"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found himself placed with a man of justice, honour, and generosity, with whom he remained till the grave terminated the contract. Whiteley's passions were so lively, and bad habit had so devested him of all control over his tongue that he would d—n and curse his actors, and call them foul names, even during the performance of the stage, and that too so loud that the audience would frequently hear him. Yet he was in substantial concerns ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... should a living man complain?" [1] I really don't know, except it be that a dead man can't; and he, the said patriarch, did complain, nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that pious prologue,"Curse—and die;" the only time, I suppose, when but little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter from Lord Holland on "The Bride of Abydos," which he likes, and so does Lady H. This is very good-natured ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Maule's well may have turned bitter in consequence of an ancient wrong; but also perhaps because of a disturbance in the underground springs. The sudden deaths of Colonel and Judge Pyncheon may have been due to the old wizard's curse that "God would give them blood to drink"; or simply to an inherited tendency to apoplexy. Did Donatello have furry, leaf-shaped ears, or was this merely his companions' teasing? Did old Mistress Hibben, ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... provokes me to speak the truth, and unless I tell it myself, you could hardly suspect what a resemblance I once bore even to the lovely Lady Augusta of Berkely. About this time broke out those unfortunate feuds of Bruce and Baliol, which have been so long the curse of this country. My father, determined in his choice of party by the arguments of his wealthy kinsmen at the court of Edward, embraced with passion the faction of the English interest, and became one of the keenest ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... except a tunic, which they showed him. As may be readily supposed, I did not have the audacity to claim it, though well aware of its value, and my chagrin became almost insupportable as I vented many a groaning curse over my lost treasure. The peasants paid no attention to me, and I was gradually left behind, as my weakness increased my pace decreased. For this reason, it was late when I reached the city, and, entering the inn, beheld ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... had stayed with me yesterday I should never have forgiven you—no, never! I'll resign in her favour. I will. But in no one else's, and if ever I hear of your going wrong, my boy, or doing anything but the best with that sweet trusting woman, I'll make you curse the day that ever you knew me—I ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... you hear, Europeans? Are you stopping your ears? Listen to the voice within! We ourselves must question ourselves. Let us not resemble those who ascribe to their neighbour all the sins of the world, and think themselves blameless. For the curse under which we are labouring to-day, each one of us must bear his share of responsibility. Some have erred by deliberate choice, others through weakness, and it is not the weak who are the least guilty. The apathy of ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... putting his hands on Ercole's shoulders, "you do not know what it is to be in love! How everything one touches is fire, and the sky is like lead, and one minute you are cold and one minute you are hot, and you may turn and turn on your pillow all night and never sleep, and you want to curse everybody you see, or to embrace them, it makes no ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... saw, That every savage tooth and claw Had got its proper beauty By doing bloody duty; Himself, the hapless Lion tore his hide, And lash'd with sounding tail from side to side. Ah! bootless blow, and bite, and curse! He beat the harmless air, and worse; For, though so fierce and stout, By effort wearied out, He fainted, fell, gave up the quarrel; The Gnat retires ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... helpless and in agony, the other with absolute power! The official faced the man deliberately, with an amused smile. "I can," he said, slowly, "but—I won't!" How would you have felt in such a case? Could you ever forget it? and would you not be ready, for that official's sake, to hate mankind, and to curse God and die? But you perhaps believe that convicts have no human feelings, and that they are cheerful under ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... when they drove away, his heart 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 an abounding ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... to be done about it," said Freydis. And, since Manuel displayed an obstinate prejudice against any lethal plague, she put the puckerel curse upon Asmund, by which he was afflicted with all small bodily ills that can intervene between ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... fresh water lake, to be devoured, perhaps, by an ichthyosaurus. Prayers and curses seemingly had produced the desired effect; indeed, the pilot's anathematizing was prayer; but such prayer is not by any means to be recommended. It would be as well to curse as only to pray when fear is excited. Prayer, doubtless, often is, but never ought to be, the effect of fear. Prayer should be the holy offering up of reasonable desires to the Creator, and in times of danger there should be confidence in the Creator as all powerful, and in ourselves ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... made to degrade the green of Ireland into a party colour, and to make that which has long been regarded as a national emblem the symbol of a faction. Gentlemen, there is no right-minded or right-hearted man—looking back upon the ruinous dissensions and bitter conflicts which have been the curse and bane of this country—who will not reprobate any effort to revive and perpetuate them. There is no well-disposed man in the community who will not condemn and crush those persons—no matter on what side they may stand—who make religion, which should ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... "Curse you if you hit me!" began a rough voice from out of the darkness; but the speech was cut short by a sharp clicking, and the familiar voice of the French captain arose, sharpened by rage and sounding fierce and tigerish in spite of the peculiarity of his broken English, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... fond of grog; and though I never says anything about it, I often think to myself, that if Tom should chance to be pressed some of these days, and be punished for being in liquor, he'll think of his old father, and curse him in his heart, when he eyes the cat flourishing ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Scotia,' he said. But he saw that it would be absurd to tell the people to let well enough alone, when, rightly or wrongly, {44} they were discontented with their government. The way to put an end to hectic agitation was not to curse or to satirize poor human nature, but to remove the cause of ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... with the desire of seeing us. That mighty Rishi, O king, will admonish thy son for the welfare of this race. And, O Kauravya, what he adviseth must be followed undoubtingly, for if what he recommendeth is not done, the sage will curse thy ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... natural death cannot be the penalty of unrighteousness, because it is not a curse and a woe, but a blessing and a privilege. Epictetus wrote, "It would be a curse upon ears of corn not to be reaped; and we ought to know that it would be a curse upon man not to die." 2 It cannot ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "Curse her!" cried Martin; "I spared her once; now she must die, or I, or both more likely;" and he reared his bow, and drew his arrow to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... unusual vehemence. "I expected you to propose something of the kind, and I am obliged to confess to you that we have discussed the contingency in advance. We will not leave you. That is final. You may depose us, exile us, curse us or anything you like, but still we shall remain true to the duty we owe to our country. We stay here, Prince Robin, just so long as you ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the French officer, with a curse in the purest Irish. It was lucky I stopped laughing time enough to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow would else have brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our combat, as what ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Aubrey's once saying that we are told mainly what they do not there? Out of that, I take it, we may pick what they do. There shall be no night—then there must be eternal light; no curse—then must there be everlasting blessedness; no tears—then is there everlasting peace; no toil—then is there perpetual ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... imposed upon the hero. Versions examined. The Gawain forms—Bleheris, Diu Crone. Perceval versions—Gerbert, prose Perceval, Chretien de Troyes, Perlesvaus, Manessier, Peredur, Parzival. Galahad—Queste. Result, primary task healing of Fisher King and removal of curse of Waste Land. The two inter-dependent. Illness of King entails misfortune on Land. Enquiry into nature of King's disability. Sone de Nansai. For elucidation of problem necessary to bear in mind close connection between Land and Ruler. ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... depends entirely on the amount of competition between the workmen themselves.' Yes, my dear children, you must eat each other; we are far too fond parents to interfere with so delightful an amusement! Curse them—sleek, hard-hearted, impotent do-nothings! They confess themselves powerless against competition—powerless against the very devil that is destroying us, faster and faster every year! They ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... patterns, and really a pretty tasteful piece of workmanship. Two or three old Brahmins, principal among whom is 'Hureehar Jha,' a wicked old scoundrel, now advance, bearing gay garlands of flowers, muttering a strange gibberish in Sanskrit, supposed to be a blessing, but which might be a curse for all we understood of it, and decking our wrists and necks with these strings of flowers. For this service they get a small gratuity. The factory omlah headed by the dignified, portly gornasta or confidential adviser, dressed in snowy turbans and spotless white, now come forward. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Bennet paused also, to watch the dancers for a moment, all of them bending and turning and twisting to a tune of such impelling rhythm that it would have made a wooden-legged man almost to attempt the impossible, and then to curse his fate; then she lifted ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... staggered in his stride, now fell headlong to cough and sob in the hollow of his arm. The unfortunate young man had the courage of his desperate strait. Many times he arose and hurled himself onward with curse or prayer; many times he fell or flung himself back to earth. But at length the storm passed over and over his spent members; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his clothes; the end was as near ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... indicated the survival of the antiquated spirit of individualism into a new order of things which peremptorily called for co-operation and iron discipline, were received in Berlin and Vienna with undisguised joy. The persistence of this spirit has been the curse of ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... When I behold the heavens, then I repent, And curse thee, wicked Mephistophilis, Because thou hast ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... up at the young man, who stood returning his gaze. "Take her, Billy, and heaven help you if you're not good to her, for John Levine's spirit will haunt you with a curse." ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... difference we find; 1280 And can no more make bears of these, Than prove my horse is SOCRATES. That Synods are bear-gardens too, Thou dost affirm; but I say no: And thus I prove it in a word; 1285 Whats'ver assembly's not impow'r'd To censure, curse, absolve, and ordain, Can be no Synod: but bear-garden Has no such pow'r; ergo, 'tis none: And so ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... prophets; by the prelates and confessors; by the doctors of the church; by the holy abbots, monks, and eremites, who dwelt in solitudes, in mountains, and in caverns; by the holy saints and martyrs, who suffered torture and death for their faith, I curse thee, witch!" cried Paslew. "May the malediction of Heaven and all its hosts alight on the head of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to have rolled away from me. Of course, I never expected Aunt Susan's money, but mother has been harping upon it as long as I can remember. I don't think Maurice wanted it greatly. It seemed to me that that money brought a curse with it. I wonder if things are going to be happier now. Oh, dear, I am glad—yes, I am glad that it has not been left to ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... tower was no doubt suggested by one of the temple towers of Babylon. W. A. Bennet (Genesis, p. 169; cf. Hommel in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible) suggests E-Saggila, the great temple of Merodach (Marduk). The variety of languages and the dispersion of mankind were regarded as a curse, and it is probable that, as Prof. Cheyne (Encyclopaedia Biblica, col. 411) says, there was an ancient North Semitic myth to explain it. The event was afterwards localized in Babylon. The myth, as it appears in Genesis, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... in all this territory. We shall see the tremendous importance of this clause, which guaranteed to this large tract freedom from the curse of slavery, when we come to consider the struggles which were made for many years to keep ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... eyes opened wide. He looked her up and down. "I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather was. You are my daughter—and you keep ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the curse of Canada, and the very low price of whisky places the temptation constantly in every one's reach. But it is not by adopting by main force the Maine Liquor law, that our legislators will be able to remedy the evil. Men naturally ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... as the door closed, "he's a good plucked one—showed spirit. But I'll show spirit, too. Meeson is a man of his word. Cut him off with a shilling? not I; cut him off with nothing at all. And yet, curse it, I like the lad. Well, I've done with him, thanks to that minx of a Smithers girl. Perhaps he's sweet on her? then they can go and starve together, and be hanged to them! She had better keep out of my way, for she shall smart for this, so sure as my name ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... of the eternal ingredients of joy. This spirit is the central spirit of the Bronte novel. It is the epic of the exhilaration of the shy man. As such it is of incalculable value in our time, of which the curse is that it does not take joy reverently because it does not take it fearfully. The shabby and inconspicuous governess of Charlotte Bronte, with the small outlook and the small creed, had more commerce with the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than a legion of lawless minor poets. ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... their drunken state, drag by the hand each other, and girls like the one whom I saw taken to the station-house; they drag with them cabmen, and they ride and they walk from one tavern to another; and they curse and stagger, and say they themselves know not what. I had previously seen such unsteady gait on the part of factory-hands, and had turned aside in disgust, and had been on the point of rebuking them; but ever since I have been in the habit ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Underhill was a born ruler, dominating most of the people with whom life brought her in contact. Distant cousins quaked at her name, while among the male portion of her nearer relatives she was generally alluded to as The Family Curse. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... that "wandering voice?" What the distinguishing trait which has made this wily attendant on the spring notorious from the times of Aristotle and Pliny? Think of "following the cuckoo," as Logan longed to do, in its "annual visit around the globe," a voluntary witness and accessory to the blighting curse of its vagrant, almost unnatural life! No, my indiscriminate bards; on this occasion we must part company. I cannot "follow" your cuckoo—except with a gun, forsooth—nor welcome your "darling of the spring," even though he were never ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... from the moral perils of the community. This is not always a willful breach of duty on the part of the father, but usually comes from ignorance as to how to broach this subject to the boy. A great many growing lives would be saved from moral taint and become a blessing instead of a curse if the father discharged his whole duty to his growing son, by putting at his disposal the knowledge which is necessary to an understanding of the functions of ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... them with the sword of his mouth unless they repent. The doctrine of Balaam is partly explained—he "taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication." When Balak desired Balaam to pronounce a curse against Israel, God by various means miraculously prevented Balaam's doing so; but Balaam craftily instructed Balak to make use of the women of Moab to seduce the men of Israel to sacrifice to their idols and to indulge in the licentious accompaniments to such ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... aerial perspective. On the fourth day, I was absorbed over the hardest of all hard tasks in landscape art, studying the clouds straight from Nature. The magnificent moorland silence was suddenly profaned by a man's voice, speaking (or rather croaking) behind me. 'The worst curse of human life,' the voice said, 'is the detestable necessity of taking exercise. I hate losing my time; I hate fine scenery; I hate fresh air; I hate a pony. Go on, you brute!' Being too deeply engaged with ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... all, but she kept her eyes upon the face of him who offered her this possibility. There passed through her mind a hundred stories she had heard of those who had gone back. But not one that spoke of them as welcome, as received with joy, as comforting those they loved. Ah no! was it not rather a curse upon the house to which they came? The rooms were shut up, the houses abandoned, where they were supposed to appear. Those whom they had loved best feared and fled them. They were a vulgar wonder,—a thing that the poorest laughed ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... say, don't tell her this. I don't believe they'll do anything to me, because they'll look upon me as a boy, and I'm reckoning upon its being the grandest piece of fun I ever had. If they do chop me short off, I leave you my curse if you don't take down my head off the spike they'll stick it on, at the top of Temple Bar, out of spite because they could not get Sir Robert's. Good-bye, old usurper worshipper. I can't help liking you, all the same. Try ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... Boy-poet, whom with curse They hounded on to death's untimely doom. [Footnote: T. L. Harris, Lyrics of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... down an' my stammerin' tongue goin' to lie silent in my head. I want a house not made with han's but eternal in the Heavens. That Man up there, is all I need; I'm goin' to still trus' Him. Before the comin' of Chris' men was kill' for His name sake; today they curse Him. It's nearly time for the world to come to en' for He said "bout two thousand years I shall come again" an' ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... with perfect calmness, had an astounding effect upon the two men. Penurot's pale face turned almost green; Brandelaar's hard features were frightfully distorted in a grimace of rage. Half choking in the effort to keep down a furious curse, he drew a deep breath, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... family's face. But never give up reading and thinking, the keeping in touch with abstract ideas. As long as you are young you can get on without this, but, when the charm of youth deserts you, you will find life (and others will find you) a blessing or a curse, according as you have developed or starved your powers of mind. It may be that you find little pleasure in your steady reading, and see no immediate results from it; never mind, read on, lest you become in middle life one of those amiable, empty-headed women ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... steadily working on the estate. A few wandered away, but their places were easily filled; for the majority of the freed slaves very soon discovered that their lot was a far harder one than it had been before, and that freedom so suddenly given was a curse rather than a blessing ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... but they says it bes her ye brought ashore put the curse on to us—an' now they bes comin' this way, skipper, to tell ye to run her out ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... with immortal victory, you see Him not alone! He is heading and heralding a multitude which no man can number. Himself the victorious precursor, he is shewing to these exulting thousands "the path of life." He tells them to dread neither for themselves or others that lonesome tomb. The curse is extracted from it; the envenomed sting is plucked away. In passing through its lonesome chambers they may exult in the thought that a mightier than they has sanctified it by His own presence, and transmuted what was once ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... hows'ever—time enough, my sons—plenty time!" promised Un' Benny Rowett, patriarch of the fishing-fleet and local preacher on Sundays. Some of the younger men grumbled that "there was no tellin': the season had been tricky from the start." The spider-crabs—that are the curse of inshore trammels—had lingered for a good three weeks past the date when by all rights they were due to sheer off. Then a host of spur-dogs had invaded the whiting-grounds, preying so gluttonously on the hooked fish that, haul in as you might, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... caresses which were good for the souls and bodies of men. It was a starved life up there in the salient... Why shouldn't she give him her lips? Wasn't he fighting for France? Wasn't he a tall and proper lad? Curse the girl for being so sulky to an English soldier!... And now, if those other women, those old hags, were to swear against him things he had never said, things he had never done, unless drink had made him forget—by God! supposing drink had made him forget? He would be ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... on all sides show the desire for peace and the end of the war; for war brings in its train forced labour, the requisition of food, and the curse of German Askaris wandering about among the native villages, satisfying their every want, often at the point of the bayonet. Preferable even to this are the piping times of peace, when the German administrator, ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... that I cannot so forget my soul, as to live the life of brutes, and die the death more horrible because it dreams of waking? There is none to lead me forward, there is none to teach me right; young as I am, I live beneath a curse that lasts for ever." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... thee? All hopes shall shake the head at thee, and say: there goes the poison of purity, the perfection of impiety, the serpentine seducer of simplicity. Zeal herself will cry out upon thee, and curse the time that ever she was mashed by thy malice, who like a blind leader of the blind, sufferedst her to stumble at every step in Religion, and madest her seek in the dimness of her sight, to murder her mother the Church, from whose paps thou ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... provision by parents to provide education and opportunity for their children is commendable and desirable. But the evil effects of waiting for dead men's shoes are proverbial. Many a boy's greatest curse has been his father's fortune. Many a man of native ability waits idly for fortune to come and lets opportunities for self-help slip by unheeded. The world often exclaims over the failure of the sons ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... strong, as the deepening passions of dawning love. Presently up comes the sun very peremptory, and says to people, "Go about your business! Laggards not allowed in Maine! Nothing here to repent of, while you lie in bed and curse to-day because it cannot shake off the burden of yesterday; all clear the past here; all serene the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... here their paradise. And in these fair realms the children of Adam might have experienced joys hardly surpassed by those of their first parents in Eden, were it not for that inhumanity of man to man which has caused countless millions to mourn. To redeem this world from the curse of sin, Jesus the Son of God has suffered and died. And there can be no possible true happiness for the human family until the result of ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... asserted that there were two classes of protestants in France—political and religious; and that "the late ebullition of public vengeance was solely directed against the former." Dr. M'Crie, cursing the catholic with a catholic's curse, execrates "the stale sophistry of this calumniator." But should we allow that the Greek professor who advocated their national crime was the wretch the calvinistic doctor describes, yet the nature of things ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... with our fathers and brothers, and our other Christian friends, on board. Our hearts were bowed down with grief; but we prayed earnestly that we might forgive our enemies, and that God, in His great mercy, would change their hearts. (A fact.) We would not curse them, we would not pray that God would wreak His vengeance on their heads; for are we not told that, as we forgive our enemies, so alone can we ask God to ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... Aietes came to the place he saw the floating corpse; and he stopped a long while, and bewailed his son, and took him up, and went home. But he sent on his sailors toward the westward, and bound them by a mighty curse—'Bring back to me that dark witch- woman, that she may die a dreadful death. But if you return without her, you shall die by ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... one of ourselves." She is destined to quicken the world end, and she is postponing it. One millennium is past, another is near by, yet the Church does not think of the world end: she loves this world; that is her curse. The world still exists because of the Church's hesitation and fear. Were she not hesitating and fearing she had been dramatically struggling and suffering, and a new heaven and a new earth should be in sight. ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... sure if they had but the faintest idea of what the poor have to pass through, their hearts and purses would open. You know it has passed into a proverb, 'When a poor man needs help he should apply to the poor.' The reason is obvious. Only the poor know the curse of poverty. They know how heavily it falls, crushing the heart of man, and (to use my favorite expression) they can at once put themselves in the unfortunate one's place and appreciate difficulties, and are therefore ready to render ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... have patience, since it is the will of the stars I should be thus tormented. This is the effect of the malicious conjunctions and oppositions in the third house of my nativity; there the curse of kindred was foretold. But I will have my doors locked up;—I'll punish you: not a man ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... his brother-in-law, Michael Morse. The field was not saved, probably because it had an exposure toward the north and the west. A number of witnesses in the vicinity of Nineveh remember that the prophet set a day for that village to sink, but that he afterward repented and withdrew his curse. He did, however, announce that on a certain evening, about twilight, he would walk on the water. The place of his selection was watched by Gentile boys until one of Smith's followers was seen to construct a bridge of planks just under the surface. Watching their opportunity, the boys removed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Cook can fancy their Palats whose Mouths are always out of taste. As for those who make it their business to hide their Candle under a Bushel, to do only good to themselves, and not to others, such as will curse me for revealing the Secrets of this Art, I value the discharge of my own Conscience, in doing Good, above all their malice; protesting to the whole world, that I have not concealed any material Secret of above my fifty and five years Experience; my Father being a Cook ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... Yet neither Moses nor Paul could so sacrifice himself for another's sin. "No man can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him."[111] But Jesus, the pure, sinless one, was blotted out. He was made a curse. Moses and Paul would if they could. Jesus both could and did. Was there ever such a heart of love! And that heart was greatest in its action of love ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... "I know you do but counterfeit to frighten me, but I am not frightened," she added, with an hysterical attempt to laugh; and then instantly changing her tone, entreated him to "speak, were it but to curse my folly. Oh, the rudest word you ever said to me would now sound like the dearest you wasted on me before I gave you all. Lift him up," she said, "lift him up, for God's sake!—have you no compassion? He ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... vision: the vision of the dimly-lighted state-bedroom of Whitehall. Elizabeth, haggard and wild-eyed has flung herself prone upon the floor and refuses to take meat or drink, but lies there, surrounded by ceremonious courtiers, but seeing with that terrible insight that was her curse, that she was alone, that their homage was a mockery, that they were waiting eagerly for her death to crown their intrigues with her successor, that there was not in the whole world a single being who cared for her: seeing all this, and bearing it with the iron fortitude of her ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of iron very neatly. I should imagine they smoked hot, but of this I have no knowledge. One of my Ajumba friends got himself one of these pipes when we were in Efoua, and that pipe was, on and off, a curse to the party. Its owner soon learnt not to hold it by the bowl, but by the wooden stem, when smoking it; the other lessons it had to teach he learnt more slowly. He tucked it, when he had done smoking, into the fold in his ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was his undoing. Money can be a curse, or it can be a blessing. All depends upon whether or not you recognize God's ownership, acknowledge it, and act upon it. Some of the saddest lives ever lived are those built around a wrong conception of their relation to money. Some of the happiest and most ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... in France; he must see the finest soil, the finest climate, the most compact state, the most benevolent character of people, and every earthly advantage combined, insufficient to prevent this scourge from rendering existence a curse to twenty-four out of twenty-five parts of the inhabitants of this country. With us, the branches of this institution cover all the states. The southern ones, at this time, are aristocratical in their dispositions: and that that spirit should grow and extend itself, is within the natural order of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... work," he cried, in horror. "My dear fellow, don't tell me that! You are certain to make a dreadful mistake if you listen to any one but Schwartzmuller. He is the last word in restorations. He is the best bet, as you would say in New York. Any one else will make a botch of the work. You will curse ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... wanted to tackle him hard and ask some pointed questions. He saw me as I saw him skidding to an unbalanced stop, and there was the dull glint of metal in his right hand. His needle-ray came swinging up and I went for my armpit. I found time to curse my own stupidity for not having hardware in my own fist at the moment. But then I had my rod in my fist. I felt the hot scorch of the needle going off just over my shoulder, and then came the godawful racket of my ancient forty-five. The big slug caught him high in the belly and tossed him back. ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... was as nothing to him now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The Dies irae filled him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the Throne of God. ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... gates of her country back to my own land. "Shadow of me!" I said; "which art not me, but which representest thyself to me as me; here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of darkness! Here I may find a blessing which will fall on thee as a curse, and damn thee to the blackness whence thou hast emerged unbidden." I said this, stretched at length on the slope of the lawn above the river; and as the hope arose within me, the sun came forth from a light fleecy cloud ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... to go with him to the place; but the old Vicar, seeing Walter's bright eye, and knowing something of the difficulties, said that the legend was that it would be ill to disturb a thing that had cost so many warriors their lives; and that a curse would rest upon one that did disturb it. The old scholar laughed and said that the curses of the dead, and especially of the heathen dead, would break no bones—and he went on to say that doubtless there was a whole hen-roost of curses hidden ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Curse it all, I must tell her. Half knowledge is always dangerous, and is sure to lead to blunders, and there must ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... that woman touch her ag'in if I kin help it!" The fury of the merciless sea was in him now—the roar and pound of the surf in his voice. "She'll be a curse to the child all her days; she'll go back on her when she's a mind to just as she did on Archie. There ain't a dog that runs the streets that would 'a' done that. She didn't keer then, and she don't keer now, with him a-lyin' dead there. She ain't ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the happiness or the hopeless misery of her whole life. They decide whether she is to become a healthy, helpful, cheerful wife and mother, or a languid, complaining invalid, to whom marriage is a curse, children an affliction, and life itself ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... nature was roused. Woman or no woman, he would show the murmuring crowd what it meant to cross the path of the Tinman. She had struck him. She must take the consequence. No one should square up to him with impunity. He swung his right with a curse. The bonnet instantly ducked under his arm, and a line of razor-like knuckles left an ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... awaited the word from your lips which will make him in rank what he is in sentiment and in courage. Consider, in short, your people who love you and who yet are famished, who have no other wish than to bless you, and who, nevertheless—no, I am wrong, your subjects, madame, will never curse you; say one word to them and all will be ended—peace succeed war, joy tears, and happiness ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "We are beginning to understand things. We know that you people are after profits and nothing else, that to you we are like so many horses or sheep, only not so valuable because we're harder to break in and our carcasses aren't worth anything. We know that you don't care a curse whether we live or die and that you'd fill the bush with Chinese to-morrow if you could see your way to making an extra ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... revolting spectacle to watch, this struggle between mother and child. The one sparing neither blow nor curse, the other silent and active as a cat, watching every movement of his adversary, and ready for the slightest chance of escape. The crowd, careless of the rights of the case, cheered on both, and only interfered when the woman, having secured the boy in her grip, bade fair to bring the interesting ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... thing differently—just so much of him as his tenants see. We were talking of tenantry. Miles Chandon leaves everything to his steward. Now, between ourselves, all stewards, land agents, bailiffs—whatever you choose to call 'em—are the curse of our system, and Miles Chandon's happens ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Rishis also. Though filled with great energy, he could not however, fight as before. Then taking up another celestial bow that Angiras had given him, and certain arrows that resembled a Brahmana's curse, he continued to fight with Dhrishtadyumna. He covered the Panchala prince with a thick shower of arrows, and filled with rage, mangled his angry antagonist. With his own keen shafts he cut off in a hundred fragments those of the prince as also the latter's standard and bow. He then killed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Bernburg. 