"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father, "canst thou think of thine own sordid rights in the midst of death and frenzy? My son?—thou art the fiend who has occasioned my wretchedness in this world, and who will share my eternal misery in the next. Hence from my sight, and my curse go with thee!" ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... honest fellow," said Craigengelt, "and some of my special friends; but, curse me if I know the reason, the women could never bear me, and always contrived to trundle me out of favour before ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... threats were yet coming in that the night riders would burn his house and take his life. Across the turnpike were the fields and untouched woodlands of Marjorie, and it looked as though the hand of Providence had blessed one side of the road and withered the other with a curse. On top of the orchard fence, to the western side of the house, Jason sat a while. The curse was descending on Gray's innocent head and he had had the weakness and the folly to lift his eyes to the blessing across the way. As Mavis had pointed out the way to Gray, so ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... thou gayest fancy-weaver, Heart-betrayer, soul-deceiver, Come with all thy clinging kisses; Bringing all thy beaming blisses; It may serve the cynic's parts, If he curse and if he scout thee, But, O, where were gentle hearts, If they had ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... pay the forfeit. Has disgrace or insult been heaped upon her? a life of eighty years is not long enough to bring down vengeance on the offender. So with Harpstenah. Her life had not been a blessing to herself—she would make it a curse to others. ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... use looking for Mark Thorn, they said, shaking gloomy heads. When he came into a country on a contract to kill, it was like a curse predestined which the power of man could not turn aside. He had the backing of the Drovers' Association, which had an arm as long in that land as the old Persian king's. He would strike there, like the ghost of all the devils in men that ever had lived on their fellows' blood, and slink ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... curse of the forty-one seven-sided sea cooks,' says I, 'and the bad luck of the nine impenitent grasshoppers rest upon this self-same sideshow at once and forever more. Amen. I'll go to see it myself ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Cause that made his heart sink in that seemingly fateful hour. When we heard in the malignant and triumphant roar of the Rebel cannon in our rear what might be the death-knell of the last great experiment of civilized men to establish among the nations of the world a united republic, freed from the curse of pampered kings and selfish, grasping aristocrats—it was in that moment, in his simple language, that the peril to the Cause was the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... mustache; hacerse el —— curl one's mustache. blanca f. blanca (old copper coin). blanco, -a white, fair. blancor m. whiteness. blando, -a soft, tender, gentle, pleasing. blasfemar blaspheme, curse. blasn m. blazon, armorial bearings, honor, glory. bledo m. blite, pigweed; dar un —— de care a straw for. boca f. mouth, lips. boda f. marriage, wedding. bolsa f. purse, money. bonanza f. fair weather. bordar embroider, embellish. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... leading the way up the Arkwright steps and ringing the bell. Grant muttered a curse under his breath. When the man had opened the door, "Come in," continued Josh loudly and cheerily, leading the ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... other hand, the smallness of the independent city, as a political aggregate, made it of little or no use in diminishing the liability to perpetual warfare which is the curse of all primitive communities. In a group of independent cities, such as made up the Hellenic world, the tendency to warfare is almost as strong, and the occasions for warfare are almost as frequent, as in a congeries of mutually hostile tribes ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... SAY? Time runs; and will you be slothful? Much of your lives are past; and will you be slothful? Your souls are worth a thousand worlds; and will you be slothful? The day of death and judgment is at the door; and will you be slothful? The curse of God hangs over your heads; and will you be slothful? Besides, the devils are earnest, laborious, and seek by all means every day, by every sin, to keep you out of heaven, and hinder you of salvation; and will you be slothful? Also your neighbours are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... against them, Detest them, curse them—yet 'tis greater skill In a true hate, to pray they have their will: The very devils ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... difficult. But it was in her bright and beautiful eyes, in her handsome features, and her winning voice, that he found his chief obstacle. How could he look upon her face in its loveliness, and talk to her as if she must be under the wrath and curse of God for the mere fact of her existence? It seemed more natural and it certainly was more entertaining, to question her in such a way as to find out what kind of theology had grown up in her mind ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Egyptian monuments get such a beautiful shine on them," I heard poor Higgs muttering in my ear again and again, for he was growing light-headed; "no wonder, no wonder! My shin-bones will be very useful to polish Quick's tall riding-boots. Oh! curse the lions. Why did you help me to salt, you old ass; why did you help me to salt? ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... retrieved. We may, sir, now be able to support those whom, when once dispossessed, it will not be in our power to restore; and that if we suffer the house of Austria to be overborne, our posterity, through every generation, may have reason to curse our injudicious parsimony, our fatal ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... O'Mara set himself to chop his face to pieces. Flail-like blows he side-stepped, and whipped to the other's eyes. That open guard he feinted wider and laid flesh open raw. Harrigan could no longer curse, for his lips were puffy things pulped between his own teeth and those merciless knuckles. He could only sob, great groaning gasps for breath—and ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... promote your happiness, insure my own. But I cannot break my mother's heart, Montraville; I must not bring the grey hairs of my doating grand-father with sorrow to the grave, or make my beloved father perhaps curse the hour that gave me birth." She covered her face with her hands, and burst ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... blessing to die, and it is only a curse to rise from the dead. And now she endures this exile with an aching heart, with memories that are irrepressible, with longings unutterable, and yearnings that cannot be expressed for that starry world and that bright companionship from which she has been recalled. So ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... by Eve, Adam too ate of the forbidden fruit, and the man and woman were driven out of the Happy Garden, and the curse fell upon them because ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the percentage of sin. But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, nothing, and slander loses its power to harm; for even the wrath of man shall praise Him. The reduction of evil, in Science, gives the dominance to God, and must lead us to bless those who curse, that thus we ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... the paper angrily in his hand, and muttered a curse as he flung it into the fire. He felt little enough gratitude to Wren for describing him merely as resigned, and not, as was actually the case, dismissed. Yet, even in his wretchedness, there was an atom of relief in knowing that at least a shred of ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... was the first sound which had followed that thud and, slight as it was, it released them somewhat from their awful tension. Jake felt that he could move now, and was about to let forth his imprisoned breath when he felt the touch of icy fingers trailing over his cheek, and started back with a curse. It was Mrs. Quimby feeling about for him in the impenetrable darkness, and in another moment he could ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... No wrong it may be with the serfs of hell To cast upon a woman for a curse Shame: to defile the spirit and shrine of love, Put out the sunlike eyes of maidenhood And leave the soul dismantled. Has not he So sinned?—Hast thou wrought no such work as this? The king ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... alarmingly ill. Should Heaven take him, it would be the dawn of a better era for Russia. His son is a man of very different mould. He has fallen into disgrace with his father for his liberal ideas, and he is known to think, as I do, that serfdom is the curse of the empire." ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... weigh it, and you'll find 'Tis light as feathers blown before the wind) That Poverty, the Curse of Providence, Attones for a dull Writer's want of Sense: Alas! his Dulness 'twas that made him poor; Not vice versa: We infer no more. Of Vice and Folly Poverty's the curse, Heav'n may be rigid, but the Man was worse, By good made bad, by favours more disgrac'd, So dire ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... "Curse your physiology, old Galen; what you call opposition, is that piquant resistance to oppression that makes half the charm of the sex. It is with them—with reverence be it spoken—as with horses: the dull, heavy-shouldered ones, that ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... her the lot which still befalls her favourite plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and ignorant passers-by would curse those dismal flowers before they knew them. Affrighted by their questionable hues, they shrink back, keep far aloof from them. And yet among them are the comforters (Solaneae) which, when discreetly employed, have cured so many, have lulled ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... curse you!" said the American, in an angry snarl. "Drop it, boys; they're too many for us this time. We're done, and it's of ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... Lord; and 'tis no small matter, so to walk, and so to behave as to be accounted worthy of a covenanted union with the Lord and interest in him, this covenant relation being confirmed with such awful sanctions, as in scripture we find, Neh. x. 29. "They———entered into a curse and into an oath, to walk in God's law," &c. This consideration, that covenanting work is weighty in its own nature, was further illustrated and amplified from the difficulty both of the things to be engaged against, and of the things to be engaged unto. As for the former, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... propaganda in the play, and no intentional satire, although in a way "Maurice Harte" affords a parallel to so definitely a propagandist satire as Mr. Robinson's "Harvest." It is not education that is the curse, however, in "Maurice Harte," but the belief that only priesthood in the end can justify the sacrifices without which a college education is almost impossible for an Irish peasant. Certain it is that it is only ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... as it is called, above virtue and religion, is the curse of the age. Education is now chiefly a stimulus to learning, and thus men acquire power without the principles which alone make it a good. Talent is worshiped; but if divorced from rectitude, it will prove more of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... produces it and many kindred evils more dear to the Mormon rulers. They do not care for all the sentiment or law against this one fruit of the tree, if the tree itself is left to stand. The tree—the prolific cause of so many and so great evils in Utah, the greatest curse of the territory, the strength of Mormonism, and its impregnable wall of defence against Christianity and civilization, is that arbitrary, despotic, and absolute hierarchy known ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... buried. Thorhall, overjoyed at the deliverance, treated Grettir handsomely, giving him a good horse and decent clothes, for his own had been torn to pieces in the struggle. Grettir's fame spread far abroad for this deed, and none was deemed his equal for boldness and prowess. Yet Glam's curse began already to work, for Grettir dared not go out after nightfall, for then he seemed to see all kinds of horrors. It became a proverb in the land that Glam gives Glam-sight to those who see things otherwise than ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... Halstrom, to my mind uncertainty Is but a mental sore, which cancer like, Doth spread its roots until the surgeon's knife With sharp incision shall the curse remove. So must I cross the Rubicon and strike The foe in parts most vulnerable. Caesar, from the deep cavern of his mind, Hath fashioned, with a statesman's ready hand, A plan which we must now ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... beleaguered castle. She did not speak, in her own defence, for silence was defence of Marie. And little knowing how she would be tried, she had sworn to defend her friend, sworn by Vanno's love and her own love for Vanno. It was a vow she would not break if she could, lest a curse fall in punishment and kill the love which was her dearest treasure. Yet through all the echoing confusion in her mind one note rang clear: she must in the end right herself ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... muttered a few words, meant, I felt sure, to appease him by letting him know how much they had suffered at his strong hands; but he turned upon the negro with a savage curse, bidding him be silent. Then every one of the culprits was stripped, and secured to the lash-rail by the wrists; scourges were made of cotton fish-line, knotted at intervals, and secured to a stout handle; the harpooners were told off as executioners, and the flogging began. Perhaps ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... required to put them on a paying basis. There would be no pleasure or satisfaction in merely robbing other farms to build up mine, as some of the prosperous truck farmers and dairymen are doing. I should want to practice a system of soil improvement of unlimited application so that it would not be a curse to the agricultural people, as is the case with the man who builds up his farm only at ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... not for me, the man!" he cried gutterally. "Ah! I could curse the power that I coveted and set above all earthly joys! I who boasted that he could control his will—I read in your eyes that I am willing you to love me! I seek a gift and can ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... man is a fool to make threats," sneered Wilde. "But come, now. Out with it, curse you! Where is ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... out of my education: hence I am perfectly illiterate in the polite style of the street, and am not fit to converse with the porters and carmen of quality, who grace their diction with the beauties of calling names, and curse their neighbour ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... his own little cottage, but it seemed too small and too "slick" for him. He liked our trees and lawn and barn, and I was glad to have him continue his supervision of them. They gave him something to think about, something to do. The curse of the "tired farmers" of the village was their enforced idleness. There was almost nothing for them to ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... after a pause, "if you despise my love, I must see what can be done with fear. You smile, but the day will come when you will come screaming to me for pardon. Yes, you will grovel on the ground before me, proud as you are, and you will curse the day that ever you turned me from your best friend into your most bitter enemy. Have a care, Professor Gilroy!" I saw a white hand shaking in the air, and a face which was scarcely human, so convulsed was it with passion. An instant later she was gone, and I heard the quick hobble and ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hypocrisy is the curse and danger of our age. The Atheist, no longer an execration, an astonishment, a curse, and a reproach, poses now as the friend of man and the champion of right. Those who incur the last and most terrible curse in this book, do so in the name ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Again I swear it; and I have the ear of his Grace. If thou hast thy country's cause at heart thou wilt hear me in this thing. I will give you back the lords you all love. I will trouble you no more myself. I would I had never seen this evil place. It has been nought but a curse to me from the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... by the river, had encountered a pond of giant frogs, and the fricassee was the result. I had not then overcome my national antipathy to the victims of Saint Patrick's curse; and, to the voyageur's astonishment, I refused to ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... dying, but renewed and renewed, So the thoughts chased the racers like hounds that pursued, Bringing cheer to their darlings, bringing curse to their foes, Searching into men's spirits till their ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... even if the strikers ever got back, Osborne and Margraf were in the awkward positions of being blacklegs. Thus it was that Fortune had forgotten these two young men who sat by their little fire, doggedly silent, too low-hearted even to curse Fortune. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... which the abolition should take, place. He therefore congratulated the House, the country, and the world, that this great point had been gained; that we might now consider this trade as having received its condemnation; that this curse of mankind was seen in its true light; and that the greatest stigma on our national character, which ever yet existed, was about to be removed! Mankind, he trusted, were now likely to be delivered from the greatest practical evil that ever afflicted ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... love, that God sent his Son, his darling, his Son that never offended, his Son that was always his delight. Herein is love, that he sent him to save sinners; to save them by bearing their sins, by bearing their curse, by dying their death, and by carrying their sorrows. Here is love, in that while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us; yea, here is love, in that while we were yet without strength, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... "for he was the first of knights, but this fool is foul and made awry. Curse me his hour and the ship that brought ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... in the life of the man who is wise with the true Wisdom which begins with the fear of God. Just as it is active in the life, so is Folly. But its activity is not blessing and gladdening, but punitive. For all sin automatically works its own chastisement, and the curse of Folly is that, while it corrects, it prevents the 'fool' from profiting by the correction. Since it punishes itself, one might expect that it would cure itself, but experience shows that, while it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... time coming are hot air. They're not. But you've got to get fool notions out of your head, and work for the things you want, the same as I reckon to. I'm out to make good—for you. Understand, for you, and for little Coqueline. I'm out to make good with all that's in me. And it don't matter a curse to me if all hell freezes over, I'm going to make good. Get that, and get it good. It's a sort of life-line that ought to make things easy for you. There's just one thing that can break my play, Nita. Only one. It's your weakening. It's up to me to see you don't weaken. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... bore down with an oath and a curse, Bore down on the chief with the slain man's sword He saw at a glance the state of the case; He knew without need of a single word That the Turk had flown and the Russ was near, And the Tchircasse held his midday revel; So he laid himself ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... insisted on his death. The governor granted him a few moments, that he might once more speak to and bless him. "What, I! I bless a traitor!" exclaimed the enraged Russian, and, turning to his son, with a horrid voice and gesture he pronounced a curse upon him. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... women, Farncombe? [Bending forward, his hands tightly clenched.] She used to call them a menace to society. With their beauty, and their flagrant opportunities for displaying it, they are a living curse, she used to say— a source of constant dread to mothers whose hope it is to see their sons safely mated to modest, maidenly girls of the typical English pattern. She told us once— my brothers and ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... near, along the highway, or where-ever they run! A burrow is rooted up at every shady point, a nuisance at every corner you turn, and their abominable snouts into everything that is filthy, or obscene—a living curse to all that is decent about them. An Ishmaelite among the farm stock, they are shunned and hated by every living thing, when at large. But, put the creature in his pen, with a ring in his nose, if permitted to go into the adjoining yard, and comfortably ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... a doctrine leads directly to the conclusion that war, instead of being the curse and disaster which all reasonable people, not to say all Christians, feel it to be, is, as Bernhardi puts it, "a biological necessity, a regulative element in the life of mankind that cannot be dispensed with." It is "the basis of all healthy development." "Struggle is not merely the ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... happened when he died . . . There was a darkness and an agony, And some were vastly frightened—not so I! What cared I if that mob of reeking Jews Had brought a nameless curse upon their heads? I had no part in that bloodguiltiness. At least he died; and some few friends of his Took him and laid him in a garden tomb. A watch was set about the sepulchre, Lest these, his friends, should hide him and proclaim That he had risen as he had foretold. Laugh not, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... measure of truth, but is not wholly true. We see not a few instances of utter poverty of life concurrent with great possessions, and are forced to conclude that the real value of possessions is dependent on what they bring us. Merely to have is of no advantage. Indeed it may be a burden or a curse. Happiness is at least desirable, but it has no necessary connection with property accumulations. They may make it possible, but they never insure it. Possession may be an incident, but seldom ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... want to go to bed. You go to bed late and want to get up late. So simple prayer and devotion are crowded out. And yet, T——, the necessity is paramount, is inexorable. If you and I are ever to be of any good, if we are to be a blessing, not a curse, to those with whom we are connected, we must enter into ourselves, we must be alone with the only source of unselfishness. If we are of use to others, it will chiefly be because we are simple, pure, unselfish. If we are to be simple, pure, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... to the doctor, who did not curse his corpulence the less for that. He wished to judge for himself about these emanations, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... banished the devil from his heart. A terrible wrath would disfigure his countenance and kindle his eyes with demoniac fire; and in sharp ringing tones, that wounded like strokes, he would pour forth a torrent of words in his unknown language, doubtless invoking every imaginable curse on his tormentor. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... I was such a cursed sentimental fool then, that believing him capable of doing this, believing myself still the husband of that woman, your wife, and to spare that innocent girl the shame of thinking me a villain, I purchased his silence by consenting. May God curse me for it!" ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... against the gambler; the goods are forced on him by their cheapness, and with them a certain kind of life which that energetic, that aggressive cheapness determines for him: for so far-reaching is this curse of commercial war that no country is safe from its ravages; the traditions of a thousand years fall before it in a month; it overruns a weak or semi- barbarous country, and whatever romance or pleasure or art existed ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... Greek mythology, the spirit of revenge, which prompts the members of a family to commit fresh crimes to obtain satisfaction. These crimes necessitate further acts of vengeance, and the curse is thus transmitted from generation to generation. The word is also used for a man's evil genius, which drives him to sin without any provocation; a man so driven is sometimes called Alastor. The epithet is applied to Zeus and the Erinyes as the deities ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... another prisoner. By-and-by we shall have more time. There," he said, drawing a ring from his finger; "you wear that, and remember that Harry Grey always feels respect and esteem for a brave enemy, while for you—Oh, curse it! We are not enemies. God bless you, my lad! You and Scar Markham ought to be ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... or two the defeated aspirant had further cause to curse his false friend. He found that not only had the people defected from him, but that the thing had been so adroitly managed that he appeared to be in fault, and three-fourths of those who knew him were ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... an oath broke from his lips. He made a movement to spring from the well, but as the girl started back, the pistol held in her hand was discharged aimlessly in the air, and the report echoed throughout the courtyard. With a curse Starbuck drew back, instantly disappeared in the well, and Polly fell fainting on the steps. When she came to, her father and Larry were at her side. They had been alarmed at the report, and had rushed quickly to the ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... strike, no matter what the cost. Yet stay. Revolt not at the Union Jack, Nor raise Thy hand against this stripling pack Of white-faced warriors, marching West to quell Our fallen tribe that rises to rebel. They all are young and beautiful and good; Curse to the war that drinks their harmless blood. Curse to the fate that brought them from the East To be our chiefs—to make our nation least That breathes the air of this vast continent. Still their new rule and council is ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... unharassed. I have not found an outsider whose observation of Scientists furnished him a view that differed from my own. Buoyant spirits, comfort of mind, freedom from care these happinesses we all have, at intervals; but in the spaces between, dear me, the black hours! They have put a curse upon the life of every human being I have ever known, young or old. I concede not a single exception. Unless it might be those Scientists just referred to. They may have been playing a part with me; I hope they were not, and I believe they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blessed retreat familiarly known as 'Murray's den,' where, secure from feminine intrusion, as if in the cool cloisters of Coutloumoussi, I surrender my happy soul to science and cigars, and revel in complete forgetfulness of that awful curse which Jove hurled against all mankind, because of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... slave-catchers, or sheriff's officers, who could usually be relied upon to resent the drop of black blood that tainted them, and with the zeal of the proselyte to visit their hatred of it upon the unfortunate blacks that fell into their hands. One curse of negro slavery was, and one part of its baleful heritage is, that it poisoned the fountains of human sympathy. Under a system where men might sell their own children without social reprobation or loss of prestige, it was not surprising that some ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... pasted into a book some of the finer phrases. We put them in parallel columns. "Truculent corner boys," for instance, faced "Grim, silent warriors." "Men in whom the spirit of the martial psalms still survives," stood over against "Ruffians whose sole idea of religion is to curse the Pope." "Sons of unconquerable colonists, men of our own race and blood," was balanced by "hooligans with a taste for rioting so long as rioting can be indulged in with no danger to their own skins." We were interrupted in this pleasant ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... medalists become quite "household words" to him. He walks to Trumpington every day before hall to get an appetite for dinner, and never misses grace. He speaks reverently of masters and tutors, and does not curse even the proctors; he is merciful to his wine-bin, which is chiefly saw-dust, pays his bills, and owes nobody a guinea—he is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... said Peyrade in continuation. "Ask for it for me; get the Comte de Gondreville to interest himself in the matter with some degree of warmth—and you will thus repay me for the service I am about to do you. I ask your word only; for, if you fail me, sooner or later you will curse the day you were born—you ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... are a law unto his handmaiden," said Margaret demurely and icily, addressing him, but aiming point-blank at me. Her shot blew me clean out of the water, and I stood there guggling like a born idiot. "Curse you, will you never get out of your yokel's ways?" said I to myself. It was as if I had said to the sergeant, speaking of Jane, "She shall draw you a mug of beer." I was clean nonplussed, and felt as uncomfortable as a boiling crawfish, but fortunately rattle-pate came to my aid and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... thee." Now notice the promise: "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy five years old and when he departed out ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... thee thus Thy mother used to talk? Such hand and foot, She would say, in man or woman vouched for nature High tempered!—Still for sentiment refined; Affection tender; apprehension quick— Degrees beyond the generality! There is a marriage finger! Curse the hand Would ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... you are ridiculous. I could not get on a week without him. [Aside.] Curse him, I wish I could! Coyle is a most intelligent agent, and a most faithful servant ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... cheek wistfully pressed against the pane. Afterwards we go and thread blue beads, and make a string for our neck; and we go and stand before the glass. We see the complexion we were not to spoil, and the white frock, and we look into our own great eyes. Then the curse begins to act on us. It finishes its work when we are grown women, who no more look out wistfully at a more healthy life; we are contented. We fit our sphere as a Chinese woman's foot fits her shoe, exactly, as though God had made both—and yet he knows nothing of either. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... a league from Aleppo. The thirty adventurers lay in ambush at the foot of the hill; and Dames at length succeeded in his inquiries, though he was provoked by the ignorance of his Greek captives. "God curse these dogs," said the illiterate Arab; "what a strange barbarous language they speak!" At the darkest hour of the night, he scaled the most accessible height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Nancy, because I am learning more and more to respect you; I think of your happiness most assuredly as much as I think of my own. But even if my own good weighed as nothing against yours, I should be wise to resist you just as I do now. Hugger-mugger marriage is a defilement and a curse. We know it from the experience of the world at large,—which is perhaps more brutalised by marriage than by anything else.—No need to test the thing once ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... for absolute accuracy. Walking slowly, realizing that he had but four shots left and that those gone he would never be given time to reload, Howard came half a dozen paces toward Monte before he stopped. He heard True's groaning curse; a spat of flame from where the man lay showed him that he was still to be counted on. But his shooting would be apt to be wild and he must be forgotten until Devine ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... "Curse it, sir, and what's the meaning of this, I'd like to know?" he cried, and struck at the sheet of notepaper with his free hand. "A pretty fix to put us in at the last minute, upon my word! It was your business, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... "Curse on my folly," said he, as he stood fixed to the ground, "that I neglected to ask for the bag itself which held the gifts of the genius Houadir! her pretty pupil had then been my slave, in spite of the many fine lessons she had been taught by that pitiful and enthusiastic ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... freedom of expressing both truth and untruth, it is difficult to realize to what extent the authorities of the Middle Ages tried to seal the fountains of truth. Picture a man kneeling before the authorities at Rome and stating: "With a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies. I swear that for the future I will never say nor assert anything verbally or in writing which may give rise to a {463} similar suspicion against me."[3] Thus he was compelled ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... in just as that fellow come alongside, all knocked to pieces. Here he is, d—n his eyes!" holding out a twelve-pound shot in his ladle; "here's the thundering thief that's spoilt our dinner, Captain Williams, stowed away in the bottom of the copper, as snug as a flea in a soger's blanket. The curse of the twelve geese that eat the grass off o' Solomon's grave upon you!" With these words he threw the shot overboard, and turned to Captain Williams with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... poor-houses and our jails; it is ardent spirits that fill our penitentiaries, our mad-houses, and our state prisons; and it is ardent spirits that furnish victims for the gallows. They are the greatest curse that God ever inflicted on the world, and may well be called the seven vials of his wrath. They are more destructive in their consequences than war, plague, pestilence, or famine; yea, than all combined. They are slow in their march, but sure in their grasp. They seize not ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... cattlemen from Arizona and Texas. Here were miners and soldiers of fortune and plain tramps. More than one of the shining-eyed gamblers had a price upon his head. Several were outlaws. A score or more had taken part in the rapine and the pillage of the guerrilla warfare that has of late years been the curse of the country. It would have been hard in a day's travel to find an assembly where human life was ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... table wi' his hand, He garr'd the red wine spring on hie— 'Now Christ's curse on my head,' he said, 'But avenged of Lord Scrope I'll be! O, is my basnet a widow's curch? Or my lance a wand o' the willow-tree? Or my arm a ladye's lilye hand, That an English lord ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the spot for some minutes, and it was not until she had disappeared amidst the crowd gathered in that quarter, that I could so collect my scattered thoughts as to curse my folly for having omitted such an opportunity of accosting her. I however inquired of an old woman of whom she had purchased some flowers, who she was; but all the information I could glean was, that she had recently been in the habit of buying a few flowers every Wednesday of that same ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Bradford's records, to have died in the general sickness which attacked the crew while lying in Plymouth harbor. The brief narrative of his sickness and death is all that we know of his personality. The writer says: "He was a proud young man, and would often curse and scoff at the passengers," but being nursed when dying, by those of them who remained aboard, after his shipmates had deserted him in their craven fear of infection, "he bewailed his former conduct," saying, "Oh! you, I now see, show your love like Christians indeed, one to another, but ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... to renew the general interest in the closed door, and many gazed in that direction. They looked at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and muttered, now a curse, now a comment. Still they waited and still the snow whirled and cut them with biting flakes. On the old hats and peaked shoulders it was piling. It gathered in little heaps and curves and no one brushed it off. In the centre of the crowd the warmth ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... apartment followed by a man in a mask. He was masked likewise; but I knew his step, I knew his voice, I knew him by that imposing bearing which hell has bestowed upon his person for the curse of humanity. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the curse of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... never been stricken with this curse, and with the exception of a few contests, caused by the instinct of reproduction, harm would be absolutely unknown to the lower animals of creation. Man, though he cannot appreciate pleasure except by a small number of organs, may yet be liable to ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... after reading the funeral service over them. I saw Tesse and told him of the scene I had witnessed, and demanded vengeance. He laughed in my face. Senor, I persisted, and he got angry and told me that, were it not for my cloth, he would hang me from the steeple. I called down Heaven's curse upon him, and left him and came home. Do you wonder, senor, that I found it hard to spare those Frenchmen for whom you pleaded? Do you wonder that I, a man of peace, lead out my villagers ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... moistened his lips with his tongue, drew the back of his hand across his blinking eyes, moistened his lips again, but no words seemed to come to him. It was Fox-Foot who spoke first. Touching one splendid nugget almost contemptuously with the toe of his moccasin, he sneered "It is the curse of the paleface, this gold. 'Most every white man he sell the soul within his body for gold, gold, but not so Larry. I know him. He prize this thing because it is the reward of pluck, of work, of great patience, of what white men ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... work, on the face of them, of anarchists pure and simple. A large proportion of them were written in red ink, and in many—very many—cases the passions of the writers had got so far beyond their control that you could see where they had broken their pens in the futile effort to make written words curse harder than they would. The receptacle in which they were placed was officially known in the office as the Chamber of Horrors, but it was, I think, universally spoken of among the staff as the "Hell-box." Before the end of the campaign, capacious ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Beside me, I heard Halsey give a low curse. On our mirror we saw sudden action. The ten-foot, cloaked figure laboriously lifted the black box, and swung with it toward the outer wall of the room. I saw now clearly with what a dragging, heavy tread that giant shape moved, as though it weighed, here on Earth, far more than the normal ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... it," he said: "indeed, I could not possibly inflict a worse punishment than your conduct merits. But what is the use of punishing you? nothing reforms you! I am in despair of you! You seem determined to make yourself a curse to me instead of the blessing I once esteemed you. What am I to do with you? Will you compel me to cage or chain you up like a wild beast, lest you do ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... fatigues, hardships, and dangers of it he as little regarded as the intrepid and indefatigable prince he served; but now arrived the time which was to inflict on him the worst miseries of it, and make him almost curse a vocation he had been in his soul ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... comes to Lettermore; The horses stumble on the stones, The drivers curse,—for it is hard To cross the hills from Oughterard And cart the sick from Lettermore: A stinking load ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... anybody but herself in particular? Every great reform has been forced on the Church from outside. Just consider the state of degradation, and the dense ignorance of the people of every country upon which the curse of Catholicism rests! 'Wherever churches and monasteries abound the people are backward' it is written. Just lately, there has been a little revival of Catholicism, a flash in the pan, here in England, due to Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Manning, who introduced some good old Protestant virtues into ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the gairden sod, Weet the lang roads whaur gangrels plod— A maist unceevil thing o' God In mid July— If ye'll just curse the sneckdraw, dod! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sweeping the kitchen, attending to the cows, making the soup. No word fell from her lips, and rising ever amid the ominous silence she preserved, her hatred of Goliah grew with every hour and impregnated her nature with its poison. He had been her curse; had it not been for him she would have waited for Honore, and Honore would be living now, and she would be happy. Think of his tone and manner when he made her understand he was the master! He had told her the truth, moreover; there were no longer gendarmes or judges to whom she could apply for ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... white dead Nettle is a degenerate form of this purple herb as shown by still possessing on its petals the same brown markings. Nevertheless, having disobeyed the laws of its growth, it has lost its original colour, and, like the Lady of Shalott, it is fain to complain "the curse has come upon me." Count Mattaei's nostrum Pettorale is thought to be got from the Galeopsis (hemp Nettle), another of the labiate herbs, with Nettle-like leaves, but no stinging hairs, named from galee, a cat, or weazel, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... burglar, and yet there were only two persons in the world who knew that combination, my partner and myself. I tried to be brave when these things happened, but as my life went on it seemed more and more as if some curse were on me. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... it, if I believed him to have been in the past all that his opponent has said; even if I believed that, only last evening, spurned, driven from his child, penniless and hopeless, he had yielded to the weakness which has been his curse all his life—even if I believed that, still I should demand that Henry Thomas, repentant and earnest as you see him now, should be given his rightful opportunity to become a man again. He is poor, but he is not—shall not be—friendless. No! a thousand times, no! ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the dead, we answer. Do not disturb their bones; let them rest easy at last, is the commentary on all keen criticism of those who have played important parts in life, and whose influence has perhaps been a curse. No, we reply, their bones will rest easier, and their benedictions come to us surer, for our unaffected plain-dealing. The trick of flattery may succeed with the living. Those still in this world of shadows, cross-lights, and glaring reflections ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the stewards. It all goes into old Grimshaw's pocket, and he'd skin a bolt-rope for the grease, and sell the steward if he could get a chance. He has sold a much nearer relation. I'm down upon the law, you'll see, Cap, for I know it plays the dickens with our business, and is a curse to the commerce of the port. Folks what a'n't acquainted with shipping troubles, and a shipowner's interests, think such things are very small affairs. But it's the name that affects us, and when an owner stands at every item in the disbursements, and a heavy bill for keeping his steward, and another ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... lives by many a sweet miracle of dew on fleece and ground,—once servants of mighty kings, and keepers of sacred covenant; have you indeed dealt truly with your warrior kings, and prophet saints, or are these ruins of their homes, and shrines, dark with the fire that fell from the curse of Jerubbael? ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They are now turned out to meet the severity of winter. Perhaps now, lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may curse, but will not ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... very young, I know,' she said apologetically, 'and I've only just finished my last course of Fairy History. So I know that if a fairy stops more than half a second in a curse she can't go on, and some one else may finish it for her. That is so, Your Majesty, isn't it?' she said, appealing to Benevola. And the Queen of the Fairies said Yes, that was the law, only it was such an old one most people had ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... alarm came, and I had not caused it! Polter ripped out a startled, rumbling curse and sat upright. Under the curve of his leg I saw Babs had been momentarily neglected. She ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... the dear childhood memories, into whose protection she would flee, turned in anger from her. With tears she cried to God for a heart that she might love, some one for whom she might really care. For it seemed as if a curse lay upon her, which estranged all hearts from her. She thought with fear at her heart that the being to whom she would give life might likewise turn from her, as everything had done that she loved." Then a good fate brings to her the unfortunate Johannes whom his crazy father ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... German sculptor, whose group, "The Singer's Curse," Received the second prize at the Exposition of 1849, at Paris, has arrived in this country, where he proposes to take up his residence. The Tribune states that "The Singer's Curse" will soon be exhibited ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... us there'd be work at the factories. But there weren't no work. Gawd's truf! What're sailormen wantin' wi' clorth-makin' and 'ammering' tin-pots? Them's the only jobs we wuz offered in Lunnon. I don't give a curse for the plyce.... No, Sammy an' me we says to each other"—he took another drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—"we says this ain't no plyce for us. We'd just ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... Caesar remained entitled and in duty bound to take up arms or at least to engage in plots against him. The less decided sections of the constitutional party were no doubt found willing to accept peace and protection from the new monarch; nevertheless they ceased not to curse the monarchy and the monarch at heart. The more clearly the change of the constitution became manifest, the more distinctly the great majority of the burgesses—both in the capital with its keener susceptibility of political excitement, and among the more energetic population ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... issue between Christianity and science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy—a peasant ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... is just. He will not let you escape. If He does, I will not. I will hound you to the ends of this earth and, if necessary, into the eternities. Not with the threat of my arm—you are my master there, but with the curse of a brother who believed you innocent of his darling's blood and would have believed you so in face of ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... gospel cites for our benefit certain facts which prove that the words with which it resounded were not lost in the empty spaces. They moved and struck home from the humblest regions of society to the exalted spheres, to the royal throne itself. John garnered love and hate, blessing and curse, the desirable fruits of all energetic action. Since that time and before, more than one voice has been able, applying them to itself, to give to those prophetic words, "voices in the wilderness," another very melancholy significance. The supreme ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... "Curse him and welcome," Whaley replied. "But don't fool yourself about him. He's a go-getter. Didn't he go up Peace River after Pierre Poulette? Didn't he drag him back with cuffs on 'most a year later? That's what you've got against you, three hundred ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the Fer-de-Lance. And if I were not a patriot and a Breton I'd say: 'May Sainte-Anne rot her where she lies; she's brought a curse on the coast from Lorient to the Saint-Julien Light!—and the ghosts of the Icelanders ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... awakening suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passers-by, tried to escape looking at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable as possible. Suddenly he thought of his hat. "Good heavens! I had the money the day before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear instead!" A curse rose from the bottom ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pity, George? Curse and confound it, wherefore the pity? Our youth is a perfect ass, an ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the train, and we were all shepherded into a big bare waiting-room where a large stove burned. They took us two at a time into an inner room for examination. I had explained to Peter all about this formality, but I was glad we went in together, for they made us strip to the skin, and I had to curse him pretty seriously to make him keep quiet. The men who did the job were fairly civil, but they were mighty thorough. They took down a list of all we had in our pockets and bags, and all the details from the passports the Rotterdam agent ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... with as little ceremony or scruple, as he would tell you the time of the day. He will let you know he is going to a whore, or that he has got a clap, with as much indifferency, as he would a piece of public news. He will swear, curse, or blaspheme, without the least passion or provocation. And, though all regard for reputation is not quite laid aside in the other sex, 'tis, however, at so low an ebb, that very few among them seem to think virtue ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... lady Feng assured herself that there was no one about. "How is it," she next asked, "that I'm like a queen of hell, or like a 'Yakcha' demon? That courtesan swore at me and wished me dead; and did you too help her to curse me? If I'm not nice a thousand days, why, I must be nice on some one day! But if, poor me, I'm so bad as not even to compare with a disorderly woman, how can I have the face to come and spend my ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... but the weight was too heavy for his strength of will. Perforce he yielded to alarm for the girl's safety. A great fear was upon him lest it be too late for the warning he had meant to give. He growled a curse on his own folly in not guarding against immediate attack by the outlaw. It was with small hope of finding his apprehensions groundless that he set forth at once, rifle in hand, for the cabin of the Widow Higgins. There, his fears ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... him off!" It was an eery, strangled shriek from one of the male prisoners in the throes of a nightmare. With a startled curse the guard thudded to his feet, peered tensely into the darkness, his weapon sending twin milky beams of the powerful ionizing ray toward ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... to her a battle between Ireland and England, but to me an Armageddon which shall quench all things in the Ancestral Darkness again, and from this to sayings about war and vengeance. "Do you know," she said, "what the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put the man-child on the spear, and somebody said to them, 'You will be cursed in the fourth generation after you,' and that is why disease or anything always comes in the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... in our blood—the tendency to centralized tyranny. We are but a few years removed from its curse. As we grow in years, the temptation to make Washington the gilded Capital of an Empire becomes more and more apparent. Unless we control this tendency to lapse into the past, we are lost and the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... animal, and a newspaper reading animal!" The sums which we poor prisoners paid for one English newspaper a year, would have paid the annual board of a man in the interior of our own plentiful country. I am firmly of opinion, however, that Boston has and will have reason to curse her federal newspapers. They, like, the "Courier" and "Times," of London have spread false principles, and scattered error amongst a people too violently prejudiced to read both sides of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... rage. A curse as the man grabbed at his throat. The gun was still in the air. His wrist was beginning to ache from struggling with the thing. This was part of the idiocy of things. But he must look out. Perhaps only a moment more to live. The man was weeping. Mumbling ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Here now a man might satisfy his curiosity at once. Deeds must have names to them, so must leases and wills. But I wouldn't—no I wouldn't—it is a pretty box too—prettily dovetailed—I admire the fashion of it much. But I'd cut my fingers off, before I'd do such a dirty—what have I to do—curse the keys, how they rattle!—rattle in one's pockets—the keys and the half-pence (takes out a bunch and plays with them). I wonder if any of these would fit; one might just try them, but I wouldn't lift up the lid if they did. Oh no, what should I be the richer for knowing? (All this ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... like to speculate on the probable condition of affairs in March next. I have also spoken of such a peasant as has been fortunate enough to obtain work at nine shillings a week, esteemed a fair rate hereabouts. But in truth there is very little work to be had; for the curse of absenteeism sits heavily on the West. Four great landed proprietors, who together have drawn for several years past about 70,000l. from their estates in Mayo, Galway, and Clare, have not, I am assured, ever spent 10,000l. a year in this country. As with the land itself, crop after crop has been ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... are talking of comes to pass, do not expect to look upon me again. I will not be present on your wedding day; I will not have you near me, not even at my death-bed; You are no longer a son of mine; and you go with my curse upon you.' Moving away instinctively from the finger which almost touched him, Paul replied with great calmness, 'Oh, you know, my dear father, that sort of thing is never done now-a-days! Even on the stage they have given ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the blue flood of men banked against a stone wall, spreading to right and left, as the waters of a stream spread the length of a dam. Then they began to fire dreadfully into the faces of their enemy, and to curse terribly, as is proper in battle. Bullets stung the long line like wasps, and ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... "Curse it! curse it!" he shouted; "a cursed telegram, it tells you nothing, and it murders you! She might, at all events, have sent somebody. I shall have to go there. Ah the whole thing's complete, it's more than a ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... not to think. At least, he could not face the Colonel and the others just now, so turning past the house to the most secluded spot the lawn afforded, he brushed through the screen of cedar branches, felt his way across the tanbark to a seat, and sank into it with a low curse. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... This is the culmination of these past conflicts. If this be not successful, the rest has been in part in vain. Four millions of slaves were freed, and now four millions of their descendants are as helpless and hopeless as they—as great a curse to themselves and as dangerous an element to the nation. Now this great and crowning struggle is upon us. Other interests may for a time hide it from view, but it must be met, and here again, only that which costs will win. It is to be hoped that prosperity will return and make it easier ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... gloom. Hill very justly observes: "Whenever men obey that injunction of labor, no matter what their station, there is in the act the element of happiness, and whoever avoids that injunction, there is always the shadow of the unfulfilled curse darkening their path." Thus, their ideal was "to subdue one's self and then to devote one's self," which De Tocqueville pronounces "the secret of strength." How well they succeeded in realizing their ideal by the methods ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... standing army. The Estates petitioned the willing King that the system of finance in the realm should be remodelled, and a permanent tax established for the support of an army. Thus, it was thought, solidity would be given to the royal power, and the long-standing curse of the freebooters and brigands cleared away. No sooner was this done than the nobles began to chafe under it; they scented in the air the coming troubles; they, took as their head, poor innocents, the young Dauphin Louis, who was willing enough ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of pain, alas! my heart did bear, What time my hapless self cast forth I knew; And there it doth remain; And day and hour I curse and curse again, When first that front of love shone on my view That front so queenly fair, And bright beyond compare! Wherefore at once my faith, my hope, my fire My soul doth ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... any one attempt to injure this church, which is more especially under the power and protection of the Holy Roman Church, or to lessen the jurisdiction conceded to it, may GOD expunge him from the book of life; and let him know that he is bound by the sentence of a curse." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... but see him now, and hear what he is saying, he would never more have faith in human being. Thinking of Carmen Montijo, the young officer has doubted women; witnessing the behaviour of Henry Blew, he might not only doubt man, but curse him. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Girolamo's phrases by heart, "they are too heavy for you: they are heavier than a millstone, and are weighting you for perdition. Will you adorn yourself with the hunger of the poor, and be proud to carry God's curse upon ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... "Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... hear that soon enough. Being at war - O noble lion of war, that would not suffer Injustice done in Italy!—he led The very flower of chivalry against That foul adulterous Lord of Rimini, Giovanni Malatesta—whom God curse! And was by him in treacherous ambush taken, And like a villain, or a low-born knave, Was by him on the public ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... With a curse, the boy flung the weapon down on the bed. He could not possibly kill a man so willing as this. To draw guns with him, and chance the issue, would have suited young Sanderson exactly. But this way would be no ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... Ah, you have a wise little head on your shoulders, even though you are an Irish colleen. He said that he had sold my mortgage to another man, and had got money on it; and the other man—he is an Englishman, curse him!—and he wants the place, Nora, and he'll take it in lieu of the mortgage if I don't pay up in ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... was waged with redoubled ardor on the sudden appearance of the star with the flaming tail. Mahomet II. took Constantinople by storm, and raised the siege of Belgrade. But the Pope having put aside both the curse of the comet, and the abominable designs of the Mussulmans, the Christians gained the battle, and vanquished their enemies in a bloody fight. The Angelus to the sound of bells dates from these ordinances of Calixtus ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... panting for a short moment in the doorway, and then stepped into the firelight. Behind her, through the darkness came the sound of words calling the vengeance of heaven on her head, rising higher, shrill, strained, repeating the curse over and over again—till the voice cracked in a passionate shriek that died out into hoarse muttering ending with a deep and prolonged sigh. She stood facing Willems, one hand behind her back, the other raised in a gesture ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... one of the men, with a deep curse. They listened still, yet did not move away from the place, for the duty to which they had been assigned was still prominent in their minds. The priest had already risen to his feet, still smoking his pipe, as though in this new turn of affairs its assistance might be more than ever needed ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... glare grew brighter, and there came Unto mine ears the sound of many tongues, Mingling discordant curse with bitter cry Of lamentation. On the outer marge Of Hell's domains, set one at each of four Far sundered corners, four volcanoes grim Spewed up their flaming bowels into a sea Of blackness whence no light could issue forth. Beyond this fierce horizon, ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... With a muffled curse he swung on his heel, and made to cross the gravel path and plunge into the shrubbery. But Desmond was too quick for him. Springing upon his back, he caught his arms, thus preventing him from using his pistol. He was a powerful man, and Desmond alone would have been no match for ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... scorned. Milando was my only hope, my only true friend-the only one to whom I could confide my heart achings, to whom I could look to save me from a life of shame, to which remorse had almost driven me. And will you believe that he invoked a curse, and resolved to leave his profession, (for he could not live like those shabby men of the newspapers,) to seek means whereby he could live without struggling in poverty and want. True, the wealthy gave him ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... seeing man I heard talking to me the like of that I'd put a black curse on him would weigh down his soul till it'd be falling to hell; but you're a poor blind sinner, God forgive you, and I don't mind you at all. (He raises his can.) Go aside now till I give the blessing to your wife, and if you won't go ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... rather more than the usual crop of one-idea parties. The Prohibitionists, a unit now, took the field on the "army canteen" issue, making much of the fact that our increased export to the Philippines consisted largely of beer and liquors to curse our soldiers. The anti-fusion or "Middle-of-the-road" Populists, the Socialist Labor Party, the Socialist-Democrats, and the United Christian Party ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews |
