"Curfew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tall old clock told out boldly three times three, Thrice the number of the graces, thrice the number of the fates, The full number of the Muses, the hour dedicated to Morpheus, At that curfew departed the guest, and all work being suspended, Laid aside was the grandmother's knitting-bag, for in its cradle Rock'd now and then by her foot, already slumbered the baby. Then, ere the fading brands were covered with protecting ashes, Rose the prayer of the Sire, amid his treasured and ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... that it would be more comfortable to be an Italian than a Yugoslav. The local Reading-Rooms, whose committee had received no previous warning, fell so greatly under the displeasure of the Italians that one night after ten o'clock—at which time curfew sounded for the Yugoslavs; the Italians and their friends could stay out until any hour—the premises were sacked: knives were used against the pictures, furniture was taken by assault, and mirrors did not long resist ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... 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 ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "The curfew tolls the knell of day, The lowing herd winds o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was at all cold weather there was a great fire in the ingle-nook, and a girl was sure to be found in the hall playing on the grand piano or on the beautiful organ, or singing in her sweet voice; but now all was deadly silence. Even the dogs, Curfew and Tocsin, were nowhere to be seen. There was no Magsie to talk to. Magsie had gone over to ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... Till we have made things nice and 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! The 'woodpecker ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... nobleman of the highest rank, and most distinguished for deeds of chivalry, were more attentive to exhibit feats of horsemanship as they passed the door of old Simon Glover, in what was called Couvrefew, or Curfew, Street, than to distinguish themselves in the tournaments, where the noblest dames of Scotland were spectators of their address. But the glover's daughter—for, as was common with the citizens and artisans ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... educated, would regard hypotheses as intense intellectual luxuries, prized academically, but without a place in the sane world without. He decided on saying:—"Of course, you would have documentary evidence." Then he felt that his tone had been ill-chosen—a curfew of the day's discussions, a last will and testament ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 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
... at 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 this last event ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Tea was made and wine poured out. The vessels used were spotlessly clean. He lingered till the day was almost over; the curfew-drum sounded its four beats. The old lady asked if he lived far away. He answered untruthfully, "Several leagues beyond the Yen-p'ing Gate," hoping that they would ask him to stay. The old lady said, "The drum has ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... the leading role, defy Mr. Grimm as though she were repeating a list of things she had to buy at the grocery this morning; Ella Stowbody remark "I'd like a cup of tea" as though she were reciting "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight"; and Dr. Gould, making love to Rita Simons, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... different bells from wedding-bells, or only sounded dismal in the fancies of the living; and then the precocious small boy proceeds to give the astonished clockmaker some useful information about King Alfred's candles and curfew-bells. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... when they had been established some time in their new abode, and sat together, one winter evening, listening to the sweet bells of Oldchurch—one of the few English parishes where lingers "the curfew's solemn sound." ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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 ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Curfew he quaintly and beautifully reminds us of the old couvre-feu bell of the days of William the Conqueror, a custom still kept up in many of the towns and hamlets of England, and some of our own towns and cities; and until recently the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize, From Pummery-Tout to where the ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... though it was not yet the hour of curfew. The lieutenant of the watch stood squarely before him with a forbidding air, while a file of arquebusiers lounged ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... called the 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 ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... "People awake! Some student or some saint, confound the crew! Can't they get drunk and lie in bed snoring like their neighbours? What's the good of curfew, and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's end in bell-towers? What's the use of day, if people sit up all night? The gripes to them!" He grinned as he saw where his logic was leading him. "Every man to his business, after all," added he, "and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The curfew[361-1] tolls the knell[361-2] of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... darkness, we went out according to our custom, and revelled in the old-world streets, the latticed windows, still lighted up, waiting for the curfew—real or figurative, public or domestic. For we all have our curfews, only they are not proclaimed from some ancient tower; and, alas, they are, like Easter, a movable institution; whereby it comes to pass that we too often ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... then another, we were astonished and utterly confused by the noise and hubbub through which we rode. Hundreds seemed to be moving this way and that in the narrow streets. Women screamed to one another from window to window. The bells of half-a-dozen churches rang the curfew. Our country ears were deafened. Still our eyes had leisure to take in the tall houses with their high-pitched roofs, and here and there a tower built into the wall; the quaint churches, and the groups of townsfolk—sullen fellows some of them with a fierce gleam in their ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... was unanswered. The stars twinkled overhead, the sandman was abroad, curfew sounded through the dunes, and all ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... 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, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... flow'rs, the brooks, and trees, Again are made our own, The woodlands rife with bees, And the curfew's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... no evil thing that walks by night, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, Hath hurtful power ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... at curfew," he said; "five come out and five go in, and I shall bid them seek you here at your lodgings. So now, farewell, and your revenge with the dice you shall ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Shelley came, felt the vastness, the pathlessness, of the heaven as Milton did. Or, to come to earth again, where does poetry set the ear more instantly and actively at the work of imaginative {112} creation than in those finely suggestive lines about the curfew— ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... 