"Curst" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-worn silver brightens; No fear, nor lust for sordid hoard, His light sleep frightens. Why bend our bows of little span? Why change our homes for regions under Another sun? What exiled man From self can sunder? Care climbs the bark, and trims the sail, Curst fiend! nor troops of horse can 'scape her, More swift than stag, more swift than gale That drives the vapour. Blest in the present, look not forth On ills beyond, but soothe each bitter With slow, calm smile. No suns on earth Unclouded glitter. Achilles' light was ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... appear A ragg'd soused neats-foot, with sick vinegar; And in a burnish'd flagonet, stood by Beer small as comfort, dead as charity. At which amazed, and pond'ring on the food, How cold it was, and how it chill'd my blood, I curst the master, and I damn'd the souce, And swore I'd got the ague of the house. —Well, when to eat thou dost me next desire, I'll bring a fever, since ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... menacing her with his hand. 'I, that in the form of a man live the life of a hunted beast; that in the body am a spirit, a ghost upon the earth, a thing from which all creatures shrink, save those curst beings of another world, who will not leave me;—I am, in my desperation of this night, past all fear but that of the hell in which I exist from day to day. Give the alarm, cry out, refuse to shelter me. I will not hurt ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... groans they brake When they came near him; and such space did take 'Twixt one another, loath to issue on, That in their shallow furrows earth was shown, And the poor lover took a little breath: But the curst Fates sate spinning of his death On every wave, and with the servile Winds Tumbled them on him. And now Hero finds, By that she felt, her dear Leander's state: She wept, and prayed for him to every Fate; 210 And every Wind that whipped her with her hair About the face, she ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... 'Curst be the gold and silver which persuade Weak men to follow far fatiguing trade! The lily peace outshines the silver store, And life is dearer than the golden ore: Yet money tempts us o'er the desert brown, 35 To every distant mart and wealthy town. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... you when we go) you may Boldly assault the necromancers hall; Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood, 650 And brandish't blade rush on him, break his glass, And shed the lushious liquor on the ground, But sease his wand, though he and his curst crew Feirce signe of battail make, and menace high, Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoak, Yet will they soon ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... with caution, not to tempt the sword; I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew What perils youthful ardour would pursue, That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war. O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come! Hard elements of unauspicious war, Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... patched up. On 4th June Chamberlain wrote: "Sir Edward Coke & his Lady, after so much animosity and wrangling, are lately made friends; & his curst heart hath been forced to yield more than ever he meant; but upon this agreement he flatters himself that she will prove a very good wife." So Coke and his "very good wife" settled down together again. We shall see ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... the rover tore his hair, He curst himself in his despair; The waves rush in on every side, The ship is sinking ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Curst questions! Jack did only one, He gave as his opinion That of the Roman jurists none Had lived ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... 'um hate me, so they fear, with a hey, with a hey, Curst fox has the best cheer, with a ho; Two states, in blind house pent, Make brave strong government. With a ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... harden, and all that's straight to run crooked. There's times I think you couldn't do wrong if you weren't so sure of doing right; and there's times, when I hear of your being kind to the school-children, I think it must be some curst ill-luck of my own that ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and curst; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Then he began rapidly to retrace his steps toward the house beside the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was long ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... By summer breezes fanned, Looked round him, awed, subdued, By the dreadful solitude, Hearing alone the cry Of sea-birds clanging by, The crash and grind of the floe, Wail of wind and wash of tide. "O wretched land!" he cried, "Land of all lands the worst, God forsaken and curst! Thy gates of rock should show The words the Tuscan seer Read in the Realm of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... crowd appeared, An old, revolted, unbelieving bard, Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard. Sakil's high roof, the Muses' palace, rung With endless cries, and endless sons he sung. To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first; But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curst. Sakil without distinction threw his bread, Despised the flatterer, but the poet fed." I need not say that Sakil is Sackville, or that Laurus is a translation of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for Iesus sake forbeare To digg ye dust encloased heare Bleste be ye man yt spares the stones And curst be ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... lips are blanched and white, With aching wounds and torturing thirst, What charm in canvas shot with light, And pale with faces cleft and curst, Past life ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... voice: while the quiet man at her side,—whose mere presence suggested latent force, and gave her a sense of protection wholly new to her,—stood for the Future; the undiscovered country, peopled with possibilities, dark and bright. And Quita Lenox, being blest, or curst, with the insight and detached spirit of the artist, saw clearly that the Great Experiment held, for her, a large element of hazard; that she had staked her all upon a turn of the wheel, with what resulting Time alone ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... had often done, to drink water only,' and we meet with as curious a defence of drinking—the great difficulty of resisting it when a good man asks you to drink the wine he has had twenty years in his cellar! Benevolence calls for compliance, for, 'curst be the spring,' he adds with a change of Pope's verse, 'how well soe'er it flow, that tends to make one worthy man my foe!' 'I do,' he wrote in the London Magazine for March 1780, 'fairly acknowledge that I love drinking; that I have a constitutional inclination to indulge ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... shore, And never rise to vex their author more. I would not dream o'er some soft liquid line, Amid a thousand blunders form'd to shine; Yet rather this, than that dull scribbler be, From every fault and every beauty free, Curst with tame thoughts and mediocrity. Some have I found so thick beset with spots, 'Twas hard to trace their beauties through their blots; And these, as tapers round a sick man's room Or passing chimes, but warn'd me of the tomb! O! if you blast, at once consume my bays, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... us.'—'Indeed, Sir,' resumed my son, after a pause, 'your rage is too violent and unbecoming. You should be my mother's comforter, and you encrease her pain. It ill suited you and your reverend character thus to curse your greatest enemy: you should not have curst him, villian as he is.'—'I did not curse him, child, did I?'—'Indeed, Sir, you did; you curst him twice.'—'Then may heaven forgive me and him if I did. And now, my son, I see it was more than human benevolence that first taught us to bless our enemies! Blest be his holy name for all ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... to strangers meanly kneel; And when for peace, ingloriously he sues, His crown, his life, untimely may he lose, And lie unburied on the naked shore; 765 With the last breath of life this pray'r I pour. And you, my Tyrian friends—thro' times extent On that curst race eternal hatred vent. These gifts, these honors, let my ashes reap, No peace, no treaty with that people keep. 770 Rise, rise some vast avenger from my tomb, With fire with sword that Dardan breed consume. Now and as long as Fate the pow'r shall lend, May shore with shore—may wave ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... are trying—those bullies! My mother wants you to carry on their musical education. How selfish of her! As if attending to these curst cocks and hens here were not enough work for any girl. I would flatly refuse, if I ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... I trow, is doubly blest, Who of the worst can make the best; And he, I'm sure, is doubly curst, Who of the best ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... domain. It is as though the Fiends prevailed Against the Seraphs they assailed, And, fixed on heavenly thrones, should dwell The freed inheritors of Hell; So soft the scene, so formed for joy, So curst the tyrants ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... German cookery is an education for the sentiment of hogs. The play of sour and sweet, and crowning of the whole with fat, shows a people determined to go down in civilization, and try the business backwards. Adieu, curst Croat! On the Wallachian border mayst ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... now she knows it is no gentle chase, But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, 884 Because the cry remaineth in one place, Wilere fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud: Finding their enemy to be so curst, They all strain courtesy who ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... the good grace of a gallon pitcher, and all the salt sausages that be sodden in Norfolk upon Saturday, be with us now at our beginning, and help us in our ending, and quit you of bliss and both your eyes, that never shall have ending. Amen. My dear curst creatures, there was once a wife whose name was Catherine Fyste, and she was crafty in court, and well could carve. Hence she sent after the four Synods of Rome to know why, wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... emperor Augustus Caesar, and command him from us, of whose bounty he hath received the sirname of Augustus, that, for a thank-offering to our beneficence, he presently sacrifice, as a dish to this banquet, his beautiful and wanton daughter Julia: she's a curst quean, tell him, and plays the scold behind his back; therefore let her be sacrificed. Command him this, Mercury, in our high ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... had not read, and again I would know more and run the knife yet deeper in my heart, and in that curst book never will I read again, and even in the writing of this well do I know I cannot forbear to read, and so Teares my drink and all my content gone. But let me remember there was here and there a word where he hath ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... the brave, the good and wise, Have fallen in thy curst embrace: The juices of the grapes of wrath Still ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... me not uncertain thus! And, whilst thou tellest me what's like my fate, Oh! teach me how I may avert it too! Curst be the man who first a simile made! Curst ev'ry bard who writes!—So have I seen Those whose comparisons are just and true, And those who liken things not like at all. The devil is happy that the whole creation Can furnish out ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... so grand, So beautiful, shine before thee, Pride for thy own dear land Should haply be stealing o'er thee, Oh, let grief come first, O'er pride itself victorious— Thinking how man hath curst What Heaven had made ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... particular Narrations of their Barbarism, and Cruelty in those Countreys. I will only relate two or three Stories which are fresh in my memory. The Spaniards used to trace the steps of the Indians, both Men and Women with curst Currs, furious Dogs; an Indian Woman that was sick hapned to be in the way in sight, who perceiving that she was not able to avoid being torn in pieces by the Dogs, takes a Cord that she had and hangs her self upon a Beam, tying her Child (which she unforunately had with her) to her foot; ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... Through deeps and shallows With never a tremor: Naught shall disturb her. I fear, I fear What they may be That secretly bind her: What hand holds the reins Of those sightless forces That govern her courses. Is it Setebos Who deals in her command? Or that unseen Night-Comer With tender curst ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... judges of black Tartarus, And all the army of you hellish fiends, With new found torments rack proud Locrine's bones! O gods, and stars! damned be the gods & stars That did not drown me in fair Thetis' plains! Curst be the sea, that with outrageous waves, With surging billows did not rive my ships Against the rocks of high Cerannia, Or swallow me into her watery gulf! Would God we had arrived upon the shore Where Poliphemus and the Cyclops dwell, Or where the bloody Anthrophagie With ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... care to know thee. Thou must be An arrant coward, thus to league with foes Against so poor a wretch as I—to call me By the most curst, despised, unhallowed name God's creatures can own. Away! and let me pass; I injure ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... by Jove's high throne have ever stood, The source of evil one, and one of good; From thence the cup of mortal man he fills, Blessings to these, to those distributes ills, To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed To taste the bad, unmixed, is curst indeed; Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven, He wanders, outcast both of earth ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... pleasure am I foregoing; I do not pretend to aught worth knowing, I do not pretend I could be a teacher To help or convert a fellow-creature. Then, too, I've neither lands nor gold, Nor the world's least pomp or honor hold— No dog would endure such a curst existence! Wherefore, from Magic I seek assistance, That many a secret perchance I reach Through spirit-power and spirit-speech, And thus the bitter task forego Of saying the things I do not know,— That I may detect the inmost force Which binds the world, and guides ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... all astray, Yet know I not, though they did miss their way, That joyed so much to meet thee, if they are To blame or bless the fate that bade such be. Thou seem'dst an angel when I met thee first, Nor has aught made thee otherwise to me: Possession has not cloyed my love, nor curst Fancy's wild visions with reality. Thou art an angel still; and Hope, awoke From the fond spell that early raptures nurst, Still feels a joy to think that ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... hadst thou always better thought of men, Thou hadst then acted better. Curst suspicion, Unholy, miserable doubt! To him Nothing on earth remains unwrenched and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... And tyranny usurps her happy plains? The poor inhabitant beholds in vain The reddening orange and the swelling grain: Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines: Starves, in the midst of nature's bounty curst, And in the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... aft your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is, The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er mair ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... declared His will to us by Moses and the prophets, and finally by Jesus Christ and His apostles; and we have one sole Redeemer, who purchased us by His blood, and by whose grace we hope to be saved: All the idols of the world are curst, and deserve execration. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... Curst be the dastard who shall halt or doubt! And doubly damned who casts one look behind! Ye who are men! with unsheathed sword, and shout, Up with her banner! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the blessed dwell? Return and blessed be! Or com'st thou from the lowest hell? I am more curst than thee." ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... to join them; he that cometh late is curst, For the Lords of War (by Akbar) have a most ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... Infantes might not make a tumult there. Who can tell the great dole and sorrow of Count Gonzalo Gonzalez for his sons the Infantes of Carrion, because they had to do battle this day! and in the fullness of his heart he curst the day and the hour in which he was born, for his heart divined the sorrow which he was to have for his children. Great was the multitude which was assembled from all Spain to behold this battle. And there in the field near the lists the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Mr. Rogers, slowly, after a pause, "this is a black business, and a curst mysterious one, and I wasn't born with the gift of seeing daylight through a brick wall. But speaking as a magistrate, Mr. What's-your-name, I ought to warn you against saying what may be used for evidence. As for you, lad, you'd best tell as much as you know. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... bend and grovel from the first, Crouching through life forever in the dark, Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark; And no one durst Deny their horrid dream, that they are curst. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... degenerate kind; His birth is well asserted by his mind. Then, what he suffer'd, when by Fate betray'd! What brave attempts for falling Troy he made! Such were his looks, so gracefully he spoke, That, were I not resolv'd against the yoke Of hapless marriage, never to be curst With second love, so fatal was my first, To this one error I might yield again; For, since Sichaeus was untimely slain, This only man is able to subvert The fix'd foundations of my stubborn heart. And, to confess ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... hearing the loud Shriek, came running down, and entring the Room, sees his Bride lie clasp'd in Frankwit's Arms. 'Ha! Traytor!' He cries out, drawing his Sword with an impatient Fury, 'have you kept that Strumpet all this while, curst Frankwit, and now think fit to put your damn'd cast Mistress upon me: could not you forbear her neither ev'n on my Wedding Day? abominable Wretch!' Thus saying, he made a full Pass at Frankwit, and run him thro' the left Arm, and quite thro' the Body ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the privilege of franking; that privilege, sir, of which you take an undue advantage over a too susceptible senator, by forwarding your lucubrations to every one but himself. I won't frank from you, or for you, or to you—may I be curst if I do, unless you mend your manners. I disown you—I disclaim you—and by all the powers of Eulogy, I will write a panegyric upon you—or dedicate a quarto—if you ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... us as a blank, Ourselves must make it blest or curst: Who dooms me I shall only be ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... 14. Shee curst the weauer and the walker that clothe that had wrought, & bade a vengeance on his crowne ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... a while, and thou wilt quickly find Thy body made for labour, not thy mind. No other use of paper thou shouldst make Than carrying loads and reams upon thy back. Carry vast burdens till thy shoulders shrink, But curst be he that gives thee pen and ink: Such dangerous weapons should be kept from fools, As nurses from their children keep edg'd tools: For thy dull fancy a muckinder is fit To wipe the slobberings of thy snotty wit: And though 'tis late, if justice could be found, Thy plays like blind-born ...
— English Satires • Various
... my lords. And so use witchcraft if you like. Consult the fortune-tellers. Grease your skins with ointments and drugs to make them invulnerable; hang round your necks charms of the devil or the Virgin. I will fight you blest or curst, and I will not have you searched to see if you are wearing any wizard's tokens. On foot or on horseback, on the highroad if you wish it, in Piccadilly, or at Charing Cross; and they shall take up the pavement for our meeting, as they unpaved the court of the Louvre for the duel between Guise ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... brings thee here so late? Must breakfast wait thee until all other folk have had it?" Calandrino caught the words, and angered and mortified to find that he was not invisible, broke out with:—"Alas! curst woman! so 'twas thou! Thou hast undone me: but, God's faith, I will pay thee out." Whereupon he was upstairs in a trice, and having discharged his great load of stones in a parlour, rushed with fell intent upon his ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Let their confidence in you never be abused. But is it possible, that any of you can be such barbarians, so supremely wicked, as to abuse it? Can you find in your hearts* to despoil the gentle, trusting creatures of their treasure, or do any thing to strip them of their native robe of virtue? Curst be the impious hand that would dare to violate the unblemished form of Chastity! Thou wretch! thou ruffian! forbear; nor venture to provoke heaven's fiercest vengeance." I know not any comment that can be made seriously on this curious ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the germ of almost everything which has since characterised the poet. In "Amabel" the ruinous passage of years, which has continued to be an obsession with Mr. Hardy, is already crudely dealt with. The habit of taking poetical negatives of small scenes—"your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, and a pond edged with grayish leaves" ("Neutral Times")—which had not existed in English verse since the days of Crabbe, reappears. There is marked already a sense of terror and resentment against ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... please by good aduise to consider the beginning of my Loue, the continuance of the same, and then the last issue wherunto it tendeth, I am assured that laying your hand on your hart, you wil accuse your selfe, not only of your curst and froward stomacke hitherto appearing, but also of that newe ingratitude, which you shewe vnto me at this houre, whoe not contented to bathe and plondge mee into the missehappe of my paines paste, but by a newe onset, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... because I cannot. Though we have power, know, it is circumscribed, And tied in limits: though he be curst to thee, Yet of himself, he is loving to the world, And charitable to the poor; now men, that, As he, love goodness, though in smallest measure, Live without compass of our reach: his cattle And corn I'll kill and mildew; but his life (Until I take him, as I late found thee, Cursing and swearing) ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed Virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace, 285 Insults fall'n worth, or Beauty in distress, Who loves a Lie, lame slander helps about, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... with every wind disperst:(1) (1) "Dispurst," [rhyming with "curst"] Pronounce this like ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... sits in homely cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,— 'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well, Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.' Goddess, allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... told Corruption thou wert ne'er her foe; Has boasted in thy country's awful ear, Her gross delusion when she held thee dear; How tame she followed thy tempestuous call, And heard thy pompous tales, and trusted all— Rise from your sad abodes, ye curst of old For laws subverted, and for cities sold! Paint all the noblest trophies of your guilt, The oaths you perjured, and the blood you spilt; Yet must you one untempted vileness own, One dreadful palm reserved for him alone: With studied arts his country's praise to spurn, To beg the infamy ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner |
