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Malediction

noun
1.
The act of calling down a curse that invokes evil (and usually serves as an insult).  Synonym: imprecation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Malediction" Quotes from Famous Books



... Rapidly Ferval observed his striking front, his massive head with the long, white curls, the head of an Elijah disillusioned of his mission. He, too, was sitting, but upright, and his arm was raised with a threatening gesture as if in his desolating anger he were about to pronounce a malediction upon the vanishing twilighted town. Ferval moved immediately, as he did not care to be caught spying upon his queer neighbours. He was halted by their speech. It was English. His surprise was so unaffected that he turned back and went up to ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... his lips, and uttering a deep malediction in English, turned away to consult with Wild-cat on the matter; but finding the chief would not join him in interfering with the rights of the other, he growled out another dreadful oath, and let ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... absently, with no destination in mind. It was only when the Hotel de Perigny loomed before him, with its bleak walls and sinister cheval-de-frise, that his sense of locality revived. He raised a hand which cast a silent malediction on this evil house and its master, swung about and hurried back to the tavern, recollecting that ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... just at the moment when all the rest had endowed the child with their gifts. More and more vexed, she revenged herself by rendering useless all the talents he had received from the other fairies, not one of which, though possessing them all, in consequence of her malediction, was he able to make use of. It must be admitted, that on the whole this is ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... into daily relations with a good sort of man, had tried all he could to rouse him to a sense of his higher duties and spiritual privileges, but entirely without success. A preacher came round, whose gospel was largely composed of hell-fire and malediction, with frequent allusion to the love of a most unlovely God, as represented by him. This preacher woke up the man. "And then," said Christopher, "I was able to be of service to him, and get him on. He speedily outgrew ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... little children, legs apart, hands behind them, gazing up with white eyes; the man, back to the wheel, had his mouth open, as if inviting his vanishing fowl to drop back into it; and out of the kitchen door a wide woman suddenly popped, her lips working in malediction. His amusement a bit dampened by this consternation and by the unforeseen conduct of the hen, Charles-Norton went winging back, the dead fowl dangling at the end of his arm, to his retreat, and that night, when the pangs of his ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... became aware of his obstinacy he cursed him with frightful vehemence; his indignation was so great that when, later on, Pietro Staccia was about to die and his numerous friends came to entreat Francis to revoke his malediction, all their ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... to the rank of captain, and fell in one of the actions that were fought at this time. The letter which William left on the table, directed to his father, informing him of the step he had been induced to take, was torn to atoms, and stamped upon with rage; and the bitter malediction of the parent was launched with dreadful vehemence upon the truant son, in the presence ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... scarcely ever of such things as the "He has got his discharge, by——!" of Dickens; as the "Adsum" of Thackeray; as the "Trop lourd!" of Porthos' last agony; as the longer but hardly less quintessenced malediction of Habakkuk Mucklewrath on Claverhouse. It is of Eugenie Grandet shrinking in automatic repulsion from the little bench as she reads her cousin's letter; of Henri de Marsay's cigar (his enjoyment of it, that is to say, for his words are quite commonplace) as he leaves "la ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... modern method of dealing with the question of venereal disease. "The true method of prevention is that which makes it clear to all that syphilis is not a mysterious and terrible thing, the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a sort of shameful evil branded by Catholic malediction, but an ordinary disease which may be treated and cured." It may be remarked that the aversion to acknowledge venereal disease is at least as marked in France as in any other country; "maladies honteuses" is a consecrated French ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... protest, Rouletta followed him into his snug living- quarters, Doret thought again of the ruffian from whom he had rescued her and again he breathed a malediction. The more fully he became aware of the girl's utter helplessness the angrier he grew, and the more criminal appeared her father's conduct. White Horse made no pretense at morality; it was but a relay ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... of the bridge near Benevento, under the guard of the heavy cairn. Now the rain bathes them, and the wind moves them forth from the kingdom, almost along the Verde, whither he transferred them with extinguished light.[4] By their [5] malediction the Eternal Love is not so lost that it cannot return, while hope hath speck of green. True is it, that whoso dies in contumacy of Holy Church, though he repent him at the end, needs must stay outside[6] upon this bank thirtyfold the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... Mme. Morrel listened, horror-stricken, filled with a nameless dread. A faint, but distinct murmur reached them, gradually swelling in volume. It was a fierce, bitter malediction, full of intense, burning hatred, seeming to embrace God, man and the entire ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... all was still, and he loosed his malediction upon the night air. But even as he turned to go back the bell fluttered near at hand, and he dived among the bushes to silence it He nearly fell over one that kneeled between two big shrubs and wagged a little ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... the black man. And the black man besought mercy of Peredur. "Mercy will I grant thee," said he, "on condition that thou cause the chessboard to be restored to the place where it was when I entered the hall." Then the maiden came to him, and said, "The malediction of Heaven attend thee for thy work, since thou hast left that monster alive, who lays waste all the possessions of the Empress." "I granted him his life," said Peredur, "that he might cause the chessboard to be restored." "The chessboard is not in the place where thou didst find it; ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... the heart which has no opening door for the immigrant's weary feet, and thrice accursed be the heart which remembers strangerhood against some mother's homeless boy. Such malediction, thank God, my soul has never won, for if there be one sight which more than another fills me with hopeful pity, it is the spectacle of some peasant lad making the great venture of an untried shore, pressing in to those who were also foreigners ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... the boiling abyss below, from which not one vestige of their remains was ever returned for a sign to their awe-stricken friends. Supposing this bridge to be rebuilt,—which is not likely,—I do not believe that a habitant of all that region could be got to cross it, even under the malediction, with bell, book, and candle, of his priest. And so the old wooden bridge flourishes, and the crooked road is travelled by gray-coated cultivateurs, whose forefathers went crooked in the same direction for several generations, mounted upon persevering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... for the son of a gentleman and a Dumany. If you dare to follow such an insane course, you may be sure of my malediction, and, besides ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... Holy Land. Mariti is entirely sceptical as to the sinking of the valley of Siddim and the overwhelming of the cities. He speaks kindly of a Capuchin Father who saw everywhere at the Dead Sea traces of the divine malediction, while he himself could not see them, and says, "It is because a Capuchin carries everywhere the five senses of faith, while I only carry those of nature." He speaks of "the lies of Josephus," and makes merry over "the rude and shapeless ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... a furious malediction; and reloading his rifle as rapidly as he could, sent a bullet in the same direction; but the continued strokes of the horse's feet falling upon his ear told him that his random shot had been ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... no goodwill which it could not buy ten times over. But to the little hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides, the silence of Charles Gould portended a failure. Evidently this was no time for extending a modest man's business. He enveloped in a swift mental malediction the whole country, with all its inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the innumerable ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of the Campo, with its single palms rising like ships at sea within the perfect ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... of the Pass came before Argon bringing Acomat captive, he was in a great state of exultation, and welcomed his uncle with a malediction,[1] saying that he should have his deserts. And he straightway ordered the army to be assembled before him, and without taking counsel with any one, commanded the prisoner to be put to death, and his body to be destroyed. So the officer appointed ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... he said no more, for indeed, if taken literally, there could be nothing more to be said. The malediction, however, was directed against nothing particular, and certainly against no person living or dead; it only applied to the aggregate of the awkward circumstances in which he found himself, and as he was alone he felt quite sure of not ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... were not anxious to pursue the conversation, they made a more or less dignified retreat, and Sam, with a parting malediction on all tramps and all boys, went off towards ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... the Pra, skirted its right- hand boundary for some hundreds of yards, and came to the door of a tall, narrow, white house. Upon this door the doctor kicked furiously until it was opened; then, with a malediction upon the oaf who snored behind it, up he blundered, three stairs at a time, Strelley after him whether or no; and stayed not in his rush towards the stars until he had reached the fourth-floor landing, where again he kicked at a door; and then, releasing his victim's hand, took off ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... who had laughed, and aimed and fired and laughed again, in the heat of battle. But Ford's rejoinder was the bitter malediction of the defeated industry captain. "Damn their worthless lives!" he stormed. "In the next half-minute the Pacific Southwestern stands to lose a quarter ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... slave-girls shrieked aloud and kept up their lamentation for the space of seven days. Moreover, the King bade build a great dome over his daughter's ashes and burn therein candles and lamps: but the Afrit's ashes they scattered to the winds, committing them to the malediction of God. The King was sick, well-nigh unto death, for a month's space, after which health returned to him and His beard grew again. Then he sent for me and said to me, "O youth, verily we led the happiest of lives, safe from the vicissitudes of fortune, till thou camest ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... evidence of his death; but he had never parted with hers. Oh! how he had loved her! Would to God she had loved him as dearly! But she had forsaken him, had separated him from her as one who was accursed, and whose very name was a malediction. She had exacted the uttermost farthing from him; his mother, his children, his home, his very life, to save her name from dishonor. It seemed as if this tarnished, discolored picture of herself, cherished through all his misery and desolation, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... I have sometimes ventured to liken tailors at their boards to so many envious Junos, sitting cross-legged to hinder the birth of their own felicity. The legs transversed thus crosswise, or decussated, was among the ancients the posture of malediction. The Turks, who practise it at this day, are noted to be ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... Belford to Lovelace.— The lady has written to her sister, to obtain a revocation of her father's malediction. Defends her parents. He pleads with the utmost earnestness to her for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... over the sun, and cast a shadow on city and field, but he throws over the salutation itself a more permanent shadow; and were the words never to reach us save from such lips, they would, in no long time, become terms of insult or of malediction. But so often as the sweet greeting comes from wife, child, or friend, its proper savors are restored. A jesting editor says that "You tell a telegram" is the polite way of giving the lie; and it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for hours on end, and one of the most cherished projects of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... never fell. Of that I feel assured. (SCHWEITZER and KOSINSKY fall on his neck with fervor.) Not now—not now, dear comrades. Spare my feelings in this trying hour. An earldom has this day fallen to my lot—a rich domain on which no malediction rests. Share it between you, my children; become good citizens; and if for ten human beings that I have destroyed you make but one happy, my soul may yet be saved. Go—no farewell! In another world we may meet again—or perhaps no more. Away! away! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... no one said anything of the amazing view of the Rhine. Indeed, it was plain that they considered themselves involved in a boundless wilderness, and were too perplexed to suggest a way out. After a storm of malediction over the breakfastless state of things, and a good deal of quarreling among themselves anent who had been most greedy the night before, they now turned their attention to the silent ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... creature, would you incur a maternal, as I have a paternal, malediction? Would not the world think there was an infection in my fault, if it were to be followed by Miss Howe? There are some points so flagrantly wrong that they will not bear to be argued upon. This is one of them. I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... spirit, he did not observe the other letter which lay among the usual morning mass that still awaited examination. After reading the letter twice, and turning it over with trembling hands, as if he wished there were more in it, he pronounced a deep malediction on his "humble" friend, and rang the bell for his confidential clerk, who was an unusually meek, mild, and middle-aged little man, with a bald head, a deprecatory expression of countenance, and a pen ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... which I cannot repay. I will not perjure myself to defray a debt contracted against my positive and declared principles. I never will see this Polander you speak of; and it is my express command, on pain of my eternal malediction, that you ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... his mind for an adequate malediction for the indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final blame. It—whatever it was—was responsible for him, he ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... of Dietel to the landlord of The Pike, and, after he had received a reproof, they punished him for his rudeness by ordering him to fetch one jug of wine from the cellar after another. At last, when, with many a malediction, he had brought up the fifth, his tormentors released him, but then the best time was lost. Nevertheless he continued the pursuit and entered the little garden with the dog, but the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... lay over the men at the bar lasted till the barkeeper softly muttered: "Boys, that's news to me. It does make it just too tough." Then those who had hitherto opposed the lynching of the murderer changed their minds and directed new malediction against him, and those who had handled the rope took keener comfort and greater ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... to Forrester who had been in his confidence about the marriage from the beginning. We had no suspicion of the inordinate love, suppressed, chafed, galled, and tortured into madness, he had borne to Astraea all through those years of malediction, during which he had exhausted every form of threat and appeal to enforce his rights. He had hoped on wildly to the last. He had watched the progress of my attachment to her, and had encouraged it under a frantic delusion, that the final detection ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... make a great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark. Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back before they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... miraculous escape he is supposed to have had, were sufficient, one would conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of his mission; but, instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation and malediction in his mouth, crying, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... things at his former lodging-place, Mrs. Wallen's. Going thither to claim them, he was met at the threshold by Mart, whose face was gaunt and white and worn, and who no sooner caught sight of the once revered features of the would-be labor leader than he fell upon them with his fists and fragmentary malediction. Mart battered and thumped, while Elmendorf backed and protested. It was a policeman, one of that body whom ever since '86 Elmendorf had loved to designate as "blood-hounds of the rich man's laws," who lifted Mart off his prostrate victim, and ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... "Malediction on the Church!" cried Gerard. "But for the Church I should not lie broken here, and she lie cold in Holland." Fra Jerome left ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... act) and savoured the salty humour of the great writer. But the composer has his tragic side, and therein he reminds me of Dostoievsky—both men died during the same year—who but Dostoievsky, if he had been a composer, could have written the malediction scene in Boris? As a matter of fact he did write a play on the same historical subject, but it has disappeared. There are many other contacts with Dostoievsky—intense Slavophilism, adoration of Russia; its very soil is sacred; carelessness as to the externals ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... lay my throbbing head on any loved bosom, nor drink from meeting eyes an intoxicating dew, that transcends the fabulous nectar of the gods. Shall I not then complain? Shall I not curse the murderous engine which has mowed down the children of men, my brethren? Shall I not bestow a malediction on every other of nature's offspring, which dares live and enjoy, while I ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... the son of Widow O'Neill," he answered, without trepidation, in the native Irish in which he was addressed, "and I am her mainstay and support. If you hang me you will bring the malediction of Heaven, and the widow's curse will rest upon you. If I know your secrets, I am not about to divulge them; I am too much of an Irishman to do that, if I give you my ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... testimony and decide impartially—no less a jury than the People of the Confederate States; and for their verdict as to myself, I and my children will be content to wait; as also for the sure and stern sentence and universal malediction, that will fall like a great wave of God's just anger on you and the murderous miscreant by whose malign promptings ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... extinct in 1710, and that the representation of Makerstoun soon passed into the female line. They assigned as a cause, that when the wife of Raeburn found herself deprived of her husband, and refused permission even to see her children, she pronounced a malediction on her husband's brother as well as on her own, and prayed that a male of their body ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... appeared to hear nothing of what was passing around her. And yet, behind the fence which ran along the left side of the Arcadia Walk all the way to the quay, was a dense mass of people, head behind head, and all their blazing eyes were directed at the queen, and words of hate, malediction, and threatening followed her every step which she ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... schooner called down a shocking malediction upon the prize-master just as Captain Breaker presented himself before the group assembled at the arm-chair of the lieutenant, and had heard the last oaths ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... he did a very bad thing," retorted Paganel, "and he has justly merited the malediction of SAVANTS to the end ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... injustice, and the whirlwind passions that ingratitude and villany like mine were qualified to awaken in his bosom. I dreaded not his violence. The death that he might be prompted to inflict was no object of aversion. It was poverty and disgrace, the detection of my crimes, the looks and voice of malediction and upbraiding, from which my ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... which were a long time exposed on the river because the Roman people would not take them, believing that they should entail bad fortune on themselves by so doing. It would be difficult in our days to cast a malediction upon riches of any sort which could ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... but courteous to drink my hostess's health, but I will not pledge your ripeness in so thin-spirited a tipple. Yet a malediction may cream on it, so here's damnation to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. "Just you go out there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess were ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... inspiration, endeavor to explain the Genesaic narrative as an allegory rather than a history. If Adam did not really fall he could not have been cursed for falling, and his posterity could not have become partakers either in a sin which was never committed or in a malediction which was never pronounced. Nor can Original Sin be a true dogma if our first parents did not transmit the germs of iniquity to their children. If Adam did not fall there was no need for Christ to save us; if he did not set God and man at variance there was no ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... anarchists, involves, in the dread language of Scripture, the being "clothed with cursing as with a garment." That terrible phrase of inspiration describes, we suppose, not merely profuse profanity, but the earthly deception which attracts the heavenly malediction, the reply of a mocked God to a defiant transgressor, vengeance invoked, and the invocation answered. "SO HELP ME GOD!" is a phrase so often heard in jury-boxes and custom-houses, beside the ballot-box, and in ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... those days, not meaning much harm, or particularly conscious of what they were doing, but as a matter of bad habit, in pursuance of a custom certainly odious enough, but which they had not originated, and could hardly be expected immediately to overcome. In this way malediction formed part of the manners of the time. How could these be depicted upon the stage in the face of Mr. Colman's new ordinance? There was great consternation among actors and authors. Plays came back from the Examiner's office so slashed with red ink that ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... stout awnings defied the direct fury of the sun they could not shut out its glare and furnace heat. And the human barometer showed the stress of life. Stump was a caldron in himself, Tagg a bewhiskered malediction in damp linen. The temper of the crew, stifling in crowded quarters, suggested—that they were suffering from a plague of bolls. As a mere pastime, there was an occasional fight in the forecastle. Unhappily for the disputants, Stump had a ready ear ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... fatal apple of Paradise contained, that after six thousand years of malediction that same Church had begun to venerate it, striving to make it forget its ancient persecutions? Why was religion, firm as a rock throughout the centuries, which had defied persecutions, schisms and wars, beginning to ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... his voice in the shout of malediction and despair he let out. Senores, I know many men in my country, especially in the provinces most subject to earthquakes, who will neither eat, sleep, pray, nor even sit down to cards with closed doors. The danger is not in the loss of time, but in this—that the movement ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... Republicans who spoke against the bill, a serious party division seemed to be impending. The measure came to a vote on the 6th of February, the interest in the discussion continuing to the last. Mr. Owen Lovejoy sought occasion to give the measure a parting malediction, declared that "there is no precipice, no chasm, no yawning bottomless gulf before this nation, so terrible, so appalling, so ruinous, as the bill before the House," and Mr. Roscoe Conkling sought the floor to say that he concurred ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... damned from the beginning of our dispensation," cried the Sub-Prefect in a rage. "Well, I add my malediction. I say, Damn your Jew!" And he shut the door in the face of ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.[63] The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the age was proved by their ascribing this frightful affliction to the inefficacy of baptism by unchaste priests, as if innocent children were doomed to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... hand, and the malediction trembled upon her tongue. But ere the words could find utterance, her maternal tenderness overcame her indignation; and, sinking upon her knees, she extended her arms over ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... an exclusive appanage of the train service department. At the moment of Hunnicott's assault he was taking an order for Number 17; and observing that the lawyer's cipher "rush" covered four closely written pages, he hung it upon the sending hook with a malediction on the legal department for burdening the wires with its mail correspondence, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... I will away to the hills. My brother, heart of thy sister, thou shalt be avenged!"' A vocero declaimed upon the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale, two cousins, by the sister of the former, is still fiercer and more energetic in its malediction. This Erinnys of revenge prays Christ and all the saints to extirpate the murderer's whole race, to shrivel it up till it passes from the earth. Then, with a sudden and vehement transition to the pathos of her own ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... New York periodical was the Knickerbocker or some other, we are not informed; neither do we know what Bridge replied to Hawthorne, who had closed his letter with a malediction, on the aforesaid editor, but elsewhere in his ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... deeds, On both his wings, one black, th' other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aerie flight. My name perhaps among the Circumcis'd In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering Tribes, To all posterity may stand defam'd, With malediction mention'd, and the blot Of falshood most unconjugal traduc't. But in my countrey where I most desire, 980 In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath I shall be nam'd among the famousest Of Women, sung at solemn festivals, Living ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... our right of which Gissing speaks (they are like the baize of the Apennines) annoyed him considerably; they were the malediction of the town, he declared. At the same time, they supplied him with the groundwork of a theory for which there is a good deal to be said. The old Greek city, he conjectured, must have been largely built of bricks made from ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... return for the labour she had undergone in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the modern man who on his wedding-day should be greeted with the ancient good wish, that he might become the father of twenty sons and twenty daughters, would regard it as a malediction rather than a blessing. It is certain that the time is now rapidly approaching when child-bearing will be regarded rather as a lofty privilege, permissible only to those who have shown their power rightly to train and provide for their offspring, than ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... the box of matches at his bedside. He found them, and endeavoured to strike a light. But the matches were war matches, and one after another broke off in his hand against the side of the box. He tried holding the next close to the head, but the head flew off. With a muttered malediction on British manufacturers, Colwyn struck several more in rapid succession before he succeeded in lighting the candle at his bedside. He got quietly out of bed, and, leaving the candle on the table, opened his door noiselessly and looked ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... a considerable tree) for its aptness to be shorn and govern'd like the sabine and cypress, may be entertain'd, but not for its lasting verdure, which forsakes it in Winter, but soon again restores it. It was of old counted infelix, and under malediction, and therefore used to wreath, and be put on the heads of malefactors: But it has other excellent properties, in particular sovereign against the spleen, which as{281:1} Camden tells us was therefore brought first into England by Grindal Archbishop ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... young man uttered his fierce malediction he was surprised to hear a loud "Amen" pronounced; he looked round, wondering from whom this insolence came, and beheld an individual whose approach he had not noticed. He, too, was engaged in drawing on ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... snarl and a malediction, and we proceeded on pretty nearly together. He appeared to be much soberer than before: perhaps the keen air had cooled him somewhat, or he might have been shamming it a little at the inn to hoodwink the doctor. Five or six minutes brought us to a sharp turn of the road, where ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... of the only hours of happiness I have known for years," he said. "Thou hast been to me, Gelsomina, like a flower in a desert—a pure spring to a feverish man—a gleam of hope to one suffering under malediction. No, no, not for a moment have I repented ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... people into the promised land. The same volume included Eloa, a romance of love which abandons joy through an impulse of divine pity: the radiant spirit Eloa, born from a tear of Christ, resigns the happiness of heaven to bring consolation to the great lost angel suffering under the malediction of God. Other pieces were inspired by Spain, with its southern violence of passion, and by the pass of Roncesvalles, with its ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... Pardieu! I should have expected, from what I had seen, that they would have given you little save their malediction." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a moment of ecstatic energy, that a small waist was the chiefest grace in woman. How often had the Lady Crinoline's maid, when in the extreme agony of her labour, put a malediction on his name on account of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... the whole paroxism, my father was all abuse and foul language, approaching rather towards malediction—only he did not do it with as much method as Ernulphus—he was too impetuous; nor with Ernulphus's policy—for tho' my father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, which was either aiding or abetting to his love—yet never concluded his chapter ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... happened, he could not find the tobacco, and having a hazy recollection of laying it on the ground the last time he filled his pipe, he shook his aching shoulders and trudged on. The loss of the tobacco decided him, and with a malediction on Alton he made for Horton's. It was also a fateful decision with far-reaching results he made just then. Supper had long been cleared away when he entered the general room of the hotel, and then stopped a moment with his hand on the door, for the one man who sat under the big lamp ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... charity, and be ordered by the governance of his Holy Spirit; seeking always his glory, and serving him duly in our vocation with thanksgiving. This if we do, Christ will deliver us from the curse of the law, and from the extreme malediction which shall light upon them that shall be set on the left hand; and he will set us on his right hand, and give us the gracious benediction of his Father, commanding us to take possession of his glorious kingdom: Unto which he vouchsafe to bring us ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... life was weighed down by a cruel and enigmatic fatality,"—it is thus that the story, "The Life of a Pope," opens. "As if struck by an unknown malediction, he had from his youth been made to carry a heavy burden of sorrows, sickness and misfortunes; he was solitary among men as a planet is among planets; a peculiar and malevolent atmosphere surrounded him. Son of an obscure, patient, and submissive village ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... day out, the men of Belsaye eyed it askance 'neath scowling brows and, by night, many a clenched hand was shaken and many a whispered malediction sped, toward that thing of doom that menaced them from ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... 'It seemed as though the cares of this world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the British isles. Inexcusable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... she broke the sapling she held in her hand, and flung it into the road. Margaret of Anjou, bestowing on her triumphant foes her keen-edged malediction, could not have turned from them with a gesture more proudly contemptuous. The Laird was clearing his voice to speak, and thrusting his hand in his pocket to find a half-crown; the gipsy waited neither for his reply nor his donation, but strode ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... whispers when they did not put in enough. So one way with another they sent him home to his father; the archbishop thrusting him out of the south porch with his own hands and giving him the Common or Ferial Malediction, which is much the same as that used by ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... Make haste rapidigxi. Make holy sanktigi. Make known sciigi. Make longer plilongigi. Make an obeisance riverenci. Make public publikigi. Make stronger plifortigi. Make younger plijunigi. Malachite malakito. Malady malsano. Malcontent malkontentulo. Male viro. Malediction malbeno. Malefactor krimulo. Malevolence malbonvolo. Malicious malica. Malign kalumnii. Malignant malicema. Malleable etendebla. Mallet martelego. Mallow malvo. Malt bierhordeo, hordeo trempita. Maltreat bati. Mama ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... expedition to the jewellers' purchased for himself a watch-fob as a self-selected gift from a master who had never given him anything in all his years of service except his monthly wage and a daily malediction. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... barbarous iniquity of the Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners. An expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter, followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least, which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... the god with eight villages, to cover his private expenses. Narayan's social position and property were inherited by Chintaman-Deo II., whose heir was Dharmadhar, and, lastly, Narayan II came into power. He drew down the malediction of Gunpati by violating the grave of Maroba. That is why his son, the last of the gods, is ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... them down, and, when the animated discussion of that night's adventure flagged, as their tongues grew sleep-clogged and their eyelids drooped, they slept in peace; save when Slim, awakened by the soreness of his leg, grunted a malediction or two before he ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... tide, which was on the flood, to take us back into the channel. This was somewhat of a damper to us, and the captain looked not a little mortified and vexed. "This is the same place where the Rosa got ashore," observed the redheaded second mate, most mal-a-propos. A malediction on the Rosa, and him too, was all the answer he got, and he slunk off to leeward. In a few minutes, the force of the wind and the rising of the tide backed us into the stream, and we were on our way to our old anchoring-place, the tide setting swiftly ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of the emotions now past, how many of them escaped that saddest of all human judgments: "Happy, oh, happy were it dead! Far happier had it never been born!" Among the varied feelings with which so many noble hearts throbbed high, were there indeed many which never incurred this fearful malediction? Like the suicide lover in Mickiewicz's poem, who returns to life in the land of the Dead only to renew the dreadful suffering of his earth life, perhaps among all the emotions then so vividly felt there is not a single one which, could it again live, would reappear without ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... but I tell you again, I loathe her as I do poison. I never can forgive her the art with which she wheedled that jotter-headed old sinner, your uncle, out of twelve hundred a year. Unless it returns to the family, may my bitter malediction fall upon her ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience." They are under the sentence of the broken law; the malediction of eternal justice. "By the offense of one, judgment came upon all men unto condemnation." "He that believeth not is condemned already." "The wrath of God abideth on him." "Curst is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... in form was nearer akin to an eternal malediction than to anything else, Mr. Bluffy walked to the bar. Resting himself against it, he turned, and sweeping his eye over the assemblage, ordered every man in the room to walk up and take a drink with ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... vein I feel again The fever of youth, the soft desire; A rapture that is almost pain Throbs in my heart and fills my brain! O joy! O joy! I feel The band of steel That so long and heavily has pressed Upon my breast Uplifted, and the malediction Of my affliction Is taken from me, and my weary breast At length ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... The squire muttered a malediction upon the flag, which would probably have procured for him a coat of tar and feathers, if the mob had heard it. Mrs. Pemberton was silent, for she had never seen her husband so moved before. She permitted him to pace the room in ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... his head. "Malediction on his green eyes! He baptizes the offspring of this vermin sometimes, and sits for hours in the shade before the door of Domingo's posada telling his beads as piously as a devil that had turned monk for the greater ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... by previous comminution. Then turn your eyes to a Christian breakfast—hot rolls, eggs, coffee, beef; but down, down, rebellious visions: we need say no more! You, reader, like ourselves, will breathe a malediction on the classical era, and thank your stars for making you a Romanticist. Every morning we thank ours for keeping us back, and reserving us to an age in which breakfast had been already invented. In the words ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... and carrying in Isom Chase's barn-yard. Tonight, big and bony and broad-shouldered, he was a man, with the same outward gentleness over the iron inside of him as old Peter Newbolt before him; the same soft word in his mouth as his Kentucky father, who had, without oath or malediction, shot dead a Kansas Redleg, in the old days of border strife, for spitting on ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... indulgence in the opinions of his countrymen; on the contrary, the inhabitants of Granada, when they learnt from the liberated garrison the stratagem by which Roma had been captured, cursed Cid Hiaya for a traitor, and the garrison joined in the malediction.* ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... character of the atonement wrought by Christ. There is no dispute between them on this point. I prefer to allow the Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the character of the atonement.... Luther teaches that 'Christ did truly and effectually feel for all mankind the wrath of God, malediction, and death.' Flavel says that 'to wrath, to the wrath of an infinite God without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ delivered, and that by the hand of his own father.' The Anglican homily ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... elder of the two players, in a spasm of rage; 'damn my ill-luck—damn everything!' and as he shouted his imprecations he regarded his opponent askance, as if including him in his malediction. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... Sir Pertinax, clapping hand on sword. "A pest—a murrain! This to me, thou dog's-meat? Malediction! Now will I crack thy ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... malediction at his heart, but with a smile on his lips, Captain Ducie made reply. "Pray offer no excuses, my dear Platzoff, where none are needed. What I want is to see the Diamond itself, not to know where it is kept. Such a piece of information would be of no earthly use to me, and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... grieve to say, Thompson let himself out. No puerile repetition; no slovenly, slipshod work there. It was the performance of a born orator and poet, and one who, like Timothy, had known the Scriptures from a child—a long, involved litany of seething malediction, delivered, moreover, with a measured and effortless eloquence and a grammatical exactitude which left St. Ernulphus a bad second. The other fellows pursued their work in awe-stricken silence, till at length Cooper, glancing toward ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... in ignorance of the stranger's sinister glance or his malediction, while the foreigner, with a crafty smile of triumph, entered the hotel, to find, to his alarm, that Jean had been ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... same opinions, Owen by name, were the leading spirits among them. There was here, so to speak, a school of soldiers side by side with a school of priests, in which every act of the English government provoked slander, malediction, and schemes of opposition. Pope Clement was blamed for not threatening James with excommunication as Elizabeth had formerly been threatened; and the necessity for violent means of redress was canvassed without disguise. These views were repeated in ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. He first came into notice by pictures like La Lecture du Bible, La Malediction Paternelle, or Le Fils Puni, which are now to be seen—though generally passed by—at the Louvre, and his style was imitated in later years in England by Wheatley and others of that school with ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... thanksgiving, and poured out a libation to Sharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger. Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, "ascended the ramparts of Uruk the well-protected. She sent forth a loud cry, she hurled forth a malediction: 'Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me, and who has killed the celestial urus.' Eabani heard these words of Ishtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the face of the goddess: 'Thou ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... usual with Elisha, inaugurates his course with blessing, and typifies the healing power which God through him would exert on men. Jericho had been recently rebuilt in spite of the curse against its builders. The bitterness of the spring seems to have been part of the malediction; for men would not be so foolish as to rebuild a city which had only impure water to depend on. However that may be, the main lesson of the miracle, beyond its revelation of the spirit of gentle compassion in Elisha, is the symbolical one. The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to you my will. If you obey me, I assure you, and I promise before God, that I will not punish you, but if you will return to me I will love you better than ever. But if you will not return to me, I pronounce upon you, as your father, in virtue of the power I have received from God, my eternal malediction; and, as your sovereign, I assure you that I shall find means to punish you, in which I trust God ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... Chaldaea. M. Place found no less than fourteen still in place in niches of the harem walls at Khorsabad. The long inscription they bore contained circumstantial details of the construction of both town and palace. Like that on the metal tablets, it ended with a malediction on all who should dare to raise their hands against the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... narrate unto thee all about it. Thou hast, no doubt, heard of the royal sage, Nahusha. He was the son of Ayu, and the perpetuator of the line of thy ancestors. Even I am that one. For having affronted the Brahmanas I, by (virtue of) Agastya's malediction, have come by this condition. Thou art my agnate, and lovely to behold.—so thou shouldst not be slain by me,—yet I shall to-day devour thee! Do thou behold the dispensation of Destiny! And be it a buffalo, or ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of but one emotion—hate. Every object in the universe, from its Creator to himself, fell under the ban. The language of hate is curses; and as he moved out over the prairie there dripped from his lips continuously, monotonously, a trickling, blighting stream of malediction. Swaying, stumbling, unconscious of his physical motions, instinct kept him upon the trail; a Providence, sometimes kindest to those least worthy, preserved ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... with an excited stride he re-entered the studio. He came up to the picture again, and again he stood looking at it. 'Damn him—damn him—damn him!' he broke out once more. It was not clear to Lyon whether this malediction had for its object the original or the painter of the portrait. The Colonel turned away and moved rapidly about the room, as if he were looking for something; Lyon was unable for the instant to guess his intention. Then ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... Rowland, and Myra, followed by a parting, heart-borne malediction from the agitated underwriter, left the office and reached the street. The carriage that had ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... aid your cause, wealth to support your state,—can offer you halls in which to feast, and impregnable castles for your defence. I am a houseless and landless man—disinherited by my mother, and laid under her malediction—disowned by my name and kindred—who bring nothing to your standard but a single sword, and the poor life ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... hope of forcing over; but failing in this, we hove back into the channel. This was something of a damper to us, and the captain looked not a little mortified and vexed. "This is the same place where the Rosa got ashore, sir," observed our red-headed second mate, most mal-apropos. A malediction on the Rosa, and him too, was all the answer he got, and he slunk off to leeward. In a few minutes the force of the wind and the rising of the tide backed us into the stream, and we were on our way to our old anchoring place, the tide setting swiftly up, and the ship barely manageable in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... in such hands as would retain the firmest hold of it. She cared not, after taking this revenge, what became of her body. The quickest death would then be the most agreeable to her. And she assured her that, if he persevered, she would disown him for her son, would give him her malediction, would disinherit him, as well of his present possessions as of all he could expect by her; abandoning him not only to her subjects to treat him as they had done her, but to all strangers to subdue and conquer him. It was in vain to employ menaces against her: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... cushions with a hen, who was accustomed to appropriate them for her maternal aspirations. I was in the midst of the battle, when Mrs. Kobbe coolly seized her and plunged her entire into a barrel of rain-water. She walked away, shaking her feathers, with an angry malediction of noise. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... representation of intentions misdirected, can stand against the deliberate consent of the parties to wedlock, witnessed by honorable relatives. We, therefore, call upon the Prince of Savoy to humble himself as beseems a man that has sinned against God and the Church, lest he incur her malediction, at the hands of the vicar of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... always free. No, no; thrice no, by the ashes of our fathers, by the altar of our God! The "chosen curses," and the "hidden thunder in the stores of heaven" will forbid the rendition—a crime to them, a malediction to their masters, a shame to us, and a disgrace to the age. If these children of wrong and oppression are the lawful spoil of our victorious arms, give up to the enemy your proudest national memorials—the sword of Washington, the staff of Franklin, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... face, barring the way by which Moll might regain her husband; and as the poor wife halted, trembling in dreadful awe, the old woman advanced with the sure foot of right and justice. What reproach she had to make, what malediction to pronounce, Moll dared not stay to hear, but turning her back fled to the house, where, gaining her chamber, she locked the door, and flung herself upon her husband's bed; and in this last dear refuge, shutting her eyes, clasping her ears, as if by dulling ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... one give the announcement: but no such announcement can be given; therefore the parlour firesides must even put up with —— or what other stuff chance shovels in their way, and read, though with malediction all the time. It is a great pity, but no man can help it. We are now arrived seemingly pretty near the point when all criticism and proclamation in matters literary has degenerated into an inane jargon, incredible, unintelligible, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... made so much concession to his nervous feeling that he had not turned the gas quite out, as was his custom. The dim duskiness made him shudder; he expected to see the Huckleberry Street Irish woman looking at him. But he shook off his terror a little, uttered another malediction on the man that invented Christmas ghost stories, concluded that his illusion must have come from his lying on his left side, turned over, and reflected that by so doing he would relieve his heart and stomach from the weight of his liver, repeated this physiological reflection in ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... the Angels of God, of the Heavenly Light, and of the Prophecy of Saint Patrick. XCVII The Temptation of the Nun is Subdued. XCVIII Of Saint Comhgallus, and the Monastery foreshowed of Heaven. XCIX The Saint Prophesieth of the Obstinate Fergus and of his Children. C The Malediction of the Saint is laid upon the Stones of Usniach. CI Of the Woman in Travail, and of her Offspring. CII The Bishop Saint Mel catcheth Fishes on the Dry Land. CIII The Footprints of Certain Virgins are impressed on a Stone. ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... footmen stood their ground a little longer. Mr. Donovan raised his voice a little. He felt old powers returning to him. He became fluent. One by one the footmen slank away. Mr. Donovan went on, without passion or heat. He arrived at a terrific malediction which he had found effective many years before in dealing with Italian navvies. The major domo cowered, his hands held to his ears, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... the equivocal character of her name, 'Mor,' which meant in the Arabic language 'Myrrh.' It is very probable that the story was founded on a tradition among the Phoenicians of the history of Noah, and of the malediction which Ham drew on himself by his undutiful conduct ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... know that you're not a set of pirates?" roared the Englishman. "You look like it! But wait till I get back to 'The Rosamond.' and I'll knock some of the impudence out of you, you young filibusters!" And with a parting malediction, which showed wonderful ingenuity in blasphemy, he growled out an order to back water; when the boat was turned, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... met us everywhere that afternoon. Over Furnes and Bergues, and all the little intermediate villages, the evil shadow lay. Germany had willed that these places should die, and wherever her bombs could not reach her malediction had carried. Only Biblical lamentation can convey a vision of this life-drained land. "Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... success he might have would be but a stale repetition of other successes which he had achieved. He would go on working, of course, but—. The ringing of the telephone bell across the room jerked him back to the present. He got up with a muttered malediction. Someone calling up again from the theatre probably. They had been doing it all the time since he had announced his intention of leaving for ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... and his allies to deprive the church and the world of the "lively oracles;" therefore, as he promised a blessing on the reader of this book, as it were on the title-page, here in the close he appends a malediction, that all who read or hear, may ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... sight" and "profit in sight" have been of late years subject to much malediction on the part of engineers because these expressions have been so badly abused by the charlatans of mining in attempts to cover the flights of their imaginations. A large part of Volume X of the "Institution of Mining and Metallurgy" has been devoted to heaping infamy ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... was revived by my meeting a peasant, who told me that I was not far from the village of Firmi. I left the great woods, and reached a district that was new in every sense. Entering a little gorge, to me it seemed that nature had been cursed there ages ago, and still carried the sign of the malediction in the sooty darkness of the rocks—jagged, tormented, baleful—that rose on either hand. Nothing grew upon them save a low wretched turf, and this only in patches. Beyond, the metamorphic rock gave place to red sandstone, and the ground sloped down into the little coal basin of Firmi. What ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... and raging, filled with indignation that shook her whole body, overflowed through her mouth, and tore from her now and again some coarse insult which she would hurl with a shriek of rage at her maid's vile memory. Night and day she was possessed by the same fever of malediction, and even in her dreams her attenuated ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... you laugh? I am the son of a rich and well-famed man, Nobuyoshi of Kawachi. But because of a malediction invoked upon me by my wicked stepmother, I have become as you ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... brook,—and the first over it. As soon as he was beyond Sir Simon's notice, he had scurried on across the plough, and being both light and indiscreet, had enjoyed the heartfelt pleasure of passing George Scruby. George, who hated Mr. Bottomley, grunted out his malediction, even though no one could hear him. "He'll soon be at the bottom of that," said George, meaning to imply in horsey phrase that the rider, if he rode over ploughed ground after that fashion, would soon come to the end of his steed's power. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... Instead of any attempt to sully and tarnish the glory won by the English on that day, by pointing to their cruel and barbarous treatment of unarmed prisoners, they visit their own people with the very strongest terms of malediction, as the sole culpable origin and cause of the evil. And that these were not only the sentiments of the writers themselves, but were participated in by their countrymen at large, is evidenced by the record ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... founded, than under the huswifery of Mrs. Eaton." "It is perhaps owing," Mr. Winthrop observes in his History of New England, "to the gallantry of our fathers, that she was not enjoined in the perpetual malediction they bestowed on her husband." A few years after, we read, in the "Information given by the Corporation and Overseers to the General Court," a proposition either to make "the scholars' charges less, or their commons better." For a long period ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... this malediction can neither art, nobility, policy nor law made by man deliver women: but, alas, ignorance of GOD, ambition and tyranny have studied to abolish and destroy the second ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... and it's nice and cool," said the old Capuchin. It was so damp that I actually shivered. "Would you like to see the church?" said the monk; "a jewel of a church, if we could keep it in repair; but we can't. Ah! malediction and misery, we are too poor to keep ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... world within the same number of square miles; and I believe that the Sunderbunds in Bengal do not contain monsters more hideous and terrible than are to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction. The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or "vampire" of the prairies, are trifles, compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs swamps, and muddy rivers. The former ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... bad harvest, and a dearth, because the Queen's luxury "provoked God" (who is represented as very irritable) "to strike the staff of bread," and to "give His malediction upon the fruits of the earth. But oh, alas, who looked, or yet looks, to the very cause ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... the Rappahannock, our engineers were killed in scores by the sharp-shooters of the enemy. Malediction on those imbecile staffs! The A B C of warfare, and of sound common sense teach, that such works are to be made either under cover of a powerful artillery fire, or, what is still better, if possible, a general sends over the river in some way, with infantry to clear its banks, and to ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... communication under present circumstances, and on the part of the fair member of the present company, with Mr. Neville or Miss Helena. I have reason to know that a local friend of ours (on whom I beg to bestow a passing but a hearty malediction, with the kind permission of my reverend friend) sneaks to and fro, and dodges up and down. When not doing so himself, he may have some informant skulking about, in the person of a watchman, porter, or such-like hanger-on ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... comprised Potter and his lot in a new and original malediction by way of answer, and then said to Leander, "Did Potter tell you to let that Venus stand where all the world might ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... her—from you." She was not afraid, now that the words were said, now that she had seen the guilty look upon his face. She confronted him steadily; she placed herself between him and the bed. Hugo uttered a low but emphatic malediction ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... vehemence, "it shall never be. That part of the malediction, at least, shall NOT be accomplished. For once shall the curse of the innocent ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... most out of Charles Schwab throw around him expectation and malediction and then let him ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... approaches. This is Denis Ronciat: seeing the seducer of his child, the indignation of the old man breaks out, he rejects the offering, and falls as if struck with apoplexy, pronouncing a sort of mysterious malediction, which freezes with horror all who hear it. In the second act Claudie is still at the farm, her grandfather having been sick there for two months. She has been engaged as a servant to the farmer ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... from the father's hand; Though the sinews of his heart are wrung, He utters no cry, he breathes no prayer, No malediction falls from his tongue; But his stately figure, erect and grand, Bends and sinks like a column of sand In the whirlwind of his great despair. Dying, yes, dying! His latest breath Of parley at the door of death Is a blessing on his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... situation and the musical phrase, and her ornamentation is of a novelty and elegance that reconcile me to that style of execution. I do not love roulades, I must confess, though I may learn to do so later. Jenny Lind does one thing admirably: during the malediction, instead of clinging to her lover as all the other Lucias never fail to do till the act is ended, as soon as Edgar throws her from him she remains motionless: she is a statue. A livid smile contracts her features, her haggard eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... that the least intimation, in his present irritable state of mind, reaching him of my intentions, would make him not scruple, in his fury, pronouncing some malediction upon my disobedience that neither of us, I must ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... furrowed faces. If inclined for a little exercise, they can bestir their wooden legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, criticising the rig of passing ships, and firing off volleys of malediction at the steamers, which have made the sea another element than that they used to be acquainted with. All this is but cold comfort for the evening of life, yet may compare rather favorably with the preceding portions of it, comprising little save imprisonment on shipboard, in the course ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... drawn from the dark of unconsciousness and thrust into this glare of summer. By a natural confusion of ideas, as his agitation turns to delirium, this day torturing him, this day upon which he calls a malediction, becomes his old enemy, the Day which used to keep him from her,—and shifts from that into the signal-light which even at night used to warn him off. His delusion complete, he calls imploringly to Isolde, Sweetest, Loveliest, "When, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... English," the innkeeper continued, with easy volubility. "For I know you belong to no other nation. I said so to myself the moment I saw you, riding up here on horseback alone. I called upstairs to Juanita that there was an English Senorita coming on a horse, and Juanita replied with a malediction, that I should raise my voice when the nino was asleep. She said that if it was the Pope of Rome who came on a horse he must not wake the child. 'No,' I answered, 'but he would have to go upstairs to see it;' and Juanita did not laugh. She sees no cause to laugh ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... marry her; but first hear me swear, solemnly swear"— and she raised her hand and eyes to heaven—"that my malediction shall be your portion! Speak but the word, and no power ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... contempt, all kinds of misery and degradation, seize on her in the cradle, and accompany her to the tomb. Her birth is commonly regarded as a humiliation and a disgrace to the family—an evident sign of the malediction of heaven. If she be not immediately suffocated, a girl is regarded and treated as a creature radically despicable, and scarcely belonging to the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... one does a banner emblazoned with merits. Mrs. Makebelieve understood also that the big man's action was merely his energetic surrender, as of one who, instead of tendering his sword courteously to the victor, hurls it at him with a malediction; and that in assaulting their friend he was bidding them farewell as heartily and impressively as he was able. So they fed the young man and extolled him, applauding to the shrill winding of his trumpet until he glowed again in the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens



Words linked to "Malediction" :   condemnation, imprecation, maledict, execration, curse



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