"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the newspapers, nor did a stable-boy's story of hearing the dying man curse Anthony and all his works. But nevertheless the story of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread. Anthony heard it, and forgot it. But two days later he was dragged from his carriage by young Jim Doyle, returned for the older Doyle's funeral, and beaten insensible with the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked craftily askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature. Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What might not that portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him once more to the right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking, the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a friendly caress to seize ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... "Curse that fool Benson," he growled. "What the blazes is keeping him all this time? I had better go and hurry him up. If they've got hold of Archer, it's time we ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... conviction. It is overpowering when the moral conviction is tremendously felt. This was the secret of the eloquence of Lincoln, Beecher and Garrison, when they spoke of the wrong of slavery; and of John B. Gough, Neal Dow and Frances Willard, when they plead for an uprising against the curse of strong drink. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... matter,' for time is short, the fruit great, the evening shadows lengthening, the interests at stake all-important, and the Lord of the harvest will soon come to count our sheaves. Whatever work may be done without haste, God's cannot be, and a heavy curse falls on him who 'does the work of the Lord negligently.' The runner who keeps well on this side of fatigue, panting, and sweat, has little ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Moreover, it cannot be denied that the influence of the classical authors is in the highest degree moral, while, unfortunately, with the study of the natural sciences are associated the false and noxious doctrines which are the curse of our day." ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... I do indeed cordially congratulate you. God saw that your voice might possibly prove a snare and a curse, by ministering to false pride and exaggerated vanity, and in mercy and wisdom He temporarily deprived you of an instrument that threatened you with danger. Now that you are stronger, more prudent, and patient, He trusts you again with one of the choicest blessings that can be conferred ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... around the circle where they durst not kindle the usual camp-fire. In the morning the army had talked of nothing but spitting and devouring the whole French nation: in the evening everyone went about alone; nobody looked at his neighbour, or if he did, it was but to curse and swear. "At last," says Goethe, "I was called upon to speak, for I had been wont to enliven and amuse the troop with short sayings. This time I said, 'From this day forth, and from this place, a new era ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to speak so to a man who cannot even turn on his side to curse you for a base hound. You would not dare it but that you know I cannot ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... insult, and are governed by the despotism of one man, whose word is our law! And that man, they tell us, "is the right man in the right place. He will develop a Union sentiment among the people, if the thing can be done!" Come and see if he can! Hear the curse that arises from thousands of hearts at that man's name, and say if he will "speedily bring us to our senses." Will he accomplish it by love, tenderness, mercy, compassion? He might have done it; but did he try? When ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... loud curse of bewilderment he strode out, banging the door behind him. Isolde sprang to it, slipping the bolts with trembling fingers. Then she threw herself upon a couch and ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... cried he; "and an awful rage I am in. Why, I have been waiting twenty minutes. I don't care a curse ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Tow. Curse on my fond credulity, to think There could be faith or honour in the Dutch!— Farewell my Isabinda, and farewell, My much wronged countrymen! remember yet, That no unmanly weakness in your sufferings Disgrace the native honour of our isle: For you I mourn, grief for myself were vain; I have lost ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... said Larry, who didn't like being interrupted, with a fling of his head; "they shouldn't do it! I hear people shutting up when I come into the room—just as if I didn't jolly well know they were abusing the priests or something like that. And if they only knew it, I don't care a curse ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of the finest tracts of land have been forsaken, and given up to the untamed beasts of the jungle. The motives to industry have been destroyed. The soil seems to lie under a curse. Instead of yielding abundance for the wants of its own population, and the inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own children. It becomes the burying-place of millions, who die upon its bosom crying ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... turned out that all my labors were barely sufficient (sometimes not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of my residence in London. Gloomy indeed was my state of mind at that period, for though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, yet all availed me not, and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then undertook. One canopy of murky clouds brooded forever upon my spirits, which were in one uniformly low key ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... few men on the right side of sixty whose souls grow healthier in idleness. Although nature often recoils from it, man was made to work, and he who will not work calls down upon himself some curse, visible or invisible, as he who works, although the toil seem wasted, wakes up one day to find the arid wilderness where he wanders strown with a manna of blessing. This should be the prayer of all ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... future,—the geologic with the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian ages, and all together with that new heavens and new earth, the last of many creations, in which there shall be "no more death nor curse, but the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it, and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... too much confirmed—curse on this dry discourse. Come, here's to your mistress, you had one when you were living: not forgetting your ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Inquisition at Rome, accused of having asserted that the earth moves round the sun. He was declared to have brought upon himself the penalties of heresy. On his knees, with his hand on the Bible, he was compelled to abjure and curse the doctrine of the movement of the earth. What a spectacle! This venerable man, the most illustrious of his age, forced by the threat of death to deny facts which his judges as well as himself knew to be true! He was then committed to prison, treated with remorseless ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... consequence and the punishment of wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly innocent would jar on our sense of right, and could never produce a legitimate work of art. Even Oedipus suffers, not merely because he is under the curse of a higher power, but because he is wilful, and rushes upon his own fate. Timon suffers, not because he was generous and good, but from the defects of his qualities. So, in this play, each of the characters calls ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the right hand only? Why did the women veil themselves in his presence? And what was this Mother-goddess worship that seemed to require no more of its adherents than the inclusion of their deity's name in every curse, formal and profane? "Think what you please, but not too loud," Aaron cautioned himself, and carefully commenced to copy those Murnan speech-forms, gestures, and attitudes that did not conflict ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... I could help on this glorious time; and what happens? I am struck down by the hand of a friend in a miserable squabble; inglorious, farcical!—O Ireland, Ireland! the follies of your own children may be a greater curse to you in the days to come than have been the crimes of the stranger ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... the portion allotted to him. But after a few weeks of fatigue, such as they never before have known, of inconceivable suffering, of ruinous and almost useless labor, our colonists begin to complain of their trade; their condition seems hard to them; they curse their sad existence. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... and terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their decay than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, which rise up proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient art into palaces ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... dog-whips would make slender allowance for his vein of humour! But here, curse him! he is a sort of privileged nuisanceone of the last specimens of the old fashioned Scottish mendicant, who kept his rounds within a particular space, and was the news-carrier, the minstrel, and sometimes ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... household duties as usual, 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 ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... indicated by the prohibition of it so far as concerned all the sons—deformed births excepted—and at least the first daughter. Injurious, however, to the public weal as exposure might appear, the prohibition of it soon changed its form from that of legal punishment into that of religious curse; for the father was, above all, thoroughly and absolutely master in his household. The father of the household not only maintained the strictest discipline over its members, but he had the right and duty ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... people can hardly be overrated, and the Presbyterian Mission deserves great credit for having established the hospital; but it is a regrettable fact that all these efforts are not strong enough to counteract other effects of civilization, such as alcoholism, which is the curse of the native race, especially ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... to the place he saw the floating corpse; and he stopped a long while, and bewailed his son, and took him up, and went home. But he sent on his sailors toward the westward, and bound them by a mighty curse—'Bring back to me that dark witch- woman, that she may die a dreadful death. But if you return without her, you shall die by the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... fanciful and all that sort of thing. I know. I have heard others say the same. It's only a noise and nothing to be scared of. But then, when you come to think of it, most men are scared of noise. They're like animals in that respect. What is a curse but a noise? Yet most men are secretly afraid of curses. They're uneasy under them. Yet they know it's only noise. Then look at thunderings from the pulpit. Look at excommunications. Look at denunciations. All noises ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... said that they are right who swear there is a curse upon all property taken from the Church, and that the ban fell black and bitter upon Chilton Abbey," answered his lordship's grave deep voice from the end of the table, where he sat somewhat apart from the rest, gloomy and silent, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... no dread, And feel the curse to have no natural fear, Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes, Or lurking love of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cupidity, by encroachment, and, above all, by efforts to propagate the curse of slavery, is alike false to itself, to God, and to ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... aside, and the blow, aimed with a hearty curse at this provoking lump of deformity, fell with a murderous force upon a writhen stem, which bore witness to the willing disposition with which the stroke was dealt. Gregory was laughing and mocking all the while at the impotent ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... did fully believe that the religion of Jesus is the religion which the Church to-day preaches and pretends to practice. I do not believe in her heaven, her purgatory or her hell, nor do I believe that her Masses move God to release souls from torment. I do not believe in her powers to pardon and curse. I do not believe in her claims of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Virtue falls before its corrupting and seductive influence. Honor is tainted by it. Pride, pomp and power, are but the creatures of money, and which corrupt hearts and enslaved souls wield to the great annoyance—yea, curse ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... My curse comes fast. Unerring signs are seen In stars above us. There are gods who still Protect unhappy lovers: and our Queen Venus rains fire on ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... many more virtues claim a place in this bright choir? Prudence, gentleness, modesty of speech, and many another, circle round their queen, holy charity, who is indeed the life and soul of them all. Charity it is which bids us bless those who curse us, and pray for those who persecute us; and this same charity not unfrequently transforms our persecutors into protectors and changes slanderous tongues into trumpets to sound ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... his eyes very slowly (for they were heavy and dull like lead) and he looked at Gouvernail for some while as though not seeing him. Then by and by he said: "Gouvernail, what evil have I done that I should have so heavy a curse laid upon me?" Gouvernail said, still weeping: "Lord, thou hast done no ill, but art in all wise a very noble, honorable gentleman." "Alas!" quoth Sir Tristram, "I must unwittingly have done some great evil in God's sight, for certes the hand of God lieth ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... Dagoes that God A'mighty sent to curse this earth you, Macaroni, are the maddest. Why, man, folks can hear your yelling half the length of ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... so open-mouthed to all he said, that I was bound to let my elders choose for me. Let's go back; send over for any of the tribes; send to Spain for those Vandals—they have had enough of Adolf by now, curse him!—I'll warrant them; get together an army, and take Constantinople. I'll be Augustus, and Pelagia, Augusta; you and Smid here, the two Caesars; and we'll make the monk the chief of the eunuchs, eh?—anything you like for a quiet life; but up this ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... generally they cannot catch him, and often do not wish it. Most probably he belongs to some other tribe of the Narrinyeri. Messengers pass between the tribes relative to the affair, and the friends of the accused person at last formally curse the dead man and all his dead relatives. This constitutes a casus belli. Arrangements are forthwith made for a pitched battle, and the two tribes meet in company with their respective allies. The tribe to which ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... when he was a prisoner Wade Hampton's men had made him "get out of his coat, hat, and shoes," which they appropriated to themselves. He said Wade Hampton had seen them do it, and he had appealed to him personally for protection, as an officer, but Hampton answered him with a curse. I sent Duncan to General Kilpatrick, and heard afterward that Kilpatrick had applied to General Slocum for his prisoner, Colonel Rhett, whom he made march on foot the rest of the way to Goldsboro', ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... rajah. I was consulted on the subject whether I would meet them; and as I preferred a pacific to a hostile rencounter, and had, moreover, a considerable curiosity to see these roving gentry, I consented without hesitation. Reports—a greater curse in Malay countries than elsewhere—stated their object to be the capture of the Royalist, as they had, it was averred, received positive accounts of her having fifty lacks of dollars on board, and that her figure-head was of solid gold. As, however, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... manhood you have broken will loathe you and will be always brooding and scheming to strike a fresh blow. The children will be taught to curse you. The infant being moulded in the womb will have breathed into its starved body the vitality of hate. It is not they—it is you who are blind Samsons pulling down the pillars ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... friend, my complaint is quite of an opposite nature, and I have so many arrangements to make, so many difficulties to combat, so many enemies to deal with, that I am much of a General as will make me a historian of misfortunes, and nail my curse upon the ruins of what good soldiers are pleased to call the army in Virginia. There is an age past since I heard from you. I acknowledge that on my part, I have not written so often as I ought to have done, but you ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... written to Lady Ushant accepting the invitation. The twenty pounds too was forthcoming and the dress and the boots and the hat were bought. But while this was going on Mrs. Masters took care that there should be no comfort whatever around them and made every meal a separate curse to the unfortunate lawyer. She told him ten times a day that she had been a mother to his daughter, but declared that such a position was no longer possible to her as the girl had been taken altogether out of her hands. To Mary she hardly spoke at all ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... hand was held in a vice of iron. Now his numb arm gave way, slowly, inevitably. He ground his teeth and cursed. His curse was half a prayer. For answer there was the unearthly chuckle just below his ear. His hand was moved back, down, around! He was helpless as a child in the arms of its father—no, helpless as a sheep in the constricting ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... Julian said. "I do such a lot. The more you do, the less you feel. Damnable life! All cruelty. I can't feel satisfied. But there must be something; something I haven't tried. I must find it," he said, almost fiercely, and, stirring in a sudden energy, "I must find it—or—curse you, Val, why don't ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... found an asylum in Pompeii, offered a gladiator show to the hospitable little city. A number of people from Nocera had gone to the pageant, and a quarrel arose, probably owing to municipal rivalries, that eternal curse of Italy; from words they came to blows and volleys of stones, and even to slashing with swords. There were dead and wounded on both sides. The Nocera visitors, being less numerous, were beaten, and made complaint to Rome. The affair ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... and more, 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
... chief sinner is Adam. If the evil passions of the rebel Angels invented the pun, it was the pomposity of our father Adam that first brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading trees," speaks of the sun as "this diurnal star," and, studying protection against the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Sammy? Is that water you have there? Quick! Give me—what? There is none? Then why the—why the—" There came an abrupt pause; then a brief, dry chuckle that was like the crackling of flame through dead twigs. "Ah, I forgot. I mustn't curse. I've got to set the example to these children. But, O God, the heat ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... great smart, There he gave us out of his blessed heart The same sacrament in great torment. He sold them not to us, that Lord omnipotent; Therefore Saint Peter the Apostle doth say, That Jesus' curse hath all they, Which God their Saviour do buy or sell, Or they for any money do take or tell, Sinful priests giveth the sinners example bad, Their children sitteth by other men's fires, I have heard, And some haunteth women's company, With unclean life, as lusts of lechery; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... undifferentiated human theos, with his mana, his kratos and bia, his control of the weather, the rain and the thunder, the spring crops and the autumn floods; his knowledge of what was lawful and what was not, and his innate power to curse or to 'make dead'. Recent researches have shown us in abundance the early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and lightning and rain.[25:1] We have long known the king as possessor of Dike and Themis, of justice and tribal ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... said. "Nerves gone, looks gone. I told you Maggie would put a curse on you. What ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the Stocks; if he looks over the Advertisements, it is in Quest of some new Project; when he has finished his Enquiry, and mixes in Conversation, you hear him expatiate upon the Advantage of some favourite Project, or curse his Stars for missing the lucky Moment of buying as he intended at the Rise of the South-Sea. Another complains of the Roguery of some Broker or Director, whom he intrusted; this I have heard canvass'd over and over, with so many Aggravations of Meanness and Knavery ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... encouraged any of these people in such crimes? If you have so far forgotten yourselves, the commands of God, and the curse that awaits you and those who deceive themselves the same way; reflect, before it be too late, on the evil into which you have willingly, wilfully, and without the least reasonable excuse, fallen, and on the guilt that must of necessity attach to ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... languages!" said he to me in fairly good Punjabi. "Curse the day I ever saw India, and triple-curse this system of ours that enabled them to lay finger on me in a moving train and transfer me to this funeral procession! Curse you, and curse this train, and curse all Asia!" Then he thrust me in the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... Is there a moment in history more tragic than that? For the first time since the ages began, a hostile fleet was passing the ocean—the pioneer of how many more that have gone and are yet to go—the forerunner of how much glory and shame and misery! What wonder if the curse of God seemed upon it? Hardly had it lost sight of land when it was stricken with sickness. In a few days some three hundred men were dead, and numbers of others prostrate and useless; but in unshaken faith, and with reverent wonder at the inscrutable will of Heaven, Drake never flinched or paused. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... "And may God curse you for it! You have dared much, Lucy Munro, this hour. You have bearded a worse fury than the tiger thirsting after blood. What madness prompts you to this folly? You have heard me avow my utter, uncontrollable ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Ramman in high esteem. For him, Ramman is the god of battle who in companionship with Ishtar abets the king in his great undertakings. He addresses Ramman as the great lord of heaven, the lord of subterranean waters and of rain, whose curse is invoked against the one who sets aside the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar or who defaces the monument the king sets up. While acknowledging the supremacy of Marduk, upon whose appeal he proceeds to Babylonia to rid the country of its oppressors, Nebuchadnezzar nevertheless shows remarkable partiality ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... was as fat as a stage financier, paused here to gasp; for the utterance of this string of banalities, this rigmarole of commonplaces, had left him breathless. He was very much dissatisfied with his performance; and ready to curse his barren imagination. He longed to hit upon swelling phrases and natural and touching gestures, but in vain. He could only look at Mademoiselle de Guerchi with a miserable, heart-broken air. She remained quietly seated, with the same expression ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 'Squallinaders,' or 'Masquers,' perform their part during the livelong night with instruments 'harsh thunder grating,' to insure to the poor youth a sleepless night, and give him full time to con over and curse in his heart the miseries of a college existence. Our fellow-comrade is now up, dressed, and washed, perhaps two hours in advance of the first light of dawn, and, under the guidance of a posse comitatus of older students, is kindly ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Oct. 18th, Mr. Adrian Gilbert and John Davys reconcyled themselves to me, and disclosed some of Emery his most unhonest, hypocriticall, and devilish dealings and devises agaynst me and other, and likewise of that errant strompet her abominable wordes and dedes; and John Davis sayd that he might curse the tyme that ever he knew Emery, and so much followed his wicked cownsayle and advyse. So just is God! Oct. 31st, payed xxs. fyne for me and Jane my wife to the Lord of Wimbleton (the Quene), by goodman Burton of Putney, ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... apostles, to whom he was related. The king hailed him forth, and brought him to Tara for trial. Thereupon the whole Church of Ireland rose to a man against the mere layman, the king, who had dared thus defy the spiritual powers. They came to Tara in a body, fasted against him, and laid their heavy curse on him, on Tara, and, in the result, on the kingship.—"Alas!" said Dermot, "for the iniquitous contest that ye have waged against me, seeing that it is Ireland's good I pursue, and to preserve her discipline and royal ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... daughter said "Oh, sir, your tenderness towards me is like a sword to my heart; every word you say is like swords piercing my heart—much worse than if you were to be ever so angry. I must down on my knees and beg you will not curse me." ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... the primal curse because it brings forth thistles? So thinks the farmer, no doubt, but not the goldfinches which daintily feed among the fluffy seeds, nor the bees, nor the "painted lady," which may be seen in all parts of the world where ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... nothing about that, but I can say, Sexty, that our affairs are at an end. I'm very sorry for it, old boy. We ought to have made fortunes, but we didn't. As far as the work went, I did my best. Good-bye, old fellow. You'll do well some of these days yet, I don't doubt. Don't teach the bairns to curse me. As for Mrs. P. I have no hope there, I know." Then he went, leaving Sexty Parker ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... my mother," said Nick, with a bitterness I had not thought in him, "she is my mother, or I would curse her. For she has ruined my life and brought shame on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... no 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 for the pride of having their boy ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... daubs of mud marking every fence-post, far and 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
... "Curse this weather," the Lieutenant muttered, wrinkling his eyes in a vain endeavour to see through the murk. "We've been forty-eight hours on patrol, and now we're due to go into harbour this beastly fog comes down and delays us. It IS ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... ring you would come here, You must ring well with hand and ear; But if you ring in spur or hat, Fourpence always is due for that; But if a bell you overthrow, Sixpence is due before you go; But if you either swear or curse, Twelvepence is due; pull out your purse. Our laws are old, they are not new; Therefore the clerk must have his due. If to our laws you do consent, Then take a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... terrors of the plague. Oedipus informs them that he has despatched Creon (the brother of his wife Jocasta) to the Pythian god to know by what expiatory deed the city might be delivered from its curse. Scarce has he concluded, when Creon himself enters, and announces "glad tidings" in the explicit answer of the oracle. The god has declared—that a pollution had been bred in the land, and must be expelled the city—that Laius, the former king, had been murdered—and that his ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flask of whisky and, holding her to him, thrust it to her lips. And the thing which had been a curse to Bat Truxton, which had hurled him downward from his leadership of men, which had threatened to wreck the hopes of the Great Work, brought Argyl back from the last boundaries of the thing called Life, back from the misty frontiers of the thing called Death ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Hearken to me, Luis. It matters little, perhaps, whether I wear out the short remnant of my days in captivity or in exile; but my daughter, my pure, my beautiful Rita, what will become of her—alas! what has become of her? My soul is racked with anxiety on her account, and I curse the folly and imprudence that led me to re-enter this devoted land. My child—my poor child—can I forgive myself for perilling your defenceless ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... have urg'd (but 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 ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... meeting, refusing to allow him, their best friend, to explain to them the powers of the franchise. The condition of those workingmen was very little above that of slavery. Some of you may remember when George Thompson came over to this country and rebuked us for our crime and our curse of slavery, how the slaveholders and their abettors shouted back to Mr. Thompson, "Look at home, look into your mines and your factories, you ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... and he recognized the voice of Colonel Dabney, talking in his customary stern tone to the woman who served him. And, a moment afterwards, the coach drove away, and he actually heard the old dignitary lumbering up stairs, and bestowing a curse upon each particular step, as if that were the method to make them soften and become easier when he should come down again. "Pray, your worship," said the Doctor from above, "let me attend you ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... authorizing the suspicion of joys untold. He can forget his oaths of the day before, let the fire burn upon the hearth and the candle sink to its socket,—in short, go to sleep again in spite of pressing work. He can curse the expectant boots which stand holding their black mouths open at him and pricking up their ears. He can pretend not to see the steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam which has stolen through the curtains, can ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... of the most disastrous experience, instead of regarding it as a curse they should have ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and appalling," breaks forth old Wheeler, "the consideration that the intercourse of distant nations should have entailed upon these poor, untutored islanders a curse unprecedented, and unheard of, in ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... great deeds in its secret places, his contempt and scorn of all opposing influences. Do you remember how he defied a rain of blood which scared his courtiers? One of his friends has placed on record the opinion that if an angel from heaven bade Richard abandon his work he would have answered with a curse. Well, I am poor, and of slight consequence in the world to-day, but at least it has been vouchsafed me to understand what a strong man and a king can feel when there are those who would thwart his will. At present, I am powerless, as little able to give effect to my energies as Richard ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... "It is a curse, this want of money," he said. "It makes a man do base things that his soul revolts against." And then, in his restless moving, he absently picked up a volume of Aristotle, and his eye caught this sentence: "The courageous man therefore faces danger ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... its kind. It is a law that runs through all animal and vegetable life. Each family in the great world of living forms was created for a special purpose, and was intended to remain pure and distinctive until the termination of its mission. Whenever the family boundaries are overstepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon the generative functions, and the illegitimate product dies out, or subsides into hopeless degeneration. The mule is a monster, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... covered bosom tighter and tighter, while his form quivered with agony as he gave her a last, long embrace. Oh!" continued Redfeather, while his brow darkened, and his black eye flashed with an expression of fierceness that his young listeners had never seen before, "may the curse—" He paused. "God forgive them! How could ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... silver gong, two sticks of malachite with amethyst handles for holding incense at religious feasts, four beakers one foot high, each carved from a rose-quartz crystal; a little coffer carved out of two diamonds, and (had they but known it) the written curse of a priest. It was written on parchment in an unknown tongue, and had been slipped in with the loot ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... not, Faith, crumbs from my superfluity, like those that fell from the other rich man's table. Besides, of what avail will any charities, as you call them, of mine be? They will serve only to convey the curse that attaches itself to me. I tremble to think ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... know, and I feel it very deeply. But when your mother learns of our marriage, she will forgive you and put her curse on me. Whose burden will then be the heavier? However, it doesn't matter, because it's borne for your sake. And this much I know: that terrible struggles are awaiting you; that daring thoughts are growing in your mind; and that I can never share your struggle, never help ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... "I'm no better'n dirt, I suppose, though from the start she wasn' above robbin' me. Aw, she's sly ... Mr. Raymond, I'll curse her as she comes ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the abatement of this nuisance, which is fast assuming the proportions of a curse, is not in any church; for, despite the pleadings of the most devoted pastors, the church edifices are the chosen theatres of this display; it would seem rather to be in the infusion, by a more worthy education, of ideas which would enable woman to wield religion, morality, and common sense ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... speedy, and cleanly, and shall continue the practice of it. To church, and heard a good sermon of Mr. Woodcocke's at our church; only in his latter prayer for a woman in childbed, he prayed that God would deliver her from the hereditary curse of child-bearing, which seemed a pretty strange expression. Dined at home, and Mr. Creed with me. This day I had the first dish of pease I have had this year. After discourse he and I abroad, and walked up and down, and looked into many churches, among others Mr. Baxter's at Blackfryers. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... tae me that the general and his hoose were baith under some curse, and it was fit that that curse should fa' on them that had earned it, and no' on a righteous Presbyterian, wha had ever ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seemed to be shouting something in his ear. At that moment he recognised Wingate. He staggered up the farther side of the table towards him, butting into a waiter on the way and pausing for a moment to curse ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deep breath. Then he began to curse Neuman. All the rough years of his frontier life, as well as the quieter ones of his ranching days, found expression in the swift, thunderous roll of his terrible scorn. Every vile name that had ever been used by cowboy, outlaw, gambler, leaped to Anderson's stinging tongue. All the keen, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... one of the meekest, most ingenuous, purest, and loveliest, of her meek, ingenuous, pure, and lovely sex, crushed to the earth by the curse of a brutal, drunken father; and, I am resolute to see that this world, for once, afford some ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... enlightened, member of the Albanian Catholic clergy, had been compelled to remain for eight months in the church and its precincts, seeing that the Government was powerless to guarantee that he would not be overtaken by that national curse, the blood-vengeance. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... resolves. Those last had growth somewhat in this fashion: I had dawdled for two hours over coffee in the cafe—the room and the employment which had one-time brought me fortune—but was incapable of any thought of value. I could decide on nothing good. Indeed, I did naught save mentally curse those Washington revenue miscreants who, failing of blackmail, ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... moment the subject of anonymity,' said an eminent novelist, 'I think the great curse of all criticism is that of slating any book at all. Think of the unfortunate young man or woman first entering the paths of literature, and the great pain it causes them. You should encourage them, and not ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... is to be created," 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 have Peyrade's word ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... axe, indifferent, indomitable, superb, caught his wavering vision. And he felt a great envy of the man who could go down serenely to the dark gates of death. Surely Christ, and not he, Sturges Owen, had been moulded in such manner. And why not he? He felt dimly the curse of ancestry, the feebleness of spirit which had come down to him out of the past, and he felt an anger at the creative force, symbolize it as he would, which had formed him, its servant, so weakly. For even a stronger man, this anger and the stress of circumstance were sufficient to breed ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... At length, when I had made an uproar sufficient to alarm the entire village, the casement above the door slowly opened, and a head enveloped in a huge cotton nightcap—so, at least, it appeared to me from the size—protruded itself. After muttering a curse in about the most barbarous French I ever heard, he asked me what I wanted there; to which I replied, most nationally, by asking in return, where the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... away. A wave of superlative bitterness shook him, but he was too just to curse life, or anyone but himself. He did not even curse the worthless woman who had struck the curb from his inherited weakness and made him a slave instead of a rigid and insolent master. She had been no worse, hardly more captivating, than a thousand other women, but she had appealed ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... had started they heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse under his breath. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... common curse, Joyce. You and I may congratulate ourselves that we have not chose to encounter it. Joyce," she added, after a pause, "I trust there's no danger; I should not like ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... thoughts came to him, he would dig his nails into the palms of his hands, he would grit his teeth and curse the world. No, they should not conquer him! They should never bend him to their will! They might starve him, they might kill him—they might kill Corydon, also, but he would never give up! He would fight, and fight again, he would struggle to the last gasp—he would do his work, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... free-born Child! When the Frantic One fleets, While no force can withstand, Through the populous streets Whirling ghastly the brand; For the Element hates What Man's labour creates, And the work of his hand! Impartially out from the cloud, Or the curse or the blessing may fall! Benignantly out from the cloud Come the dews, the revivers of all! Avengingly our from the cloud Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball! Hark—a wail from the steeple!—aloud The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... men, sometimes silently, sometimes violently cursing their isolation, but always cursing it—afraid in their souls lest they fall to cursing one another aloud as they had begun to curse in ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... murders perpetrated upon them as he was 18 years before. He said that the Turks should go out as they did go out of Bulgaria "bag and baggage," and he denounced the government of the Sultan as "a disgrace to Mahomet, the prophet whom it professed to follow, a disgrace to civilization at large, and a curse to mankind." He contended that every nation had ever the right and the authority to act "on behalf of ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... country, or, like them, looked forward to the triumph of freedom, enlightenment, and justice. Now, indeed, in the end the old woman had won! But what did victory mean? Tears for her slighted affection, her rejected counsels, her ruined property; and she would rise and curse the sons who had deceived and plundered her, till a single glance from her elder daughter-in-law drove her back to the chimney corner, where she used to sit and pass her time in silent torpor, while this mood was upon her. Then she would sally out, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson |