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 Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... too quickly, does she fail to smile, But never sees the shadow in her eyes His hounds are beaten till they scarce draw breath, And then caressed beyond the worth of hounds. His vassals know not if, from day to day, He will approve, or strike them with a curse. His humours are the byword of the court, And, were it not for his good-heartedness, His prowess, and undaunted strength at arms, Men would speak lightly of him in disdain; He is so often in a stormy rage, Or supplicating ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... man of an alien race. Men are naturally inclined to do good to those who treat them well and whose help they need; but Christ, in carrying out this new law of brotherly love said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:44-48). It is only through this love of man for man, no matter what the class or condition, ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... having been so long of writing, and show your pardon by writing soon to me; it will be a kindness, for I am sometimes very dull. Edinburgh is much changed for the worse by the absence of Bob; and this damned weather weighs on me like a curse. Yesterday, or the day before, there came so black a rain squall that I was frightened - what a child would call frightened, you know, for want of a better word - although in reality it has nothing to do with fright. I ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his friends in Shepherd's Inn. "That fellow of mine, I must turn him away, only I owe him two years' wages, curse him, and can't ask my lady. He brings me my tea cold of a morning, with a dem'd leaden tea-spoon, and he says my lady's sent all the plate to the banker's because it ain't safe. Now ain't it hard that she won't trust me with ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shame! What would you live for? The doors of love, and fame, even of society, are shut against you for ever. What is life to you now? a long denial—a protracted draught of bitterness—the feeling of a death-spasm carried on through sleepless years; perhaps, under a curse of peculiar bitterness, carried on even into age! Die! you can not be so base as to wish ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... him, was so filled with sadness and fright, that he began to weep from fear of death. He began to shed tears of blood and with indignation beyond his years, in the form of a malediction he said to Tocay and the Ayamarcas, "I tell you that as sure as you murder me there will come such a curse on you and your descendants that you will all come to an end, without any memory being left of ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... best of us are poor ignorant creatures, and, maybe, the blessings we long for will turn to a curse in the end. I doubt whether our little cottage will be the restful place it was before Uncle Mat came home. He has gone to a bad school to learn manners; and wild oats and tares and the husks that the swine did ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to curse. He began to feel like staying to bless. He was quite genial and pleasant, greeting Mrs. Ingham-Baker as an old friend, and thereby distinctly upsetting that lady's mental equilibrium. She had endeavoured ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... He gnashed his teeth at me, and swore it was his money. I told him that I had spent it on him. He asked me how. I said in trying to make him an honest man, and in repairing the results of his villainy. He shrieked out a curse, and pulling something out of the breast of his coat—a loaded stick, I think—he struck me with it, and I ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of April 1616, England's greatest dramatist died in the prime of life—he was just fifty-two years of age. Two days later he was buried in Stratford Church, near the north wall of the chancel. Fearful lest his bones should be added to the grisly burden of the charnel-house close by, he penned a curse upon those who should disturb ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... caress now and then. Spurlock bent his head to his knees. He took into his soul some of the father's misery, some of the daughter's, to mingle with his own. Enschede, to have starved his heart as well as Ruth's because, having laid a curse, he knew not how to turn aside from it! How easily he might have forgotten the unworthy mother in the love of the child! And this day to hear her voice lifted in a quality of anathema. Poor Ruth: for a father, a ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... is to live on here eternally and yet be human; to age in soul and see our beloved die and pass to lands whither we may not hope to follow; to wait while drop by drop the curse of the long centuries falls upon our imperishable being, like water slow dripping on a diamond that it cannot wear, till they be born anew forgetful of us, and again sink from our helpless arms ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... untruthful, unfaithful, unkind; darken the lives of all who have to live under your shadow, rob youth of joy, take peace from age, live unsought for, die unmourned—and remaining sober you will escape the curse of men's pity, and be spoken of as a worthy person. But if ever, amidst what Burns called 'social noise,' you so far forget yourself as to get drunk, think not to plead a spotless life spent with those for whom you have laboured and saved; talk not ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... my people acts now, they looks foolish. I never heard a person curse till I come up here. I was a grown young lady nineteen years old when our master lowed us to get out and cote. You better not. The first husband I married I was nineteen goin' on twenty. My husband fought on the Southern side. His master sent him ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against! O God! O God, he is worse than a murderer! How can he answer it to his country? The blood of the slain is upon him, the curse of widows and orphans, the curse of Heaven." St. Clair came East to explain. Hobbling into Washington's presence, he grasped his hand in both his own and sobbed aloud. He was continued as governor, but had to resign his major-generalship, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... "Oh! curse your fine words; it's you who forget, you swab. Ay, it's you who forget that you asked me to take the money to the gambling- tent, and made me promise that you should have half of what we won, but that I should play for both. What, are you beginning ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... "Look; that man was once a child like you." As you go by the grog-shop let them know that that is the place where men are slain and their wives made paupers and their children slaves. Hold out to your children warnings, all rewards, all counsels, lest in afterdays they break your heart and curse your gray hairs. A man laughed at my father for his scrupulous temperance principles, and said: "I am more liberal than you. I always give my children the sugar in the glass after we have been taking a drink." Three of ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I am all well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about like a ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Jerusalem is very desolate, barren, and sterile. I found the town itself neither more nor less animated than most Syrian cities. I should depart from truth if I were to say, with many travellers, that it appeared as though a peculiar curse rested upon this city. The whole of Judea is a stony country, and this region contains many places with environs as rugged and barren as ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... (but weigh it, and you'll find 'Tis light as feathers blown before the wind) That Poverty, the Curse of Providence, Attones for a dull Writer's want of Sense: Alas! his Dulness 'twas that made him poor; Not vice versa: We infer no more. Of Vice and Folly Poverty's the curse, Heav'n may be rigid, but the Man was worse, By good made bad, by favours more disgrac'd, So dire th' ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... fumed on the plantation tap of the narrow-gauge railroad, and a toiling, hurrying, hallooing stream of workers were dimly seen in the half darkness loading the train with the weekly output of sugar. Here was a poem; an epic—nay, a tragedy—with work, the curse of the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... spat out some French curse which the Boy didn't understand very clearly. But the man at the stakes jumped up ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... said Mr. Phoebus. "What you call ignorance is your strength. By ignorance you mean a want of knowledge of books. Books are fatal; they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing. Printing ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... and hard and unjust in its nature, and utterly antagonistic to civilization. Its greater evils are indeed overruled; Satan is ever rebuked and baffled by a benevolent Providence. But war is always a curse and a calamity in its immediate results,—and in its ultimate results also, unless waged in defence of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... sinews, let my blood Fill each part full of fire,* let all my good Parts be encouraged, active to do What thy commanding soul shall put me to, And till I turn apostate to thy love, Which here I vow to serve, never remove Thy blessing from me; but Apollo's curse Blast all mine actions; or, a thing that's worse, When these circumstants have the fate to see The time when I prevaricate from thee, Call me the Son of Beer, and then confine Me to the tap, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... 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 to ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... his disreputable head. "German handwriting, that is, my young lady," he croaked. "That's how our German lords and masters curse them! write their Gott mit uns! The noble Captain Hahn I knew as ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... ill. Should Heaven take him, it would be the dawn of a better era for Russia. His son is a man of very different mould. He has fallen into disgrace with his father for his liberal ideas, and he is known to think, as I do, that serfdom is the curse of the empire." ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... told him. But he objected to come. "You have betrayed me," said he. "Curse my weak heart and my loose tongue. I have done the poor Squire an ill turn. I can never look him in the face again. But 'tis all thy fault, double-face. I hate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... most,—but the feeling that I was everybody's inferior. There's no need to tell you how I was brought up; I was led to expect better things, that's enough. I never got used to being ordered about. When I was told to do this or that, I answered with a silent curse,—and I wonder it didn't come out sometimes. That's my nature. If I had been born the son of a duke, I couldn't have resented a subordinate position more fiercely than I did. And I used to rack my brain with schemes ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... time to reflect upon the outrage to his dignity, Nell forced him into a chair, to the great glee of the by-standers, especially of Manager Hart, who chuckled to an actor by his side: "She'll pluck his fine feathers; curse ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... hostile beings, a Deity and a Devil, can face neither the scrutiny of science, nor the test of morals, nor the logic of reason; and it has long since been driven from the arena of earnest thought. On this theory it follows that death is a violent curse and discord, maliciously forced in afterwards to deform and spoil the beauty and melody of a perfect original creation. Now, as Bretschneider well says, "the belief that death is an evil, a punishment for sin, can arise only in a dualistic system." It is unreasonable to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his magnificent solicitude for the mission that is at once the token and the curse of those who are really called, he shut himself off from a world from which the one thing he wanted was bread; bread ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... faces lay a smile, a ghastly, excited, pleased grin, which enraged him more than any curse would have done. He had suddenly become their dramatic entertainment. The constable gripped him tighter and the sheriff, running ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... his limbs were limp and lifeless, and his face was deathly pale. At sight of which there came into my heart a bursting pain, as though some one had stabbed me there; and there were tears in Young's eyes; and Rayburn gave vent to his sorrow in a great curse that was half a groan. As for Pablo, whom no danger could daunt, and who would bear without flinching any hurt of his own, this dreadful sight so moved him that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... "He wants the curse of Rome from Richelieu," explained Billy. "He knows it in French and he wants you to recite it in ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... were discovered, and raised a shout of triumph, as though certain that we were within their toils. I heard the inspector utter a bitter curse at his stupidity in leaving his powder and bullets behind, and that was the only answer to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... angry with himself. "Ah!" said he, "the older a man gets, the weaker. To think of my mentioning that to you young people!" And he rose and walked about the room in considerable agitation and vexation. "Curse the Gabriel hounds! It is the first time I have spoken of them since that awful night; it is the last I ever will speak of them. What they are, God, who made them, knows. Only I pray I may never hear them again, nor ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... begin to manifest themselves. Their appearance should serve as an additional stimulus to him to strive to maintain that high standard of moral purity and mental balance without which clairvoyance is a curse and not a blessing to its possessor. Between those who are entirely unimpressionable and those who are in full possession of clairvoyant power, there are many intermediate stages. Students often ask how this clairvoyant faculty will first be manifested ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... trouble to send me your opinion? I have been led of late to reflect much on the subject of naming, and I have come to a fixed opinion that the plan of the first describer's name, being appended for perpetuity to a species, had been the greatest curse to Natural History. Some months since, I wrote out the enclosed badly drawn- up paper, thinking that perhaps I would agitate the subject; but the fit has passed, and I do not suppose I ever shall; I send ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... decent to me that day," Dysart said. "You had something to say to me—but were good enough not to. I came over to-night to give you a chance to curse me out. It's the square ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Could she? I seemed to behold her figure pausing petrified in the darkness, drawing deep breaths, and scarcely knowing whether to curse or pray. I listened and listened, but it was long before the answer came. Then it was short and hurried, like the pants ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... worshiper of the gods of Tyre and Sidon. The Roman Senate decreed that not only the city, but even the villas of the nobles in the suburb of Megara, should be leveled with the ground, and the plowshare driven over the soil devoted to perpetual desolation, and a curse to the man who should dare to cultivate it or build upon it. For fourteen days, the fires raged in this once populous and wealthy city, and the destruction was complete, B.C. 146. So deep-seated was the Roman hatred of rivals, or States that had ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... to Teen "Lord Bellew's Bride; or the Curse of Mountford Abbey." Splendid, isn't it, Teen?' said Liz quite brightly. 'We buy'd atween us every week. I'll len' ye'd, if ye like. It comes oot on Wednesday. Wat could ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... was given up to fire and sword; and all the bitterness of hatred was manifested by the soldiery, both European and native. "Not a man was spared; the Affghans were hunted down like vermin; and whenever the dead body of an Affghan was found, the Hindoo sepoys set fire to the clothes, that the curse of a 'burnt father' might attach to his children." General Pollock also determined to destroy the Char Chouk, the principal bazaar in Cabul, where the remains of the unfortunate Sir William M'Naghten had been exposed to insult. This bazaar was destroyed by gunpowder; and indeed the whole ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not set out on that little trip without a good deal of moral cudgeling when it came to the point, although he threw down his scythe with a muttered curse on his lips for the man who was ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... half of the distance that separated them he was overjoyed to recognize him as Matak. As Terry's lips parted in a low call, Matak glided from the tree like a swift shadow just as a shriek of pain and terror rent the silence of the woods, followed by a vowelled curse and the sound of a heavy hand ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... was an infidel when with his friend Voltaire, but when suffering the reverses of war in Silesia he could write very pious letters to his "favorite sister." This is true in national character when traced to its last analysis. Men pray while they are down in life, but curse when up. And of necessity the religion of a bond people is not always healthy. There is an involuntary turning to a divine helper; a sort of religious superstition, that believes all things, hopes all things, and is patient. The soul of such a people is surcharged with an almost ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... be taken as well as "The King's Threshold." "Ephemera," "The Dedication to a Book of Stories," "In the Seven Woods," "The Old Age of Queen Maeve," "The Folly of Being Comforted," "Old Memory," "Adam's Curse," as well as the folk-poems of the first volumes, are but little "dream-burdened," and passages elsewhere have the human call. The feeling of Oisin nearing the coast of Ireland is, for instance, the common joy on nearing the shore of the homeland ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... heart are never free from feeling. For all men fear the desert; and when they know it they hate it, and even then the magic of it, brewed in the eternal stillness, falls upon them, and though they draw back and curse it, they love it! The desert calls, and he who hears must heed the call. It calls with a voice which talks to his soul. It calls with the dim lure of half-dreamed things. It beckons with the wavering streamers of gold and crimson light thrown across the ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... greetings and handshakings, when his own hand was so weary it could scarcely hold a pen, the President and perhaps a dozen friends, went up to the Executive Office, and there, without any pre-arranged ceremony, he signed his name to the greatest state paper of the century, which banished the curse of slavery from our land, and set almost four million ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... leaving behind him dead men looking sightlessly up to the sky. The hero will be the man or woman who knows and loves and serves. In the new histories we will be shown the tragedy, the heartbreaking tragedy of war, which like some dreadful curse has followed the human family, beaten down their plans, their hopes, wasted their savings, destroyed their homes, and in every way turned ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... him the parchments, sealed with his great seal; and he, quite broken, set his hand to them without so much as a curse on the robbery done his kingdom. But as the bearers were going out on tiptoe he suddenly sat up in bed. 'Hugh,' he grumbled, 'Bishop Hugh, come thou here.' The Bishop turned back eagerly, for those two had loved each other in their way, and knelt ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... only they all wanted to play Jocko the Ape; and they would have made no little success out of the "Lady of Lyons" if any of them had been willing to play Pauline. Their costumes and properties were slight and not always accurate, but they could "launch the curse of Rome," and describe "two hearts beating as one," in a manner rarely equalled on the regular stage. The only thing they really lacked was an audience, neither Lizzie Gustin nor Ann Hughes ever being able to sit through more than one act at a time. When The Boy, ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... but the name of Philibert roused his anger. He set his cup down with a bang upon the table. "I will not taste a drop more till he is gone," said he; "curse Galissoniere's crooked neck—could he not have selected a more welcome messenger to send to Beaumanoir? But I have got his name in my list of debtors, and he shall pay up one day for his insolence ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... could they do on foot against so many horsemen? Perhaps it was fortunate for them that they could not overtake the robbers, for they would only have become additional victims. They returned home to bewail their unhappy fate and curse the cruel authors ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... purty little dearie—If e'er a one of them great rough men on deck there says a bad word to you, or dares to as much as look unkind at you, you tell me, and curse me if—I beg your pardon, strangers, I guess I didn't know just then what I was talking about. Run along, little 'un, and get ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood |