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 ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and "Farewell" in one breath. I heard the cuckoo calling across the meadows to-day, and already I noticed a faltering in his second note. Soon the second note will be silent altogether, and the single call will sound over the valley like the curfew bell ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... floated overhead; a voice from the old time, an admonition of mortality in strains sweet to the ear of childhood. Harvey had but to listen, and the days of long ago came back to him. Above all, when at evening rang the curfew. Stealing apart to a bowered corner of the garden, he dreamed himself into the vanished years, when curfew-time was bed-time, and a hand with gentle touch led him from his play to that long sweet slumber which ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Splash on my head, and then upon my feet, The water poured;—I'm drowned! my slipper's full! My dickey—ah! 't is cruel! Flowers are nonsense! I'd have them amaranths all, or made of paper. Here, wring my neckcloth, and rub down my hair! Now Mr. Brackett, punctual man, is ringing The curfew bell; 't is nine o'clock already. 'T is early bedtime, yet methinks 't were joy On mattress cool to stretch supine. At midnight, Were it winter, I were less fatigued, less sleepy. Sleep! I invoke thee, "comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... 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 skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies dying there, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... 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 ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... bread. Silence was enjoined at meal times and the Bible was read. Latin was, from the first, the only lawful medium of conversation. All the members of (p. 083) a college, had to be within the gates when the curfew bell rang. Bearing arms or wearing unusual clothes was forbidden, and singing, shouting and games were denounced as interfering with the studies of others, although the Parisian legislators were more sympathetic with regard to games, than their English ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... curfew, she heard a loud knocking at the door of her house. Accustomed to receive visits at all hours, she took her lamp without hesitation, and opened the door. An armed man, apparently much agitated, entered the room. Louise Goillard, in a great fright, fell into a chair; this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... contradiction of the doctors, who, with 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 old friend, Pare ordered ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... counsel well," said Jenkin; "I was to be introduced to her by you when I was perfect in my gallantries, and as rich as the king; and then she was to be surprised to find I was poor Jin Vin, that used to watch, from matin to curfew, for one glance of her eye; and now, instead of that, she has set her soul on this Scottish sparrow-hawk of a lord that won my last tester, and be cursed to him; and so I am bankrupt in love, fortune, and character, before I am out of my time, and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... her back to the chateau; the curfew had tolled for the laborious villagers of Fleurieres, and the street was unlighted and empty. She promised him that he should have the marquis's manuscript in half an hour. Mrs. Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they passed round by a winding lane to a door in the wall of the park, ...
— The American • Henry James
... sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid (Weak masters tho' ye be) I have be-dimm'd The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... take a flagrant instance of wrong-doing. Suppose some person to persist in playing "Dolly Grey" on the euphonium, or to contract a baneful habit of reciting "Curfew shall not Ring" at evening parties, the Christian believer in Free Will would call him a bad man, and would say ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... most conspicuous object in the city, standing near the market-place, almost due north of the Lady Chapel. It was built at the beginning of the fifteenth century in order that the curfew bell might be hung in it. This had been cast some seventy years before the building of the tower, and had hung in the central tower of the Abbey Church; it weighs about a ton. It bears the inscription: "Missi de coelis, habeo nomen Gabrielis." The tower was restored ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... the last organized resistance had been wiped out, and curfew had been imposed, and peace of a sort restored. There was still the threat from Keegark, but it was looking less ominous now than it had the evening before. Von Schlichten and Paula were having dinner in the Broadway ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... and schoolhouses and paved streets are not the result of throwing confetti, tooting tin horns and waiving the curfew law. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... had run across a friend attached to the Staff, and now, meeting him again in the depth of our difficulty, we were told of lodgings to be found near by. He could not take us there, for it was past the hour when he had a right to be out, or we either, for that matter, since curfew sounds at nine at Chalons. But he told us how to find our way through the maze of little unlit streets about the Cathedral; standing there beside the motor, in the icy darkness of the deserted square, and whispering hastily, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... walk to the park, scarce ten to buildings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide streets brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling through them to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the curtain round each couch, rang for the gay city about us the summons to festal enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, however: gay instincts my nature had few; ball or opera I had never seen; and though often I had heard ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... could do what 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 ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... properly capped with their round cardboard tops; the cheese was never put on the same rack with the butter; the doors of the ice-box were carefully latched. Such observations, and the slow twinkle of the fire in the range, deep down under the curfew layer of coals, pleased him. In the cellar he peeped into the garbage can, for it was always a satisfaction to assure himself that Fuji did not waste anything that could be used. One of the laundry tub taps was dripping, with a soft measured ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... hush the little birds asleep in their varied leafy cradles. The very cattle, that had been seen lying lazily out of the heat under the beech-trees, had ceased their lowings. In fact, Nature had rung her curfew bell, and the sentry stars were coming out, one by ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... with their furs and beaded garments to exchange for firearms and fire-water. People fastened their doors at night for a purpose. No curfew bell was needed to call in the children. The wooded Neosho Valley grew dark before the evening lights had left the prairies beyond the west bluff, and the waters that sang all day a song of cheer as they rippled over the rocky ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter |
