"Superstitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perhaps put this into words; but the meaning of her smile, and the manner in which she put aside every suggestion about the chances of the hereafter away from her, said it more clearly than words. It was not that she had any superstitious fear about the making of a will. When the doctor or the vicar or her man of business, the only persons who ever talked to her on the subject, ventured periodically to refer to it, she assented pleasantly,—yes, certainly, she must do ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... window: the window opened, and a Welsh servant girl put out her head; her night-cap, if cap it might be called which shape had none, was half off, her black hair streamed over her shoulders, and her face was the face of vulgar, superstitious amazement. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... prove Billy's prophecy also true. His tremendous physical exertions, the bright setting sunshine, and the discovery of the cross affected Will strangely. His mind swung round from frank irreligion, to a sort of superstitious credulity, awestricken yet joyful, that made him cling to the saving virtue of the stone. Because Martin had been right in his assertion concerning the gate-post, Blanchard felt a hazy conviction that Blee's estimate of the stone's virtue must also prove correct. He ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... circumstance that the building was closed up after his death. Supposing the part of the edifice (fifty layers in all), which includes the ascending and descending passages, to have been erected during his lifetime, it may be that some reverential or superstitious feeling caused his successors, or the priesthood, to regard the building as sacred after his death—to be closed up therefore and completed as a perfect pyramid, polished ad unguem from its pointed summit to the lines along which the four faces met the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the old industries of the place. They excavate it on the hill-side yonder. Volcanic stuff. There are several suchlike indications of subterranean fires; a hot spring, for instance, which the people regard with a kind of superstitious awe. It is dedicated to Saint Elias and believed to stand in mysterious sympathy with the volcano on the mainland. You will observe too, sooner or later, something fiery and incalculable in the temperament of the natives. Perhaps ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... assassination. The Doges of Venice, the Borgias, and the Medici have all had secret poisoners in their pay. The gay, careless race which laughs when the sun shines, are just the same to-day, after the war, as they were in the days of His Holiness Rodrigo Borgia. To-day your superstitious Italian criminal enters the church and prays to the Madonna that his coup—whatever it may be, from profiteering, picking pockets, or the secret assassination of ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... the South have their own peculiar moral maxims, applicable to all situations in life, and the slaves not knowing how to read committed such Bible truths as were read to them from time to time. It is true they were generally superstitious in a great degree, as all ignorant persons are; yet their native sense of right led them to adopt the best and most religious principles, dressed in homely "sayings," their ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... a writer is now hardly permitted to mention. An 'evil and adulterous generation' has been in all ages and countries the one marked out for intestine and internecine strife. That description is always applicable to a revolutionary generation; whether or not it also comes under the class of a superstitious one, 'seeking after a sign from heaven,' only half believing its own creed, and, therefore, on tiptoe for miraculous confirmations of it, at the same time that it fiercely persecutes any one who, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... bystanders stared with redoubled awe at this man of storms, which seemed to have come up out of the deep and to be called back to it again. As, with the assistance of the negro, he slowly bore his ponderous sea-chest towards the shore, they eyed it with a superstitious feeling; half doubting whether he were not really about to embark upon it, and launch forth upon the wild waves. They followed him at a distance ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... or below ground, white enough to mark, worthily, in my calender, the fifth day of last June. I hereby abjure, for evermore, any superstitious prejudice against the ill luck of Fridays. Late in the afternoon, I was pacing to and fro in the narrow exercise-ground, speculating idly as to the delay of my dinner, which was overdue—not that I felt any interest ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... power to ameliorate disease, and to prolong existence. The rigid and sternly pious, who had attempted to renounce his aid, from a superstition that no blessing would attend the prescriptions of a sceptic, sacrificed, after a time, their superstitious scruples to their involuntary consciousness of his mighty skill." Mr. Mathias, though he severely criticizes some of Dr. Darwin's works, yet he justly calls him "this very ingenious man, and most excellent physician, for ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... One that were superstitious would count This ominous, when it merely comes by chance. Two letters, that are wrought here for my name, Are drown'd in blood! Mere accident.—For you, sir, I 'll take order I' the morn you shall be safe.—[Aside.] 'Tis that must colour Her lying-in.—Sir, this door you pass ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... physician—and his knowledge of courts and kings, had recommended him to be employed in a diplomatic capacity by his own government." The following passage is, however, from "his more popular and wider honour"—his superstitious character,—whilst, as Mr. Tytler prettily observes, "his miracles and incantations are yet recorded beside the cottage fire, by many a grey-headed crone, and his fearful name still banishes the roses from the cheeks of the little audience that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... syrup, the flour and beans, the tools and clothing which come to them from this source. They feel the pressure of the white population crowding upon them from every side. They see their wild life is a thing of the past, and while there are selfish, vicious, superstitious and conservative influences strongly at work against the change, still the change goes on. Their more thoughtful men, perceiving the necessity of the change and recognizing its advantage, are urging the establishment of schools and churches among them. There can be little doubt ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... both Nina and Marzy were safely quartered on board the yacht. It is needless to say that they received the heartiest of welcomes. The Russian sailors, ever superstitious, seemed almost to regard the coming of the child as the appearance of an angel; and, incredible as it may seem, more than one of them wondered whether she had wings, and amongst themselves they commonly referred to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... means. Sancho, on the other hand, with his proverbs, is the type of the man with common sense. He always sees things in the daylight of reason. He is never taken in by his master's theory of enchanters,—although superstitious enough to believe such things possible,—but he does believe, despite all reverses, in his promises of material prosperity and advancement. The island that has been promised him always floats before him like the air-drawn dagger before Macbeth, and beckons him on. The whole ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the impression was erased by the zeal and eloquence of the Magi: if he was armed with philosophic indifference, he accommodated his belief, or rather his professions, to the various circumstances of an exile and a sovereign. The imaginary conversion of the king of Persia was reduced to a local and superstitious veneration for Sergius, [19] one of the saints of Antioch, who heard his prayers and appeared to him in dreams; he enriched the shrine with offerings of gold and silver, and ascribed to this invisible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... hard on my Chateau, cousin, to locate it on the road to Hell. But we will let it pass. For, between us, it is a good road and an easy; and they, who travel it, are a finer lot than the superstitious dreamers who grope, in darkness, along the bleak and stony path they fancy leads upward to ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... and clear and clanging, there came the toll of a bell from a neighboring tower, as it began to strike the hour of midnight. For a moment I paused in a sort of superstitious terror, and then, before the third stroke had rung out, I rushed across ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Sundays! Consider that, mingled with all these perplexities in his mind, was the superstitious reverence of the common people for holy days, for the twenty-four hours of rest, wherein one recovers strength and courage. If he had gone out, the sight of a workingman with his wife and child would have made him weep, but his monastic seclusion gave him other ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... laid upon it, then it saw wonderful possibilities in the red man. And now, last of all, when some million or two of long-forgotten and neglected "Mountain Whites" are brought to its attention, it sees in these abjectly poor, dispirited and superstitious people, only another opportunity for elevating humanity, and proving the power of Christianity to restore the lost ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... addicted to Idolatry will use all means for their own hardening in their Superstitious and Idolatrous way, even within the Countrey; Therefore all known Papists, or persons suspect of Poperie upon probable grounds are to finde Caution before their Presbyteries, for their abstinence from Masse, and from the Company of all ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... under his strong brows, and then he stepped forward, and, laying his hand upon my arm, rejoined: "Do not be raw, Marmion. I'm only a blunt, stupid sailor; and, to tell you God's truth, as I have told you before, every sailor is superstitious—every real sailor. He can't help it—I can't. I have a special fit on me now. Why don't I keep it to myself? Because I'm selfish, and it does me good to talk. You and I are in one secret together, and it has made me feel like sharing this thing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... They took place in the infancy of the republic, under the rule of Patricians, who were not then great nobles, but brave and poor citizens, animated with patriotic zeal and characterized, like the Puritans, for stern and lofty virtues and religious faith,—superstitious and unenlightened, yet elevated and grand,—qualities on which the strength of man is based. It is not puerile to dwell with delight on the legends of that heroic age, for the philosopher sees in those little ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... facts: (1) That while many opportunities were denied our people, they abused many privileges; (2) that there was a colored population, in this section visited, of more than 200,000 and a school population of 85,499; (3) that the people were ignorant and superstitious; (4) that the teachers and preachers for the most part, were of the same condition; (5) that there were no public or private libraries and reading-rooms to which they had access; (6) that, strictly speaking, there were no public schools and only one private ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... cannibals, but on ideas in those men's and women's minds; and these ideas, which I think I may say you will always find, give you safety. It is not advisable to play with them, or to attempt to eradicate them, because you regard them as superstitious; and never, never shoot too soon. I have never had to shoot, and hope never to have to; because in such a situation, one white alone with no troops to back him means a clean finish. But this would not discourage me if I had to start, only it makes me more inclined to walk round the obstacle, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... had other instances of a bird's coming into my cabin previously to former engagements." This is the more remarkable, as the same thing is said to have afterwards happened prior to the battle of Copenhagen. In superstitious times, some inference would probably have been made from such facts; but philosophy will not warrant any other deduction, than that, as birds of passage frequently seek shelter in ships, these visits were merely accidental. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... Intercessor in Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised their natures, so that it ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... first words of the exposition of the principles of a theistical philosopher, a furious outcry arose from every part of the hall. Some mocked him, asking where he had seen God, and what form He bore. Others styled him weak, credulous, superstitious; they threatened to expel him from the assembly of which he had proved himself unworthy; they even pushed madness so far as to challenge him to single combat, in order to prove, sword in hand, that there is no God. Cabanis, celebrated by Carlyle for his dogma, 'Thought is secreted, like bile, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... hussifs, and made the world with modern Attila to back it, wonder at the stores that are hived on old wives' tongues; even so might any other literary, black-smith hammer from the ore of common gossip a regular Vulcan's net of superstitious "facts." Never yet was uttered ghost story, that did not breed four others; every one at table is eager to record his, or his aunt's, experience in that line; and the mass of queer coincidences, inexplicable incidents, indubitable ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... were moments too, when, as he sauntered homewards through the dusk at the end of his day's work, his heart grew full to overflowing of a rugged, superstitious gratitude towards God in Heaven ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the magazine containing his first story—that memorable copy at which he had looked, in Westminster Hall, through eyes bedimmed with joyful tears. Such coincidences always had for Dickens a peculiar, almost a superstitious, interest. The circumstance seemed of happy augury to both the "high contracting parties." Publisher and author were for the nonce on the best of terms. The latter, no doubt, saw his opening; was more than ready to undertake ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... waist, and had shouted at the top of their voices as, waving the krisses which they had borrowed, they fell upon the foe. The idea that white devils were leagued with the enemies against them had excited the superstitious fear of the Malays to the utmost; and when, in the morning, scouts again sallied from the village, they found that the enemy had entirely gone—the fact that they had not even returned to carry off the effects which ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... of tuneful birds resounding loud. 290 Thither he bent his way, determined there To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade High-roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys brown, That opened in the midst a woody scene; Nature's own work it seemed (Nature taught Art), And, to a superstitious eye, the haunt Of wood-gods and wood-nymphs. He viewed it round; When suddenly a man before him stood, Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad, As one in city or court or palace bred, 300 And with fair speech these words to him addressed:— "With granted ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... all time, and Shallow and Slender from the fat pastures of English rural life, come all together, each as true as if on him alone the poet's eye had fixed. And Scott is like him, setting before us with unerring pencil the old superstitious despot of mediaeval France, the bustling pedant of St. James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country lying under a natural illumination, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... move, he heard the hoofs of another horse striking upon the hard ground in an easy pace. The rider was Dr. Small. He checked his horse in a cool way, and stood still a few seconds while he scrutinized Ralph. Then he rode on, keeping the same easy gait as before, Ralph had a superstitious horror of Henry Small. And, shuddering with cold, he crept like a thief over the fence, past the tree, through the pasture, back to Pete Jones's, never once thinking of the eyes that looked out of the window at Means's. Climbing the ladder, he ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... Christian priest I was thrust away all the more resolutely from knowledge of their inner life. What I then began to learn, and what I learned more fully later, convinced me that these Indians curiously veneered with Christian practices their native heathen faith; manifesting a certain superstitious reverence for the Christian rites and ceremonies, yet giving sincere worship only to their heathen gods. It was something to have arrived at this odd discovery, but it tended only to show me how difficult was the task that I had ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... Maimonides, divesting himself of the conservatism of his contemporaries, ventures to inquire into the reasons of biblical laws. For many of them, he assigns local and historical reasons; many, he thinks, owe their origin to the desire to oppose the superstitious practices of early times and of the Sabeans, a mythical, primitive race; but all, he contends, are binding, and with this solemn asseveration, he puts the seal upon ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Fowler was inspired by something of the austere devotion which had fortified his religious ancestor. Since his college days his private life had been irreproachable. Though he was a stronger character than his wife, he regarded her with almost superstitious reverence, and made no decision above Wall Street without consulting her. His heart, and as much of his time as he could spare from business, were hers, and she made the most of them. Women, as women, did not attract him, and he avoided ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Order for Matins daily through the year." Similarly, what we call the Order for Daily Evening Prayer was styled "An Order for Evensong." These beautiful names, "Matins" and "Evensong," which it is a great pity to have lost, for surely there is nothing superstitious about them, disappeared from the book as subsequently revised, and save in the Lectionary of the Church of England have no present recognition. One of them, however, Evensong, seems to be coming very generally into colloquial ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... you do it just for once? 'Ave a dream that me and Emily are killed a few days arter the wedding. Don't say in wot way, 'cos she might think we could avoid it; just dream we are killed. Bill's always been a superstitious man, and since you dreamt about his leg he'd believe anything; and he's that fond of Emily I believe he'd 'ave the wedding put off, at any rate—if I ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... pebbly bottom of the lake, thinking he might have drowned himself in his superstitious fear, but he was not there: and after days had been wasted in the fruitless search, Captain Lem had his belongings packed together and sent to his relative, Der Doo, in San Diego. Whence, at the very end of the summer word came back ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... even if she desires intercourse, feeling a repugnance to be approached at a time when she regards herself as "disgusting," and the husband easily sharing this attitude. It may, however, be pointed out that the aesthetic objection is very largely the result of the superstitious horror of water which is still widely felt at this time, and would, to some extent, disappear if a more scrupulous cleanliness were observed. It remains a good general rule to abstain from sexual intercourse during the menstrual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and Bill Slinker were superstitious and nervous to a degree, as most burglars are; and at that announcement their hair rose, and they stood gazing at the speaker with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bantering that had marked their intercourse before, even in the face of blighting hardships and hideous danger. This was a new menace that threatened them, something that they couldn't explain; and so, naturally, it aroused within them superstitious fear which Tippet's attitude only tended to augment. To add further to their gloom, their way led through a dense forest, where, on account of the underbrush, it was difficult to make even a mile an hour. Constant watchfulness was required ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... It is generally agreed on to be matter of fact; the reason perhaps may be that there may rise certain unctuous vapours which may cause that fertility. [This is a general observation: we have it in Essex. I reject as superstitious all prognosticks from the weather on particular ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... mean. If I ever call upon you in the hour of my death, you need not hear me or take me among your own, for I will go and spend eternity with the devil.' After which speech he found it desirable to spend six months in retirement at the home of a woodcutter. With all this, he was so superstitious that prodigies and omens gave him incessant frights, leaving him no belief to spare for the immortality of the soul. When his hearers questioned him on the matter, he answered that no one knew what became ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... mast-like scaffolds as if they meant to be launched into the air and go cleared for yonder faintly tinted spectral moon, which lingered so long by day, like the symbol of the Indian race, departed but lambent in thoughtful memories. Duff had grown superstitious; he came out of the inn door sidewise, that he might always see that moon over his right ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... reminiscences, injunctions and prohibitions controlling all the positions and relations of life, curious, quaint tales, ideal maxims and proverbs, uplifting legends, charming lyrical outbursts, and attractive enigmas side by side with misanthropic utterances, bewildering medical prescriptions, superstitious practices, expressions of deep agony, peculiar astrological charms, and rambling digressions on law, zoology, and botany, and when all this has been said, not half its contents have been told. It is a luxuriant jungle, which must ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... there is massed a large population of exceedingly ignorant, destitute and superstitious people of every colour and condition—men, women and children—crowded together in rickety hovels, where stagnant water stood the year round, the very air impregnated with the heavy sickening odour of the packing-houses. No tongue or pen can describe the wretchedness that existed in that locality, ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... that the boy had fallen on the deck from heart disease; and that, after an interval, chance had brought O'Malley and the father together again in this valley of the Central Caucasus. All that was as literal as the superstitious terror of the Georgian peasant. Further, that the Russian possessed precisely those qualities of powerful sympathy with the other's hidden longings which the subtle-minded Celt had been so quick to appropriate—this, too, was literal enough. Here, doubtless, was ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... defeated, and ridden down with her comrades in their pursuit in twice a score of vanquished, bitter, intolerably shameful days. Some among them had sworn by their God to put her to a fearful death if ever they made her captive, for they held her in superstitious awe, and thought the spell of the Frankish successes would be broken if she were slain. She knew that; yet, knowing it, she looked at their advancing band one moment, then turned her horse's head and rode straight ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... them into aerial regions, as some of the more superstitious men seemed inclined to believe they could not have vanished ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a day, as he abroad Walk'd by his mother, in their road He heard a sky-lark singing; Smit with the sound, a flood of tears Proclaim'd the superstitious fears His inmost ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sort of an existence this is into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungry as his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his other appetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story which will make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious, and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savage races. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknown is marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that children must be governed through their ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... man came up from the engine-room, and while trying to say something to me fell down in a fit, and was dead in half an hour. There was quite a panic among us all, and as if to make things worse to the superstitious sailors, whenever we stopped several horrid sharks immediately showed themselves swimming round the vessel. The men lost all heart, and would I think have been thankful to have been captured, as a means of escape from what they believed ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... face could have been visible to the latter, while those pitiless green rays—you know their ravaging effect on the human physiognomy—struck full on Dollmann's face. It was my first fair view of it at close quarters, and, secure in my background of gloom, I feasted with a luxury of superstitious abhorrence on the livid smiling mask that for a few moments stooped peering down towards Davies. One of the caprices of the crude light was to obliterate, or at any rate so penetrate, beard and moustache, as to reveal in outline lips ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... those who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the savages. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... bent over to take a last look at the life-long partner of her joys and sorrows, her veil became attached to the handle of the casket, which my sister was compelled to stoop and unloosen. Without being superstitious, this looked like the dead reaching forth to ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... when he met her. Chopin, Franchomme informed me, made George Sand's acquaintance in 1837, their connection was broken in 1847, and he died, as everyone knows, on October 17, 1849. In each of these dates appears the number which Chopin regarded with a superstitious dread, which he avoided whenever he could-for instance, he would not at any price take lodgings in a house the number of which contained a seven—and which may be thought by some to have really exercised a fatal influence ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... attached to their ancient modes, that they unaccountably chose rather to lose their lives than their hair; as the Tartar fashion is to shave the head, except a long lock on the crown, which they plait in the same manner we do. The Dutch, taking advantage of this superstitious attachment of the Chinese to their hair, exact from all the men who live under their protection, a poll-tax of a dollar a month for the liberty of wearing their hair, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... chalices, what could it matter? The Cardinal did not know the artist, and whatever picture he might make to himself of the man would be shadowy and indistinct. The feeling, then, was his own and quite personal. It would be the height of superstitious folly to suppose that any evil principle could be attached to the silver and gold because they were chiselled by impious hands. A simple matter this, but one which had many a ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... it be to run in debt for these superfluities.... When you have got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment; but, as Poor Richard says, 'Creditors have better memories than debtors; creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.' The day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it; or, if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality, which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason and philosophy, for a time, struggled ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... all success in his future essays, we commend his present work to the lovers of superstitious lore, and to the substantial notice of the very ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... not amongst them!" And you never afterwards,' said I, 'ascertained what became of it? "Oh yes," he replied, "no doubt that rascal Rothschild, or some of his set, got hold of it."' Whatever poor Brummell's supernatural tendencies may have generally been, he had unquestionably a superstitious veneration for ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Iran; two of these have become noted in history—the Medes and the Persians. The Medes at the west, nearer the Assyrians, destroyed Nineveh and its empire (625). But soon they softened their manners, taking the flowing robes, the indolent life, the superstitious religion of the degenerate Assyrians. They at ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Records 1. 1468—Capt. Bertie, 6 May 1706.] again, was essentially a creature of contradictions. Notorious for a "swearing rogue," who punctuated his strange sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his credit at his bankers, the Navy Pay-Office; and though during a voyage he earned his ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... remorse for her past conduct; but no signs of true repentance, else she would not have received the Popish sacrament of extreme unction. The papists having now lost their head, and the church not suffering her to be buried with the superstitious rites of popery, she was coffined, and kept four months, and then went to France: and so she, who a little made the followers of Christ when killed lie unburied, could not obtain a burial in the kingdom ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... themselves and to everybody else: but they make strange work with matter of fact; and if they were allowed to act in public affairs, would soon turn the world the wrong side out. They indulge only their own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make idols or bugbears of whatever they please, caring as little for history or particular facts as for general reasoning. They are dangerous leaders and treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them into all sorts of extravagances; and their habitual ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... philosopher and poet inueighing sore against the abuses of the superstitious religion of the Gentils, and recompting the wicked fact of king Agamemnon in sacrificing his only daughter Iphigenia, being a yoong damsell of excellent bewtie, to th'intent to please the wrathfull gods, hinderers of his nauigation, after he had said all, closed it vp in this one verse, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... shock to his religion at the same time. The relics were ruthlessly swept away; they were taken possession of by the agents of Cromwell and destroyed, or sent to London. The images carried in the village processions were lost— the images that could keep the superstitious Welshman from hell, or even bring him back from it, or heal his diseases, or keep his cattle from the murrain, and his crops from blight. I only know of one of those relics that can still be seen. It is the healing cup of Nant Eos, a mere fragment of wood. The people's faith in the relics ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... said, slowly, with a sad smile, "your mother's talisman was worth more than mine. I have kept the lake pebbles she gave me, and death has passed me by; but the opals of the agraffe did not bring happiness to your mother. It is said that those stones are unlucky. Are you superstitious?" ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... get even whenever they have the chance," chimed in Lester. "The minute they see any of the beasts near the ship, they trail a hook over the stern in the hope of catching him. Sailors are superstitious, and they believe that as long as a shark is in sight some one on board is doomed to die. So they try to kill the hoodoo, by putting the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... beautifying and adorning (other than with carved pulpits and communion-tables or altars) the places of divine worship, which were now stripped of many of their former ornamental accessories, would have been regarded and inveighed against as a popish and superstitious innovation; and a charge of this kind was at a later period preferred against Archbishop Laud. Parochial churches were, therefore, now repaired when fallen into a state of dilapidation, in a plain and inelegant mode, in complete variance with the richness ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... with a malignant look, and the whining petition died on his lips. Then she made her way to the Porta Basilica and passed into the church. But as its great spaces opened out before her a thought, childishly superstitious, came to her, and she turned abruptly, went out, made her way to the beggar who had worried her, gave him a coin and said something kind to him. His almost soprano voice, raised in clamorous benediction, followed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... so superstitious as some of your physicians—men of science, as you are pleased to be called," said Hawver, replying to an accusation that had not been made. "Some of you—only a few, I confess—believe in the immortality of the soul, and in apparitions which you have not ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the suburban landscape of Tripoli. When we got off Tripoli we had a dead calm, and myself looking about for the wind, the Moors got angry, and said, "Be still; if you restlessly stare about, and wish the wind to come, it will never come: you cast the 'eye malign' upon it." These superstitious ideas are not peculiar to the Moors. An English captain once told me, if I continued to stay below, the wind would never be fair. Tripoli looked here very bold, massive, and imposing from the sea; its broad lime-washed towers, and the graceful minarets beyond, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... and again she was silent. "It's so awfully jolly, isn't it? that there's not at last a single thing that we can't take our ease about. I mean that we can't intelligibly name and comfortably tackle. We've worked through the long tunnel of artificial reserves and superstitious mysteries, and I at least shall have only to feel that in showing every confidence and dotting every 'i' I follow the example you so admirably set. You go down to the roots? Good. It's all ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... ray! Both monsters were changing color as he marched them through the door and into the open. But now they glowed with a visible red that rapidly intensified to the dazzling whiteness of intense heat. Cadorna babbled in superstitious terror. Then, in an instant, both mechanisms were reduced to shapeless blobs of molten metal. Lina clapped ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... them do not speak or understand the French language. Few of them, outside of the cities, have conformed appreciably to French customs. Quaint, sturdy, picturesque folk they are—simple, for the most part, superstitious, tenacious of the old, suspicious of the new, and governable only by those ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... grace. And so those two vertuous learned men taking their iournie, finallie arriued in Britaine, though not without some danger by sea, through stormes & rage of winds, stirred (as hath beene thought of the superstitious) by the malice of wicked spirits, who purposed to haue hindered their proceedings in this their good and well purposed iournie. After they were come ouer, they did so much good with conuincing the wicked arguments of the aduersaries of the truth, by the inuincible ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... and does violence to the legend, by treating it from its own point of view, which is quite different from the old one. Moral and religious culture is further advanced; and hence the removal of real or apparent offences against morality and of notions which are too childish, or superstitious, or even mythical. If the Godhead appears, it must not be patent to the senses, at least it must not be seen in visible form. Jehovah speaks with Jacob, but not in a dream from the heavenly ladder; He reveals Himself to Moses, but ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... them in the other room, a room where there was no evidence of Tanqueray's ever having been. The place was incontestably and inalterably Nina's. There were things in it cared for by Nina with a superstitious tenderness, portraits, miniatures, relics guarded, as it were, in shrines. And in their company were things that Nina had worn out and done with; things overturned, crushed, flung from her in a fury of rejection; things on which ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... accustomed to think of God's presence as in some special way associated with his father's encampment, and had not risen to the belief of His omnipresence. There seems no joyous leaping up of his heart at the thought that God is here. Dread, not unmingled with the superstitious fear that he had profaned a holy place by laying himself down in it, is his prevailing feeling, and he pleads ignorance as the excuse for his sacrilege. He does not draw the conclusion from the vision that all the earth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... I would never see you again. It all began with you. If I were a superstitious person I would say you brought misfortune with you into this house. Before you came this morning, everything was as it had always been—orderly and regular. What is your message? That madwoman has not escaped, ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... through Mary Isabel took it to her own room and locked it in her bureau drawer. Then she sat by her window, looking out into a sea-sunset, and thought it over. Coming in the strange way it had, the letter seemed a message from the dead, and Mary Isabel had a superstitious conviction that she must obey it. She had always had a great respect for Tom's opinion. He was right—oh, she felt that he was right. What a pity she had not received the letter long ago, before the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it is this," said Jim, "almost every School Examination Report in the Province tells us one story:—the sons and daughters of these same ignorant, superstitious Chinamen head the lists in open competition; our own white youngsters tailing hopelessly in the rear. Not only that, but once in a while we find one of these Canadian educated Chinese kids—despite his education—while working as kitchen help in some ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... learned found themselves confronted by dangers which they could not gauge or explain. Nor could the end be foreseen. If such considerations weighed down the spirits of the most intelligent men, imagine the fears of frail, nervous women, of the children, the wild panic of the superstitious negroes to whom science explained nothing. To their excited minds the earthquake was due directly either to the action of a malignant, personal devil, or of an angry God. While many of the poor ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... these gentlemen, it would be a cruel hardship on the people to be compelled to pay, from the sweat of their brow, the most heavy of all taxes to men, to condemn as heretical the doctrines which they repute to be orthodox, and to reprobate as superstitious the practices which they use as pious and holy. If a man leaves by will an establishment for preaching, such as Boyle's Lectures, or for charity sermons, or funeral sermons, shall any one complain of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his mere personal interests, led him to make a great sacrifice in selling his farm, severing his relation as pastor and teacher with a people whom he loved dearly, and who regarded him with a sort of superstitious reverence. The object of the change was that he might move to Quincy, Ill., where he might give his children a thorough education. He secured a scholarship in Knox College for his eldest son, Luther Morgan Anderson, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... generally agreed that religion is either the paramount issue or the most serious obstacle to progress. To its devotees religion is of overwhelming importance; to unbelievers it is, in the phrasing of Burke, "superstitious folly, enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny." The difference between the friends and the enemies of religion may, I think, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into this image of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for any other ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... redeem her pledge, and who bequeathed the duty to her son. He died shortly afterwards, and his widow assumed the pious task. According to Murray, she intrusted the erection of the church to "Maistre Loys von Berghem," and the sculpture to "Maistre Conrad." The author of a superstitious but carefully prepared little Notice, which I bought at Bourg, calls the architect and sculptor (at once) Jehan de Paris, author (sic) of the tomb of Francis II. of Brittany, to which we gave some attention at Nantes, and which the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... may not, perhaps, be amiss to examine it in this Light, so far as regards my present Purpose. Whoever looks into the Abridgment above mentioned, will find that the Character of AEneas is filled with Piety to the Gods, and a superstitious Observation of Prodigies, Oracles, and Predictions. Virgil has not only preserved this Character in the Person of AEneas, but has given a place in his Poem to those particular Prophecies which he found recorded of him in History and Tradition. The Poet took the matters ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sufficiently superstitious to lend a half belief to the idea that the place was haunted, and that was his reason for haste. The electrician was only sorry that so much time had been purely wasted; that was his reason. He was a middle-aged man, spare, quick, and impatient, but he looked at ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to see her issue from the big gate on the brow of the south hill with her ominous-looking black bag was sufficient to raise apprehension in every heart. Indeed, Mrs. Duffy, who lived nearly opposite the Frasers and who regarded the village nurse with something akin to superstitious fear, would throw up her hands at the sight of the herald of misfortune passing the door and exclaim, "God bless me sowl, who's ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... them got to the Susan B. The other two fell on their faces, as if something had tripped them up, in a couple of feet of water. But, just then, Tobias hit the captain right in the heart; ah! if only he had one of those skins—but he always laughed off such things as superstitious. ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... orders—except the Jesuits—and the friars were distributed among the different parishes. In the town assigned to him the friar had much authority. He was chief adviser in all civil affairs, and, by his influence over the superstitious natives, maintained absolute control in all matters pertaining to the local government as well as to the local church. So firm was his hold that he led the Spanish government to believe that the islands could not be ruled ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... carried his big slouch hat, dust-begrimed and frayed at the edges. It hung over one knee now, a red cotton handkerchief tucked under its brim. He was superstitious about it, no doubt; he would wear it when he walked out a free man, and wanted it always within reach. Hooked in its band was a trout-fly, a red ibis, some souvenir, perhaps, of the cool woods that he loved, and which brought back to him the clearer the happy, careless days ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the other side of the room and stood positively shaking; shaking at the sight of a mere collection of dry bones. It was amazing. I have often been puzzled by the odd, superstitious fear with which ignorant people view these interesting and beautiful structures. But surely this was an extreme case. Here was a callous wretch who would murder without a scruple a young and lovely woman and laugh at the recollection of the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Indians suppose that they originally sprang from a dog; and about five years ago, a superstitious fanatic so strongly pressed upon their minds the impropriety of employing these animals, to which they were related, for purposes of labour, that they universally resolved against using them any more, and, strange as it may seem, destroyed them. They now ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin |
