"Curfew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been left to the clerk in order that he may ring the curfew-bell, or a bell at night and early morning, so that travellers may be warned lest they should lose their way over wild moorland or bleak down, and, guided by the sound of the bell, may ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... warriors, Spaniard! but thou hast not kept thy time; Only two had sunk before thee ere I heard the curfew chime; Back thou goest to thy dungeon, and thou may'st be wondrous glad, That thy head is on thy shoulders for thy work to-day, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... printed in the current press, remind the reader of some of these aforementioned rules and regulations. We read that "Tapsters are forbid to sell to the Indians," and that "unseasonable night tippling" is also tabooed; likewise drinking after nine in the evening when curfew rings, or "on a Sunday before three o'clock, when divine service ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Judson, who kindled the lights of salvation amid the darkness of Burmah?—or of Mrs. Hemans, who poured out her holy soul in words which will forever be associated with hunter's horn, and captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb, and curfew's knell at the dying day?—and scores and hundreds of women, unknown on earth, who have given water to the thirsty, and bread to the hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to the discouraged—their footsteps heard along dark lane and in government hospital, and in almshouse corridor, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lady seized the first opportunity of deserting Rachel, and plunging into the melee. Rachel sat on, sick with suspense, feeling utterly unable to quit her seat. Still they waited, the whole of the party were not arrived, and here was the curfew ringing, and that at the Deanery, which always felt injured if it were seven o'clock before people were in the dining-room! Grace must be upstairs dressing, but to ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Butter Cross and the old inn, reminiscent of stage-coach days, as the church bell was tolling, probably the curfew, and long after darkness had set in, for we were trying to reach Lichfield, we came to the village of Handsacre, where at the "Crown Inn" ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... o'er the face of day, The mantling mists of even-tide rise slow, As thro' the forest gloom I wend my way, The minster curfew's sullen roar I know; I pause and love its solemn toll to hear, As made by distance soft, it dies upon ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... [Midnight.] — N. evening, eve; decline of day, fall of day, close of day; candlelight, candlelighting[obs3]; eventide, nightfall, curfew, dusk, twilight, eleventh hour; sunset, sundown; going down of the sun, cock- shut, dewy eve, gloaming, bedtime. afternoon, postmeridian, p.m. autumn; fall, fall of the leaf; autumnal equinox; Indian summer, St. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... A 9 o'clock curfew law and that not enforced; parents allowing their children to roam the streets at night; misdemeanors winked at by those in authority, particularly the police; a general laxity on the part of parents and city officials in ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... ruined walls of the grim old castle in which he was born, and which he stormed and carried when a boy of scarce fourteen, our thoughts go back to his stormy and turbulent boyhood. And, as we do so, we see, not the Conqueror of England, the enslaver of the Saxons, the iron-handed tyrant of the Curfew-bell and the Doomsday-book, but the manly, courageous, true-hearted, perplexed, and persecuted little fellow of the old Norman days, when, spite of trouble and turmoil, he kept his heart brave, and true, and pure, and was in all things the real boy ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... capital he was severe. Kayrawan teemed with disaffected folk, sheiks, and theologians bitterly hostile to the heretical "orientalism" of the Fatimites, and always ready to excite a tumult. Moizz was resolved to give them no chance, and one of his repressive measures was the curfew. At sunset a trumpet sounded, and anyone found abroad after that was liable to lose not only his way, but his head. So long as they were quiet, however, he used the people justly, and sought to impress them in his favor. In a singular interview, recorded by Makrisi, he exhibited himself to a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... curfew toll, and supplied with as much wood and charcoal as maintained the light till sunrise; and at no period was the ceremonial omitted, saving during the space intervening between the death of a Lord of the Castle and his interment. When ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... England, and as one of the strongest elements of its permanency, the feudal system was brought into England; the territory was surveyed and apportioned to be held by military tenure; to guard against popular insurrections, the curfew rigorously housed the Saxons at night; a new legislature, called a parliament, or talking-ground, took the place of the witenagemot, or assembly of the wise: it was a conquest not only in name but in truth; ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Gael—repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a bluntness of feeling or by a dull stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul of a starving Irish village in which the curfew was still a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... far away are the ruins of the priory, which was founded at the same time as the castle. A dismantled gate-house with some rather extensive foundations are all that remain. In a little church near by the matins and the curfew are still tolled, one of the bells used having belonged to the priory. Few English ruins have more romance attached to them than those of Kenilworth, for the graphic pen of the best story-teller of Britain has interwoven them into one of his best romances, and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... the exception of Chapelain, were his enemies, Ambroise Pare insisted that an abscess was formed in the king's head, and that unless an issue were given to it, the danger of death would increase daily. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and the curfew law, which was sternly enforced in Orleans, at this time practically in a state of siege, Pare's lamp shone from his window, and he was deep in study, when Lecamus called to him from below. Recognizing the voice of his ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... at him. "I ask thee to reveal nothing," he said significantly. "I have but two eyes, and I must use them, as I said, to see, all that goeth on before me. Do thou but ask Eric there to show thee the way out of the town before the curfew ring. He hateth king's men worse even than I. My master will summon me to the house shortly, according to his custom. That will be the time for thee, for I can in no wise see what goeth on behind my back, nor did I promise ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... streets were becoming blacker and more deserted every moment. The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare intervals now that they encountered a passer-by in the street, or a light in the windows. Gringoire had become involved, in his pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts which surround the ancient ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of my kindness to Bessie Wendover,' she said to Miss Motley, in the confidence of that one quiet hour which belonged to the mistresses after the pupils' curfew-bell had rung youth and hope and gaiety into retirement, 'when I think of the mustard poultices I have put upon her chest, and the bronchial troches I have given her when she had the slightest touch of cold or cough, I am positively appalled at the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... The curfew bell rang at nine o'clock; the lights were put out; and all had betaken themselves to their hammocks. The sentries (not a few,) passed backwards and forwards outside, or stood at ease in their boxes. The picquets went the rounds ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... to Miss West's, and the Southerner's knock often appealed to Lizzie's hospitality when Mme. Clopin's early curfew had driven her boarders from the salon. It sounded thus one evening just as Lizzie, tired from an unusually long day of tuition, was in the act of removing her dress. She was in too indulgent a mood to withhold her "Come in," and as Miss Macy crossed the threshold, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the old lady; "as we cannot escape the Norman neighbourhood, or get beyond the sound of their curfew, it signifies not whether they be near our walls or more far off, so that they enter them, not. And, Berwine, bid Hundwolf drench the Normans with liquor, and gorge them with food—the food of the best, and liquor of the strongest. Let them not say the old ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of view with which he judged the rest of the world. The laborer whom he saw in the early morning swinging his dinner pail while with light steps he marched to the daily task in mill and factory, and whom he watched in the evening's dusk after the factory sirens had blown the working man's curfew, hurrying home anxious to reach his humble fireside, and for whom heretofore he had only known feelings of deepest contempt, suddenly had become a man who benefitted preciously far more of his life than any yegg he ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... of his bell that I connect the town crier with those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple of the Old North every night at nine o'clock—the vocal remains of the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... bar sun ban tired of standing, so it lak to set, yu say; And yust ven dis sun ban setting, it shine hard on Yosephine; She ban talking to the sexton, and ban feeling purty mean. "Now," she tal him, "yust be careful,... ay skol fix it op all right; Yust one teng ay lak to tal yu, Curfew ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... you tell me about the curfew?" The first boy was well up in the curfew, and rattled off a "full, true, and particular account" of that fine old English institution, much to everybody's satisfaction. The Doctor went on repeating two or three verses till he came to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... pleasant. First rule—'No Rules!' O, of course male noddies Will snigger at once, the superior bodies! But OSCAR WILDE must 'pull up his socks,' Ere he'll equal women at paradox. What I mean is this, in our 'Women's Hotel,' We'll have no such thing as the 'Curfew Bell,' And no fixed hour for the cry, 'Out lights!' We will give free way to true 'Woman's Rights,' Which are to thump, strum, tap, twirl, trill, From morn till night at her own sweet will. That's why we cherish, despite male spleen, Typewriter, Piano, and Sewing-Machine! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... Churchyard. When you know that my poem, The Poet, begins—"Ruin seize thee!" and ends With recapitulations of horrors the poet invokes on his friends. And I'll swear, if you look at the dirge on my relatives under the turf, you Will perceive it winds up with some lines on myself—and begins with the curfew. Now you'll grant it's more probable, Bill—as a man of the world, if you please— That all these should have prigged from myself than that I should have prigged from all these. I could cry when I think ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Jack" Hemingway, sexton of the First M. E. Church, and asked him to refrain from ringing the curfew bell last night, as Underwood's execution had been set for the hour when the bell was to ring. Hemingway refused, alleging it to be his ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... party," said de Crespigny. "Says his prayers, cheats his customers, keeps the curfew law, and runs a three-wife establishment, I believe, in three parts of town, all according to the Book. Why, have you run ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... the great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men's property, and in the general tenor of the government. He, therefore, as much as possible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light or fire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, had sounded. This bell rung at about eight in the evening. There was policy in this; and it served to prevent the numberless disorders which arose from the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a bubble of vanity. And this vanity was what was best in him. It alone had held him firm and upright so long; it alone clinched his teeth on the groans of his last agony. In the damp garden the water drips sadly. The bugle of the firemen sounds the curfew. "Go and look at No. 7," says the mistress, "he will never have done with his bath." The attendant goes, and utters a cry of fright, of horror: "Oh, madame, he is dead! But it is not the same man." They go, but nobody can recognise the fine gentleman who entered a short ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... and Saint Benedight Blesse this house from wicked wight; From the night-mare and the goblin, That is hight good-fellow Robin; Keep it from all evil spirits, Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets: From curfew time ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... curfew, a bell rang at sunset in summer and at eight in winter, which was the government signal for putting out lights and covering up fires. This law, which was especially hated by the English, as a Norman innovation and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... you couldn't do—I was the physician to heal wounds. You mind how nervous I was when I heard the drums beat. I hear them every evening now, for we have made a rule that all the Kaffir farms on the Berg sound a kind of curfew. It reminds me of old times, and tells me that though it is peace nowadays we mean to keep all the manhood in them that they used to exercise in war. It would do your eyes good to see the garden we have made out of the Klein Labongo glen. The place is one big orchard with every kind of tropical ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... curfew tolls the hour of closing gates, With jarring sound the porter turns the key, Then in his dreamy mansion, slumbering waits, And slowly, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... courtyard, and so into house. Yet slept he not there!" And that other one, The guest unwelcome, kinsman little loved (How these shrewd varlets turn us inside out At kitchen-conclaves, over our own wine!) Him had no eye seen since he issued forth As curfew sounded. "Call me lying knave"— He of the venison-pasty had the word— "And let me nevermore dip beak in ale Or sit at trencher with good smoking meat, If I heard not, in middle of the night, The cock crow thrice, and ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... U. alone has secured temperance measures of many kinds, including a law in every State requiring scientific temperance instruction in the public schools; in many States curfew laws, and statutes prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and of liquor on or near fair grounds, Soldiers' Homes and school-houses, and preventing gambling devices, immoral exhibits, etc. The Federation of Women's Clubs has obtained laws for free traveling libraries and has ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... great pleasure, and having once started, he found it difficult to stop. From "Lord Ullin's Daughter" he passed to "Curfew," hence to "Barbara Frietchie" and "Young Lochinvar," and as he read Hinton sat with closed eyes ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... so long as a woman can fight?" Kate cried quickly. "Chivalry?" she went on contemptuously. "That's surely a survival of ages when the old curfew rang, and a lot of other stupid notions filled folks' minds. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... days passed in which I did not see in my mind's eye the talismanic letters on the Abbey tower—"King Robert The Bruce." All my recollections of childhood, all I knew of fairyland, clustered around the old Abbey and its curfew bell, which tolled at eight o'clock every evening and was the signal for me to run to bed before it stopped. I have referred to that bell in my "American Four-in-Hand in Britain"[10] when passing the Abbey and I may as well quote from ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... of patriotism. With this great theme our poet is in perfect sympathy. His attitude is simple and reverent; he treads softly, as if on holy ground. The natural setting or atmosphere of his poem, the peace of evening falling on the old churchyard at Stoke Poges, the curfew bell, the cessation of daily toil, the hush which falls upon the twilight landscape like a summons to prayer,—all this is exactly as it should be. Finally, Gray's craftsmanship, his choice of words, his simple figures, his careful fitting of every line to its place and context, is as near ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... shall he in that dusk room Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig, Profuse of blossom and of essences, He smells not, who in a paltering hand Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the lustre of bare ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... kept his treasure long, 'Mid seasons grave or gay, Till to death's plaintive curfew-song, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... "The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... adored At the feet of Christ the Lord. Alas! December's all too brief For me to hope to wipe away The memory of my sinful May!" And Friar Jerome was full of grief, That April evening, as he lay On the straw pallet in his cell. He scarcely heard the curfew-bell Calling the brotherhood to prayer; But he arose, for't was his care Nightly to feed the hungry poor That ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... walls Led in abstemiousness a studious life; When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung Like caterpillars eating out their way 455 In silence, or with keen devouring noise Not to be tracked or fathered. Princes then At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time, Trained up through piety and zeal to prize Spare diet, patient labour, and plain weeds. 460 O seat of Arts! renowned throughout the world! Far different service in those homely days The Muses' modest nurslings underwent From their ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... regularly every night as if an invasion were expected. In Charleston, however, it is not the dread of foreign invasion, but of domestic insurrection, which occasions these nightly precautions; and, for the first time since my residence in this free country, the curfew (now obsolete in mine, except in some remote districts, where the ringing of an old church-bell at sunset is all that remains of the tyrannous custom) recalled the associations of early feudal times, and the oppressive insecurity of our Norman conquerors. But ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... ah! once I fell a-dreaming; some one played a polonaise I associated strongly with those happier August days; And I mused, "I'll speak this evening," recent pangs forgotten quite. Sudden shrilled a scream of anguish: "Curfew SHALL ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... beyewtiful?" she continued, after accomplishing the pirouette that prevented creases. "And Mart, he looked that proud, and solemn too. It made me think of that gal when she spoke 'Curfew shall not ring tewnight' at the schoolhouse. Every one looks fine. I hain't seen Barnabas so fussed up sence Libby Sukes' funyral. It makes him look real spry. And whoever got Larimer Sasser to perk up and put on ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... 1. Young persons should not drink coffee. 2. Reasons for the curfew bell. 3. Girls wear their hair in a variety of ways. 4. There are several kinds of boys in this school. 5. Civilization increases as the facilities for transportation increase. 6. Trolley roads are of great benefit to the country. 7. Presence of ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... stranger, and sore oppressed with long travel. Penury and misfortune have been my lot, and I am driven from place to place without a home or a morsel of bread. Last night, long after the curfew, I came hither, but no hospitium or religious house being near, I sat down by the hill-side yonder, until morning should enable me to crave help for my hopeless journey. The morning had not dawned ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... building; and in each district a special official was equipped with a proper hook and cord for pulling down houses on fire. At night respectable town-life was practically at a standstill: the gates were shut; the curfew sounded; no street-lamps dispelled the darkness, except possibly an occasional lantern which an altruistic or festive townsman might hang in his front-window; and no efficient police-force existed—merely a handful of townsmen were drafted ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... still, simply in reference to your health and complexions, advise you not to exceed seven o'clock. But, to effect this, a sine qua non is, retiring early, say at eleven—(though really I am too liberal.)—When people were compelled to retire at the sound of the curfew, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... sunshine—storm. Plenty of storm. Minor tempests that burst from a clear sky, apparently without cause, and the great final tornado. There had been cause enough for that. Why was it, mused Mr Ferguson, that every girl in every country town in every county of England who had ever recited 'Curfew shall not ring tonight' well enough to escape lynching at the hands of a rustic audience was seized with the desire to come to London and go ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Andy smiled. "Curfew must ring for us every time. Fancy dropping plump in the middle of such a jumble of forest as that is yonder, and I bet you it's just cram full of snakes, jaguars and everything else that would want to snuggle up to a poor birdboy dropped out of the clouds. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... sky as black as Lucifer. God bless us! here was goodman Theophilus buried; he was the best Nutcracker that ever dwelt in Enfield. Well, tis 9. a clock, tis time to ring curfew. Lord bless us, what a white thing is that in the Church porch! O Lord, my legs are too weak for my body, my hair is too stiff for my night-cap, my heart fails; this is the ghost of Theophilus. O Lord, it follows me! I cannot say my prayers, and one would give me a thousand ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare |
