"Accursed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that other epic of souls, The Brothers Karamazov, which illuminates, as if with ghastly flashes of lightning, the stormy hearts of mankind. Tolstoy wrote of life; Dostoievsky lived it, drank its sour dregs—for he was a man accursed by luck and, like the apocalyptic dreamer of Patmos, a seer of visions denied to the robust, ever fleshly Tolstoy. His influence on Tolstoy was more than Stendhal's—Stendhal ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that Slavery, by its minions, slew him, and slaying him made manifest its whole nature. A man cannot be bred in its tainted air. I shall find saints in hell sooner than I shall find true manhood under its accursed influences. The breeding-ground of such monsters must be utterly ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... opportunities on some American railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on Sunday and at night; whereas my fellow-passenger had never quitted Tyneside, and had made all that he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling England, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, millwrights, and carpenters were fleeing as from ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the earth and the air were black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles blew—it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and accursed star. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! The European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the millions of the child widows in India never find release from the bonds of cruel custom and false religion. In Hinduism there is no hope for such accursed ones.—"Mosaics From India," published by Fleming ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and it behoved him to write. If he did not, his father would be at Oxford before the next night was over. How should he write? Would it not be better to write to his mother? And then what should he do, or what should he say, about that accursed debt? ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... was the maddening fact that these Swiss, who were made the ministers of vengeance, were part of that accursed, detested, hated, shunned, despised, abhorred, loathed, execrated, contemptible, stupid, thick-headed, brutal, gross, cruel, bestial, demoniacal, fiendish, and utterly abominable race—I Tedeschi —whose very name, when ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... me through you," exclaimed Iver, with a sudden outburst of passion. "Why do you plead my mother's cause, when it was she—I know it was she, and none but she—who thrust you into this hateful, this accursed marriage." ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... "It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick performed. Laus Deo] There comes a time when the souls of human beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society places its transparent bell-glass over the young woman who is to be the subject ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... night, when the troops were encamped by the whale-boats, a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead,—was dead,—was dead,—that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile outside the city, and that of all their crews there remained not one; and Khartoum ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... perceptible as when he deals with Ben Cruachan or the Old Man of Coniston, with the Four Great Lakes of Britain, East and West (one of his finest passages), or with the glens of Etive and Borrowdale. The accursed influence of an unchastened taste is indeed observable in the before-mentioned "Dead Quaker of Helvellyn," a piece of unrelieved nastiness which he has in vain tried to excuse. But the whole of the series from which this is taken ("Christopher ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... own police officers had proved untrue. "Are ye also deceived or led astray?" they cry in anger. Then they ask, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this multitude which knoweth not the law, are accursed." They would have it that only the ignorant masses had been led away by this delusion; none of the great men, the wise men, had accepted this Nazarene as the Messiah. They did not suspect that at least one of their own number, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... accursed with this knowledge, and the desire for it," he declared, fiercely. "The suffering is for us, and the joy for the beasts of the field. Why not throw down the cards? We are the devil's puppets in this game ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... walked slowly on the way into that accursed park, my heels were light enough on the way out. They kept time to a very good old air, that is as ancient as the Bible, and the words of it are: "Surely the bitterness of death is past." I mind that I was extremely thirsty, and had a drink at St. Margaret's Well on the road down, and the sweetness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she added her persuasions, such as that each soul that died in his realms before that letter was sent went before the Throne of Mercy unshriven and unhouselled, so that their burden of souls grew very great. And in the midnights, the King would start up and cry that all was lost and himself accursed. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... barefoot, that its horses were scarecrows, that gunnysacks and ends of wires from baled hay and bits of frazzled rope all made contribution to the saddles and bridles of the cavalry! Was Pasquale not going to take them straight to Mexico City, where all of them would be made rich at the expense of the accursed Federals who had trodden upon the face of the poor? Caramba! Soon now the devil ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... keep my tongue, sir. Only you may imagine how impatient it has made me to see these accursed seals which prevent me from going to look at the gun. Oh, if I had dared to break ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... anger we are just) recount With how great compensation from thy store Of hoarded gold and jewels thou wilt buy Remission of the penalty. Be wise. Hark how my subjects, storming through the streets, Vent on thy tribe accursed their well-based wrath." And, truly, through closed casements roared the noise Of mighty surging crowds, derisive cries, And victims' screams of anguish and affright. Then Raschi, royal in his rags, began: "Hear me, my liege!" At that commanding voice, The Bishop, who ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... rode to Whiskeyhurst, When summer days were gone, And there he met with Jock McThirst Was greetin' all alone. 'McThirst what gars ye look sae blank? Have all yer wits gane daft? Has that accursed Southron bank Called up your overdraft? Is all your grass burnt up wi' drouth? Is wool and hides gone flat?' McThirst replied, 'Gude friend, in truth, 'Tis muckle ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... enforcing them by chains and dungeons to every person whose face a minister thinks fit to dislike, are not only opposite to that maxim which declares it better that ten guilty men should escape than one innocent suffer, but likewise leave a gate wide open to the whole tribe of informers, the most accursed, and prostitute, and abandoned race that God ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... intercourse with Mitri, they would cast me off. Well, thou hast no more hope from them, thanks to thy rashness. Why couldst thou not shun the priest here, as I told thee to? Now, with all the Orthodox boasting of thy conversion, thou art more than ever accursed in their sight. Even at me they look askance, I fancy, as if I had a finger in the mess. Come indoors where we can talk privately. The worthy priest will let me enter with thee. What made thee go and change thy ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... {us o'erthrew;} { desired } When we read the {long-sighed-for} smile of her, {a fervent} To be thus kiss'd by such { devoted } lover, He who from me can be divided ne'er Kiss'd my mouth, trembling in the act all over. Accursed was the book and he who wrote! That day no further leaf we did uncover.— While thus one Spirit told us of their lot, The other wept, so that with pity's thralls I swoon'd as if by death I had been smote, And fell down even ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... returned Ithuel, taking the word in its technical meaning; "they pressed me, as if I had been a dog they wanted to turn a spit, and kept me seven long years fighting their accursed battles, and otherwise sarving their eends. I was over here, last year, at the mouth of the Nile, and in that pretty bit of work—and off Cape St. Vincent, too—and in a dozen more of their battles, and sorely against my will, on every account. This ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Halfway up the slope was the good cow Hafchor, the lady of the West, in meadows of tall plants where every evening she received the sun at his setting. If the dead man knew how to ask it according to the prescribed rite, she would take him upon her shoulders[*] and carry him across the accursed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... streets of this populous city, can scarcely form an idea of the different appearance they presented in the primitive days of the doubter. The busy hum of multitudes, the shouts of revelry, the rumbling equipages of fashion, the rattling of accursed carts, and all the spirit-grieving sounds of brawling commerce, were unknown in the settlement of New Amsterdam. The grass grew quietly in the highways—the bleating sheep and frolicksome calves sported about the verdant ridge, where now the Broadway loungers ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... him and them). No, monster! First over my dead body thou shalt tread. I will not live to see the accursed deed! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Eden, Otherwise Violante, and while his pupils about him Wrought and chattered, in silence ran the thought of the painter: "She, and forever she! Is it come to be my perdition? Shall I, then, never more make the face of a beautiful woman But it must take her divine, accursed beauty upon it, And, when I finish my work, stand forth her visible presence? Ah! I could take this sword and strike it into her bosom! Though I believe my own heart's blood would stream from the painting, So much I love her! Yes, that look is marvellous like you, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... in their language, "one who has shaken hands with the accursed speech;" a religious man, "one who has shaken hands with the beloved speech." If this be a correct definition, we ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... these predatory dashes at the waking world, was the construction of an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other youths of tender age; on which fortification the two in bed made harassing descents (like those accursed Picts and Scots who beleaguer the early historical studies of most young Britons), and then withdrew to their ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... from each black, accursed mouth, The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... especially when your spirits may happen to be elevated, and your hearts glad? Oh! it is then, my friends, that the tempter approaches you, and probably implants in your unguarded hearts the germ of that accursed habit which has destroyed millions. How often have you heard it said of many men, even within the range of your own knowledge, 'Ah, he was an industrious, well-conducted, and respectable man—until he took to drink!' Does not the prevalence of such a vile habit, and the ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... more. I touched myself; I was the same; I knew Myself to be lone Adeb, young and strong, With nothing but a stride of empty air Between me and God's justice. In a sleep, Thick with the fumes of the accursed grape, Sprawled the false Imam. On his shaggy breast, Like a white lily heaving on the tide Of some foul stream, the fairest woman slept These roving eyes have ever looked upon. Almost a child, her bosom barely showed The change beyond her girlhood. All her charms Were budding, but half ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... I beseech thee, O Lord, by thy sixth day, that the body of me be not caught, nor put to death by the hands of justice at all; peace be with you, the peace of Christ, may I receive peace, may you receive peace, said God to his disciples. If the accursed justice should distrust me, or have its eyes on me, in order to take me or to rob me, may its eyes not see me, may its mouth not speak to me, may it have ears which may not hear me, may it have hands which may not seize me, may it have feet which may not overtake me; for may I be armed with the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... for whose fear the figurative crow I eat, accursed be thou and all thy kin! Thee will I show up—yea, up will I show Thy too thick buckwheats, and thy tea too thin. Ay! here I dare thee, ready for the fray: Thou dost not "keep a first-class house," I say! It does not with the advertisements ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... will be accursed among adulterers," said the laird of Loughlinter. "By such a one I will send no message. From the first moment that I saw you I knew you for a child of Apollyon. But the sin was my own. Why did I ask to my house an idolater, one who pretends to believe that ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... if I have faltered and am weak, Tis from my nature! Fancies, more accursed Than haunt a murderer's bedside, throng my brain— Temptations, such as mortal never bore Since Satan whispered in the ear of Eve, Sing in my ear—and all, all are accursed! At heart I have betrayed my brother's trust, Francesca's openly. Turn where I ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... that made me the target of her scorn." He tore off his white tie madly as he spoke, threw it on the ground, and trampled upon it. "She and I were kindred in suffering; I read it in her eyes, averted as they were at the sight of this accursed thing! You stare at me—you think I have gone mad. Leon, you are not as other men. Can you not guess that this damnable white tie has been choking the life and manhood out of me? But it is over now. Take your pen, Leon, as you are ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... my boys were at work, straight off. The ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone missing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. In two days we had it all done and the water in—a spacious pool of clear pure water that a body could swim in. It was running water, too. It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. The old abbot kept his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... these? Mere pastime! There were a hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse cries, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of a dog is sweet, delicious music when compared with these sounds. When we had proceeded a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the wild place of Damnation, I perceived, by their own light, innumerable men and women here and there; and devils without number and without rest, incessantly employing their strength in tormenting. Yes, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... more in need of water, and having sighted an island, we made for it, but could find no means to get near the land, owing to the heavy surf. We found the coast very precipitous, without any foreland or inlets. In short, it seemed to us a barren, accursed place, without leaf or grass. The coast here was steep, consisting of red rocks of the same height almost everywhere, and impossible to touch at owing to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... exclaimed one of the Spanish officers, after watching the boys shooting at a target, two hundred yards distant, with their powerful bows; "it reminds me of the way that those accursed English archers draw their bows, and send their arrows singing through the air. In faith, too, these men, with their blue eyes and their light hair, remind one ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... the barriers, which were so well guarded by citizen soldiers of the Republic. Men in women's clothes, women in male attire, children disguised in beggars' rags: there were some of all sorts: CI-DEVANT counts, marquises, even dukes, who wanted to fly from France, reach England or some other equally accursed country, and there try to rouse foreign feelings against the glorious Revolution, or to raise an army in order to liberate the wretched prisoners in the Temple, who had once ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... she eluded me by leaping into the pit. I have been haunted by her face night and day ever since. I see her face in crowds, in the depths of the silent forest, her specter appears before me until I fly from it like one accursed." ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... him to his lone repose: Juan slept like a top, or like the dead, Who sleep at last, perhaps (God only knows), Just for the present; and in his lulled head Not even a vision of his former woes Throbbed in accursed dreams, which sometimes spread[bk] Unwelcome visions of our former years, Till the eye, cheated, opens thick ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... dissatisfaction, distrust, almost contempt. "Disease, decay, and death around I see," is their key-note, rather than "O all ye works of the Lord, bless Him, praise Him, and magnify Him together." There lingers about them a savour of the old monastic theory, that this earth is the devil's planet, fallen, accursed, goblin-haunted, needing to be exorcised at every turn before it is useful or even safe for man. An age which has adopted as its most popular hymn a paraphrase of the mediaeval monk's "Hic breve vivitur," ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... way of treating the property of unitarians. 'One artifice of this kind,' said Maurice, 'has been practised in this election which it makes me blush to speak of. Mr. Ward called the reformation a vile and accursed thing; Mr. Gladstone voted against a certain measure for the condemnation of Mr. Ward; therefore he spoke of the reformation as a vile and accursed thing. I should not have believed it possible that such a conclusion had been drawn from such premisses even ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... "World's Wonder" of his time, was regarded by half Europe as no better than an infidel. A faint revival of physical science, so long crushed as magic by the dominant ecclesiasticism, brought Christians into perilous contact with the Moslem and the Jew. The books of the Rabbis were no longer an accursed thing to Roger Bacon. The scholars of Cordova were no mere Paynim swine to Adelard of Bath. How slowly indeed and against what obstacles science won its way we know from the witness of Roger Bacon. "Slowly," he tells us, "has any portion of ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... we must remain friends, but you shall not continually tarnish my poetry with your accursed science! I thank my Creator that He made me ignorant enough to admire the beauties of nature. You are continually peeping behind the scenes, and pointing out the grease paints, the lime-lights and the sham effects. Let me enjoy the beauty ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... they all assembled, Then care and doubt were fled; With jovial laugh they feasted; The board was nobly spread. The elder of the village Rose up, his glass in hand, And cried, "We drink the downfall "Of an accursed land! ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... Escurial," cried Don John recklessly, "your friendship must indeed possess miraculous properties! However, you may judge with your own eyes the pleasantness of my position; and every day that improves your acquaintance with the ill blood and ill condition of this accursed army of the royalists, ill-paid, ill-disciplined, and ill-intentioned, will inspire you with stronger yearnings after our days of the Mediterranean, where I was master of myself and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... nest a few yards from the first, and proceeded to rear a second brood; but the new nest developed into the same bed of torment that the first did, and the three young birds, nearly ready to fly, perished as they sat within it. The parent birds then left the place as if it had been accursed. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... sawn," he said. "I wanted to know and I climbed up to see." At which words the whole crowd moved and swayed, and a dozen hands stooped to lift the body of Juliet and carry it away from that accursed spot. ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... infallibility of the pope met with the punishment of parricide and the infamy of sodomy; its sentences resembled the frightful corruption of the plague, which turns the most healthy body into rapid putrefaction. Even the inanimate things belonging to a heretic were accursed. No destiny could snatch the victim of the Inquisition from its sentence. Its decrees were carried in force on corpses and on pictures, and the grave itself was no asylum from its tremendous arm. The presumptuous arrogance ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... relief to move out of this accursed flat, where I have spent the gloomiest hours ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... to the place of execution between Ahmad al-Danaf and Ali al-Zaybak of Cairo.[FN102] Now they had brought Ala al-Din to the gibbet, to hang him, but Ahmad al-Danaf came forward and set his foot on that of the hangman, who said, "Give me room to do my duty." He replied, "O accursed, take this man and hang him in Ala al-Din's stead; for he is innocent and we will ransom him with this fellow, even as Abraham ransomed Ishmael with the ram."[FN103] So the hangman seized the man and hanged ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the quaint little hamlets by which Lewes is surrounded. It was at Mailing Deanery that the assassins of Thomas a Becket sought shelter on their flight from Canterbury. The legend records how, when they laid their armour on the Deanery table, that noble piece of furniture rose and flung the accursed accoutrements to ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... face flushed crimson as he took the accursed thing, desiring no greater boon from Heaven than instant death. He felt sick with humiliation. The brightly lit room grew black. It was in a stupor of despair that he heard her say, "Wait a bit here, till I've got rid of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... wild storm of fear and wonder, When Europe woke and burst her chain; The accursed race, like scatter'd thunder, After the tyrant fled amain. And Nemesis a doom hath spoken, The Mighty hears that doom with dread: The wrongs thou'st done shall now be wroken, Tyrant, upon thy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... fever-haunted land of delirium, out of which she had of late emerged, was still near enough to throw over her soul its dark and terrific shadows. It needed but a slight word from the doctor, or from any one else, to revive the accursed memories of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... his meal-taking finished, a moan was uplifted, 15 Morning-cry mighty. The man-ruler famous, The long-worthy atheling, sat very woful, Suffered great sorrow, sighed for his liegemen, [6] When they had seen the track of the hateful pursuer, The spirit accursed: too crushing ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... eternal foe; the baffler of my best-concerted schemes. Twice have you been saved by his accursed interposition. But for him I should long ere now have borne away ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... for it. The game is afoot at last. The liberty of Ireland may come sooner or later, by peaceful negotiation or bloody conflict—but it is sure; and wherever between the poles I may chance to be, I will hear the crash of the downfall of the thrice-accursed British Empire." ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... unfortunate event that puts a man astray at first. He sees some woman and loses himself with her;—or he is taken to a racecourse and unluckily wins money;—or some devil in the shape of a friend lures him to tobacco and brandy. Your temptation has come in the shape of this accursed seat in Parliament." Mr. Low had never said a soft word in his life to any woman but the wife of his bosom, had never seen a racehorse, always confined himself to two glasses of port after dinner, and looked upon smoking as the darkest of ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... fathers, that they are so lost to every principle of humanity, that as soon as they receive their wages, they leave their homes, and hasten with eager steps to the public house; nor do they re-pass its accursed threshold, till the vice-fattening landlord has received the greater part of the money which should support their half-fed, half-clothed wives and children; and till they have qualified themselves, by intoxication, to act worse than ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... peculiar sense, were set apart and devoted to God. In the story of the conquest of Canaan, for instance, we read of Jericho and other places, persons, or things that were, as our version somewhat unfortunately renders it, 'accursed,' or as it ought rather to be rendered, 'devoted,' or 'put under a ban.' And this 'devotion' was of such a sort as that the things or persons devoted were doomed to destruction. All the dreadful things that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... treasure.' He seemed to waken from a dream. 'Where?' he cried; and then, seeing it before his eyes, 'Can this be possible?' he added. 'I must be light-headed. Girl,' he cried suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once before observed, 'what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?' ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Close in his wake another came,— Fragments of midnight floating through The sunset flame,— Another and another, weaving rings Of blackness on the primrose sky,— Another, and another, look, a score, A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavily From that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood, They boiled into the lucid air Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair! And more, and more, and ever more, The numberless, ill-omened brood Flapping their ragged plumes, Possessed the landscape and the evening light With menaces and glooms. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... heels and ran a mile straight off, and reported with ashy face and trembling lips that a ghost had appeared on the arch of the abbey as he passed, and called to him thrice, and had shrieked with demoniacal laughter as he hurried from the accursed place. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... bliss, 5 How many thoughts of what entombed hopes, How many visions of a maiden that is No more—no more upon thy verdant slopes! No more! alas, that magical sad sound Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more, 10 Thy memory no more. Accursed ground! Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante! ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... she told her story well—and it was an old story that she had learned by heart—she could not be rid of the feeling that this was a less easy matter than it had seemed to her, to call Cromwell accursed. She had a moving tale of wrongs done by Cromwell's servant, Dr Barnes, a visitor of a church in Lincolnshire near where her home had been. For the lands had been taken from a little priory upon an excuse that the nuns lived a lewd life; and so well had she known the nuns, going in ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the right,"—King, homewards, got to HAM that evening,—"I could have thought I was at the Last Judgment, where the Bon Dieu separates the elect from the damned. DIVUS FREDERICUS said to you, 'Sit down at my right hand in the Paradise of Berlin;' and to me, 'Depart, thou accursed, into Holland.' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... within herself, she said, Wo is me, who begat me? and what womb did bear me, that I should be thus accursed before the children of Israel, and that they should reproach and deride me in the temple of my God: Wo is me, to what can ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... Christendom, that the election of Urban VI was carried by force and the fear of death; that through the same force and fear he had been inaugurated, enthroned, and crowned; that he was an apostate, an accursed antichrist. They pronounced him a tyrannical usurper of the popedom, a wolf that had stolen into the fold. They called upon him to descend at once from the throne which he occupied without canonical title; if repentant, he might ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 'That accursed bird,' said the Cook; 'it will end by getting me sent away. Come, some of you, and hide yourselves, and if it comes again, catch it and ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... still I see. This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes. Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep, Against the smoky paper thrust,— With glasses, boxes, round me stacked, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... shall keep my promise. It is not in my heart to send you to the gallows. You are my father. You have always loved me. This is my baby,—mine and Edward's. She may live,—God knows I wish I might have died yesterday and spared her the accursed breath of life,—she may grow up to be a woman, just as I grew up. I do not ask much of you in return for what I have done for you, father. You have killed my Edward. I loved him with all my soul. I do not care to live. But my child must go on living, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Death had wiped out every distinguishing mark. Was it Guy? Was it Burke? She knew not. She turned from the sight with dread unspeakable. She went from the accursed spot with the anguish of utter bewilderment in her soul. She was bereft of all. She walked alone ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... said nervously, "this is one of those accursed code-ciphers. They always route them through to me. Why ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... easy matter; what with the watch-paper and various emphatic passages of something more than friendship, the true love does not at once stand forth, that he may find "the partition-wall between love and friendship with women to be very visible and very thick." But one day the accursed watch-paper flutters into Joachime's hand, who at once takes it for a declaration of love to herself, and beams with appropriate tenderness. Victor, seized with sudden coldness and resolution, confesses all to Joachime; and the story, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... 'who said you did? I take my own sins on my own shoulders; but you did worse; you betrayed me. Yes; there is a warrant out for my arrest, for the murder of that accursed Pierre. I have eluded the clever Melbourne police so far, but I have lived the life of a dog. I dare not even ask for food, lest I betray myself. I am starving! I tell you, starving! you harlot! and it is ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... erect, looking wellnigh in gesture and figure the apostate spirit he described—"Behold me," he said; "see you not my hair streaming with sulphur, my brow scathed with lightning? I am the Arch-Fiend—I am the father whom you seek—I am the accursed Richard Tresham, the seducer of Zilia, and the ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... see in the light of the story if we can learn how to look at the sin of prayerlessness, and at the sinfulness that lies at the root of it. The words I have quoted above, "Neither will I be with you any more, except ye put away the accursed thing from among you," take us into the very heart of the story, and suggest a series of the most precious lessons around the truth they express, that the presence of sin makes ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... disastrous to himself. His duel with the ill-fated Hamilton, the awful retribution of public opinion that followed, and the slow downward course of a doomed life are all on record. Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of hatred, so accursed in common esteem that even the publican who lodged him for a night refused to accept his money when he knew his name, heart-stricken in his domestic relations, his only daughter taken by pirates and dying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... (as belonging to the older layer of archaic beliefs) are hateful to the gods, and Woden casts them out as accursed, though he himself was the mightiest of wizards. Heathen Teutonic life was a long terror by reason of witchcraft, as is the heathen African life to-day, continual precautions being needful to escape the magic of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... beasts, work leather, attend upon criminals, and do other degrading work. Several accounts are given of their origin; the most probable of which is, that when Buddhism, the tenets of which forbid the taking of life, was introduced, those who lived by the infliction of death became accursed in the land, their trade being made hereditary, as was the office of executioner in some European countries. Another story is, that they are the descendants of the Tartar invaders left behind by Kublai Khan. Some further facts ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... continued Diccon in graveyard tones. "They all go away together,—Sir Thomas and Captain Argall, Captain West, Lieutenant George Percy and his cousin, my master, and Sir Thomas's men; they go out of the wood as though it were accursed, though indeed it was not half so gloomy then as it is now. The sun shone into it then, sometimes, and the birds sang. You would n't think it from the looks of things now, would you? As the dead man rotted ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... reached its last trial. If we keep this mighty nation one and inseparable, we shall have answered it forever; if not, why then those who revile man as vile and irreclaimably degraded may raise their paeans of triumph; the black spectres of antique tyrants may clap their hands gleefully in the land of accursed shadows, and hell hold high carnival, for, verily, it would seem as if they had triumphed, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... women's shrieks, That torturing famine should thy footsteps clog; That captive's broken hearts should ache thine own. And Slavery—that villain plausible— That thief Gehazi!—He stripped before thine eyes And showed him all a leper, foul, accursed. He touched thy lips, and every word of thine Vibrates on chords whose deep electric thrill Shall never cease till that wide wound be healed. And then He took thee home. Ay, home, great heart! Home to ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... in the sandy desert looks for springs to quench his thirst Finds his fountains are but slime-pits such as Siddim's vale accursed; He who hopes to still the longing of the heart within his breast Must not search within a scene where naught is ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... his prayers to her, and of how she sang hymns to him on Sunday evenings. Her death had seemed to choke all the beauty out of his being at the time, and yet now he thanked heaven that she was dead. And then he thought of the accursed woman who had been his ruin, and of how she had entered into his life and corrupted and destroyed him. Next there rose up before him a vision of Belle, Belle as he had first seen her, a maid of seventeen, the only ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... "Accursed be the tongue which tells me so," said the trembling Macbeth, who felt his last hold of confidence give way; "and let never man in future believe the lying equivocations of witches and juggling spirits who deceive us in words which have double ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "Black day, accursed! on thee let no man hail Out of the port, or dare to hoist a sail, Or row a boat in thy unlucky hour! Thee, the year's monster, let thy dam devour, And constant Time, to keep his course yet right, Fill up thy space with a redoubled night. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... oats, two-cent beef, and no price at all for butter and eggs—that's what came of it.... The main question is the money question.... We want money, land, and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans directly from the Government. We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out. Land equal to a tract 30 miles wide and 90 miles long has been foreclosed and bought in by loan companies of Kansas in a year.... The people are at bay, and the blood-hounds of money who have dogged us thus ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... gold into her lap," said Mr. Carroll, "only for the accursed conventionalities of ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... ancestral, fain the life of their lord to shield, their praised prince, if power were theirs; never they knew, — as they neared the foe, hardy-hearted heroes of war, aiming their swords on every side the accursed to kill, — no keenest blade, no farest of falchions fashioned on earth, could harm or hurt that hideous fiend! He was safe, by his spells, from sword of battle, from edge of iron. Yet his end and parting on that same day of this our life woful ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... heart,' answered Balihu, the hermit of the faithful from Queda, 'triumph over all his foes! As I travelled on the mountains from Queda, and saw neither the footsteps of beasts, nor the flight of birds, behold, I chanced to pass through a cavern, in whose hollow sides I found this accursed sage, to whom I unfolded the invitation of the Sultan of India, and we, joining, journeyed towards the Divan; but ere we entered, he said unto me. 'Put thy hand forth, and pull me towards thee into the Divan, calling ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... affirmed "that the increasing and acknowledged usefulness of Christian missions was a subject of congratulation." We spoke of the increase of missionary operations in our own country, and of the spirit of self-denial which was widely spreading, particularly among young Christians. We spoke of that accursed thing in our midst, which not only tended greatly to kill the spirit of missions in the church, but which directly withheld many young men from foreign missionary fields. It had made more than two millions ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... find cause to complain of anybody, my voluntary referee, the Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Laurie, Kt., perpetual Deputy Lord Mayor, will see justice done you without any charge whatever: he and his toady, — —— ——. The accursed of Moses can hang any man: thus, by catching him alone and swearing Naboth spake evil against God and the King. Therefore (!) I admit no strangers to a personal conference without a prepayment of 20s. each. Had you attended to my former notice you would ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... thinking of Marius de Tregars. The accursed days of November and December had come. There were constant rumors of bloody battles around Orleans. She imagined Marius, mortally wounded, expiring on the snow, alone, without help, and without a friend to receive his supreme ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... with the mercantile class, which expected to benefit by it, both the nation and the parliament were thoroughly weary of the American war, and the opponents of it in the commons were strengthened by the accession of Pitt who pronounced it "a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war".[148] Yet the news of successes in the south, of a mutiny of the Pennsylvania troops in January, 1781, and of the distress and financial difficulties of the Americans encouraged ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... in spite of his rough temper and hasty speeches, came and spent most of the day with him, and in the intervals of his kindly talk, marched up and down the room, swearing that Giovanni was no more ill than he was himself, and that he had acquired his accursed habit of staying in bed upon his travels. As Giovanni had never before been known to spend twenty-four hours in bed for any reason whatsoever, the accusation was unjust; but he only smiled and pretended to argue the case for the sake of pleasing the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... he said, holding it up; "it is full yet!" I glanced at Satan, and in that moment he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose up, flushed and excited, crossed himself, and began to thunder in his great voice, "This house is bewitched and accursed!" People began to cry and shriek and crowd toward the door. "I summon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stood a little time to regard it; and then, perceiving it to be dead, fear succeeded his anger. "Wretched man that I am," said he, "what have I done! I have killed a man; alas, I have carried my revenge too far. Good God, unless thou pity me my life is gone! Cursed, ten thousand times accursed, be the fat and the oil that occasioned me to commit so criminal an action." He stood pale and thunderstruck; he fancied he already saw the officers come to drag him to condign punishment, and could not tell what resolution ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... the tiny cottages on the outskirts of the town, or others still farther back, scattered and solitary on the wooded hills. Was he, then, never to possess a house of his own nor a yard of earth? Was the sea, the accursed sea, to claim him till he died? What had he done, he asked himself, that others drew all the prizes and left him but the blanks—that they should stay ashore and prosper—that they should marry and have children round them, while he drudged at sea alone? ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... but spirit little Emily away to the mountains," said Hunston to himself, "I shall be able to repay them for all I have suffered. Nay, more, I shall be able to satisfy the greed of Mathias and the band, by making the accursed Harkaway disgorge some ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... own right arm rely, And my command obey: Smite the foul monster that she die, And take the plague away. To reach this country none may dare Fallen from its old estate, Which she, whose fury naught can bear, Has left so desolate. And now my truthful tale is told How with accursed sway The spirit plagued this wood of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... strongly sympathetic with all movements for local autonomy as most directly tending to destroy the modern 'nation' or centralised bureaucratic State."[1076] "It is quite true that Socialism will have to take over the accursed legacy of existing national frontiers from the bourgeois world-order; but Socialism will take it over merely with the view of killing it off and burying it at the earliest possible moment. The modern nation or centralised State is a hideous monstrosity, the offspring of capitalism ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... appears to me that the temperance people begin at the wrong end of the matter, by restraining the animal propensities before they have convinced the mind. If a man abstain from drink only as long as the accursed thing is placed beyond his reach, it is after all but a negative virtue, to be overcome by the first strong temptation. Were incurable drunkards treated as lunatics, and a proper asylum provided for them in every large town, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... had come to this country and had left it again; so he resolved to examine the matter adroitly, to learn from the Princess's discourse where his brother might be found. And, hearing her say that he had put himself in great danger by that accursed hunting, especially if the cruel ogre should meet him, he at once concluded that ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... there's been some astonishing mistake." For one moment he exonerated Jewdwine and embraced the wild hypothesis of a printer's error. He took back the accursed journal; as he held it his hand trembled uncontrollably. He glanced over the notices again. No. It was not after this fashion that the printers of the Metropolis were wont to err. He recognized the familiar hand of the censor, though it had never before accomplished such an incredible ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... believe in love. He could have wished to have his letter back again. It was an absurd letter. There were a thousand and one things, now that he came to think of it, that he might have said, things infinitely better and more moving than those stilted phrases of his, those accursed, sophisticated, pretentious, fine-spun phrases, though, luckily, the punctuation had been pretty bad and the lines shockingly crooked. He tried not to think, not to feel; but he felt and thought, and was wretched. If he had been ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... with the perspiration standing thickly about their pale lips, and a strange glitter in their feverish eyes as they see hundreds swept away, still play recklessly, desperately, until all is lost, and they leave the accursed spot, hopelessly ruined, sometimes seeking forgetfulness in death, with only the silent stars looking down upon them and the restless sea moaning in their ears, lost, lost! There are women too, at Monte Carlo, more, I verily believe than men; old women, who sit from the hour of noon to ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... had witnessed his struggles with a smile of gratified vengeance; "I had forgotten the accursed imp in this confusion. Take it," he cried, lifting the babe from the bottom of the boat, and flinging it towards ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... were best, voiceless and fanged, to wait About their rooms, that they might speak with none, Nor ever hear one answering human tone! But now dark women in still chambers lay Plans that creep out into light of day On handmaids' lips—[Turning to the NURSE.] As thine accursed head Braved the high honour of my Father's bed. And came to traffic ... Our white torrent's spray Shall drench mine ears to wash those words away! And couldst thou dream that I ...? I feel impure Still at the very hearing! Know for sure, Woman, naught but mine honour saves ye both. ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... you," he said violently, "it's the most accursed business! That Castro, with his Cuba, is nothing but a blasted buccaneer... and Carlos is no better. They go to Liverpool for a passage to Jamaica, and see ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... one man Christ is imputed to the sinner to justify him in God's sight. For his law calls for perfect righteousness, and before that be come TO, and put UPON the poor sinner, God cannot bestow other spiritual blessings upon him; because by the law he has pronounced him accursed; by the which curse, he is also so holden, until a righteousness shall be found upon the sinner, that the law, and so divine justice can alike approve of, and be contented with. So then, as to the justification of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sun will soon bring warm wind, and how glad one would be of a thaw in the trenches. But then the accursed time will come again when the whole surface of Northern France sticks to the boot ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... former beggar, 'leave my house at once, with your wife—you coward! you cur! You robbed my father, and then cheated me when I was a spendthrift. Begone, and may your name be accursed ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... full horror and degradation involved. She merely felt certain that—heredity or no—Eldred was, by the nature of him, incapable of travelling far down that awful road; that with her at his side to hearten and help him, he could not fail to free himself from "the accursed chain." ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver |
