring of the first ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... superstitious about the way he was always left with no more than a hundred credits in his pockets. This time, he stripped himself to that sum at once, depositing the rest in the First Marsport Bank. Maybe ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... set out from the city. First, Spurius Carvilius, to whom had been decreed the veteran legions, which Marcus Atilius, the consul of the preceding year, had left in the territory of Interamna, marched at their head into Samnium; and, while the enemy were busied in their superstitious rites, and holding their secret meeting, he took by storm the town of Amiternum. Here were slain about two thousand eight hundred men; and four thousand two hundred and seventy were made prisoners. Papirius, with a new army, which he raised in pursuance of a decree of the senate, made himself ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... said Helen to herself. "I have a premonition that something will happen." Helen was very superstitious in certain ways. ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... helping himself to a luscious nectarine from the basket at his side—"Sweet Niphrata! ... settest thou a limit to the power of the King? As well draw a boundary-line for the imagination of the poet! Khosrul may be loved and feared by a certain number of superstitious malcontents who look upon a madman as a sort of sacred wild animal,—but the actual population of Al-Kyris,—the people who are the blood, bone, and sinew of the city,—these are not in favor of change either in religion, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... judgment and of energy. His health, however, gradually declined. He spent much of his time in traveling, and was often dejected and depressed. One circumstance made him feel very unhappy. The people of many of the villages through which he passed, being in those days very ignorant and superstitious, got a rumor into circulation that the king's malady was such that he could only be cured by being bathed in the blood of young children. They imagined that he was traveling to obtain such a bath; and, wherever he came, the people fled, mothers eagerly carrying off their ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ducat of Aloysius Mocenigo, Doge of Venice. Afterwards the boy was again thrown into a trance (in all he was mesmerized eight times), and revealed where the sacks still lay; but before the white trader could renew his search for them, the party was hunted out of the country by natives whose superstitious fears were aroused, barely escaping ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... told me that before. The time I've wasted!" exclaimed Nevill. "But I'll make up for it now. Thank Heaven I'm superstitious." ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... superstitious. After hearing that dismal story, Joseph Duncombe was rather inclined to regret the choice he had made; but he resolved to keep the history of old Screwton a secret from his daughter, though it cost him perpetual efforts to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... it?" said the old woman. "And so you're not superstitious at all, and you don't believe in the Good People! Now tell me, Peter Sullivan, when you came to that door just now and said 'God save all here,' like a decent man, why did you add 'except the cat?' What did you mean by those words 'except the ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... which supplemented the fruits of his natural gifts, and which he always managed to harmonize with what he already knew by more commonplace means. He had been long in the East, whence he had brought a cargo of half-scientific, half-superstitious fancies—belief in astrology, mesmerism, spiritualism, and cheiromancy the most prominent. He could cast a horoscope, summon departed spirits, heal the sick and read the reticent by mesmeric force, and explain the past as well ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Majesty's simplicity of habitudes. But one loves especially in him his scrupulous attention to cleanliness of person and of environment. He washed like a very Mussulman, five times a day; loved cleanliness in all things, to a superstitious extent; which trait is pleasant in the rugged man, and indeed of a piece with the rest of his character. He is gradually changing all his silk and other cloth room-furniture; in his hatred of dust, he will not suffer a floor-carpet, even a stuffed chair; but insists on having all of wood, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... it—Madeline," he stopped short at that name, and added in an altered voice; "no, I will be one of the watch, Lester; I will look to her—to your—safety; but I cannot sleep under another roof. I am superstitious, Lester—superstitious. I have made a vow, a foolish one perhaps, but I dare not break it. And my vow binds me, save on indispensable and urgent necessity, not to pass a night any where but in my ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so unknown, then, uncle Phaeton?" hesitatingly asked Bruno, touched, in spite of himself, by that intensely earnest tone and expression. "Of course, I know what the Indians say; they are full of a rude sort of superstitious awe, which—" ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... post held a frail, box-like contrivance. The inner recess of this was supposed to hold a relic of Buddha—some whispered a finger, some a piece of the great teacher's robe; but whatever the holy emblem, both place and shrine were surrounded with a veil of superstitious mystery and held in awe. A lonely taper burned before the shrine, dimly lighting a small opening covered with ground glass and disclosed above a written warning to all passers-by to stop and offer prayer ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the next rejoicing Day, which had been employ'd in Squibs and Crackers, and by that means celebrated its Subject in a double Capacity. I once met with a Page of Mr. Baxter under a Christmas Pye. Whether or no the Pastry-Cook had made use of it through Chance or Waggery, for the Defence of that superstitious Viande, I know not; but upon the Perusal of it, I conceived so good an Idea of the Author's Piety, that I bought the whole Book. I have often profited by these accidental Readings, and have sometimes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the branches. Their thick shade and their delicious fruit made them precious trees, and meanwhile, according to Harris, not a native would dare to propagate the species. "Whoever plants a mango-tree dies!" Such is the superstitious ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... overseer's pistol cracked, and the black giant fell dead. A yell arose from the crowd, but they stood irresolute. For firearms, so strictly kept from servants and slaves, so preeminently pertaining to the dominant class, they had a superstitious dread. Four pistols meant four lives picked ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... on Gen. Hooker's capacity, and to refer to the question of Gen. Hooker's habitual use of stimulants. The public mention of my name was as sedulously avoided as a reference to his satanic majesty is wont to be in the society of the superstitious; but the exuberance of the attack must have afforded unbounded satisfaction to its authors, as it very apparently ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... it is doubtful yet Whether Caesar will come forth to-day or no; For he is superstitious grown of late, 195 Quite from the main opinion he held once Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies: It may be these apparent prodigies, The unaccustom'd terror of this night, And the persuasion of his augurers, 200 May hold him from the ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... in a glass bowl (in Fez), or almost any polished surface. The magical ceremonies, which have probably nothing to do with the matter, have succeeded in making this old and nearly universal belief seem a mere fantastic superstition. But occasionally a person not superstitious has recorded this experience. Thus George Sand in her Histoire de ma Vie mentions that, as a little girl, she used to see wonderful moving landscapes in the polished back of a screen. These were so vivid that she thought they must ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... or, rather, its Dutch equivalent. Still, as this talk of missing vultures touched me nearly, and it is always as well to conform to native prejudices, at the next and two subsequent heaps I cast my stone as humbly as the most superstitious Zulu in the land. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... consideration all, whether quality or defect, not supported by at least five authorities, it may be concluded, so far as this induction goes, that the Filipino is, on the one hand, hospitable, courageous, fond of music, show, and display; and, on the other, indolent, superstitious, dishonest, and addicted to gambling. One quality, imitativeness, is possibly neutral. It would appear that his virtues do not especially look toward thrift—i.e., economic independence—and that his defects positively look the other way. If ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... for psychology; here were subtle unwindings of motive, trackings of reason, intricate anatomizations of the heart. All ages, before these last in which we live, have been worshippers, even to excess, of "unknown gods," "too superstitious:" we, upon whom the ends of the world are fallen, may be thought to be beyond a danger into which the wisest of old time were entrapped: we scarcely allow that the Brahmin may, notwithstanding, be a learned man ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "Yes, I don't think we can insist on it as being a levee," he said, "where one is expected to come and make one's bow and pay formal compliments. That idea is an old anthropomorphic one, of course. It is superstitious—it is almost debasing to think of God demanding praise as a duty incumbent on us. 'To thee all angels cry aloud'—I confess I don't like the idea of heaven as a place of ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Providence on his audience he speaks with confidence, as to a friend to whom his purity is known, and who is accustomed to listen favourably to his prayers. He is zealous but not fanatical, but equally superstitious as devout. His closet was crowded with relics, rosaries, etc., but there he passed generally eight hours of the twenty-four upon his knees in prayer and meditation. He often inflicted on himself mortifications, observed fast-days, and kept ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to produce a 'lake' or copper-salt of the vegetable alkaloids, which copper-lakes are among the most brilliant and most permanent of colouring matters; the alum was there as a 'mordant'; and even the blood was doubtless there incorporated for better reasons than superstitious ones, in all probability for the purpose of clarifying (by means of its coagulating albumen) the seething and ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... and hence her hatred of marriage, and her Amazonian exploits. But still the Piache[195-12] would not show her that trumpet, or tell her where it was: and as for going to seek it, even she feared the superstitious wrath of the tribe at such a profanation. But the day after the English went, the Piache chose to express his joy at their departure; whereon, as was to be expected, a fresh explosion between master and pupil, which ended, she confessed, in her burning the old rogue's hut over his head, from which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to Cambridge except as an admiring visitor; I have never been to Chesterton at all, either from a sense of unworthiness or from a faint superstitious feeling that I might be fulfilling a prophecy in the countryside. Anyone with a sense of the savour of the old English country rhymes and tales will share my vague alarm that the steeple might crack or the market cross fall down, for a smaller thing than the coincidence of a man ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... miscomprehension of certain texts or diagrams. To do him justice I must mention that in my own case—(he told my fortune four times),—his predictions were fulfilled in such wise that I became afraid of them. You may disbelieve in fortune-telling,— intellectually scorn it; but something of inherited superstitious tendency lurks within most of us; and a few strange experiences can so appeal to that inheritance as to induce the most unreasoning hope or fear of the good or bad luck promised you by some diviner. Really to see our future would be a misery. ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the postal department of the government as the advertisements 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 ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... repudiate the former (see Orig. in Joann. Tom. VI. 17, Opp. IV. p. 133).[288] Complete obscurity prevails as to the Church's adoption of the practice of child baptism, which, though it owes its origin to the idea of this ceremony being indispensable to salvation, is nevertheless a proof that the superstitious view of baptism had increased.[289] In the time of Irenaeus (II. 22. 4) and Tertullian (de bapt. 18) child baptism had already become very general and was founded on Matt. XIX. 14. We have no testimony regarding it from earlier times; ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... masterly manner. Pan, like other gods who dwelt in forests, was dreaded by those whose occupations caused them to pass through the woods by night, for the gloom and loneliness of such scenes dispose the mind to superstitious fears. Hence sudden fright without any visible cause was ascribed to Pan, and called a ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of subordination and deference continued to tell upon the working-class. The modern spirit has now almost entirely dissolved those habits, and the anarchical tendency of our worship of freedom in and for itself, of our superstitious faith, as I say, in machinery, is becoming very manifest. More and more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which machinery is valuable, this and that ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... the terrible effect it was having upon the poor people who were practising upon themselves with it. Excitable young girls of fifteen and sixteen, half hysterical with their wonderment; ignorant, afflicted women, who had lost dear relations and friends by death; superstitious lads, and men too incapable of consecutive reasoning to perceive the necessary connection between cause and effect; the whole community, in short, seemed to me catching the credulous infection one from another, and to be in a state ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 Perkins en Mad Whately? Dey'd ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... maia, ruae, or forbidden articles at the Society Islands, though doubtless the same thing, did not seem to be so strictly observed by them, except with respect to the dead, about whom we thought them more superstitious than any of the others were. But these are circumstances with which we are not as yet sufficiently acquainted to be decisive about; and I shall only just observe, to shew the similitude in other matters ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... dumb, and motionless with terror, but when they saw the waters coming, they escaped for life, though thirty or forty were overtaken and drowned. Another squaw named Isabel says that the stubs of trees, which are still plainly visible deep down in the pellucid waters, are considered by the old superstitious Indians to be evil spirits, the demons of the place, reaching up their arms, and that they ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... couple of days ago, and I heard a strange little muffled sound, more like a snared rabbit than anything else. But the Indian with me said no, everybody who had lived there was dead, and he was for hurrying on. They're superstitious, you know, about a place where people have died. But I crawled in, and found this little thing lying in a bundle of rags with its hands bound and dried grass stuffed in its mouth. It was too weak to stir or do more than occasionally ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... It was all so simple to Mark, and so perfect to Canon Nicholls, that the latter almost dreaded this very perfection as unlikely, and unbefitting the "second-rate" planet in which it was his lot to live. And to confirm this almost superstitious feeling of a man who had lived to know where the jolts and jars of life cause the acutest suffering to the idealist, had come this fresh aspiration of Mark's after a life more completely perfect in itself. Strong instincts were entirely in accord with the older man's sober judgment ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... I must not be misunderstood. By 'religion', I don't mean 'priest-craft'. I don't mean that superstitious grimace; that rolling up of white eyes, and spreading of sanctified palms; with 'disfigured faces and long prayers,' and all the rest of that holy trumpery, which, so far from making people cheerful, tends but to throw them into the dumps. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Church remained, however, untouched, and this continued, until after the Russian revolution of 1917, as one of the most serious obstacles to Russian intellectual and educational progress. The serfs, too, remained serfs—tied to the land, ignorant, superstitious, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY |
