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More "Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... PEARLS, they signify CURSE OF ALA. But I no understand meaning, explanations, or signs. Must see the Dervish of Anghera—wise man and translate all. I take parchment to day and bring parchment to-morrow, and deceive not nor ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... 'Curse that fellow! I say, Rowland, I can't help it, it breaks my heart to see Netta as she is; and she will kill mother. As to father, there is no getting a civil word from him ever since the ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... slavery!—a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!—a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours,—I always felt it was,—I always thought so when I was a girl,—I thought so still more after I joined the church; but I thought ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... behind them whimpered . . . . The name was ringing like a knell in Hodder's head—Eldon Parr! Coming, as it had, like a curse from the lips of this wretched, half-demented creature, it filled his soul with dismay. And the accusation had in it the profound ring of truth. He was Eldon Parr's minister, and it was Eldon Parr who stood ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in 1830. He left Montenegro larger and stronger than he found it, for he had worked hard to unite the ever-quarrelling tribes by establishing laws to suppress blood-feuds. Inability to cohere is ever the curse of Slav lands. Only a strong autocrat has as yet welded them. Petar earned the fame ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... The curse pronounced on the serpent takes its habit and form as an emblem of the degradation of the personal tempter, and of the perennial antagonism between him and mankind, while even at that first hour of sin and retribution a gleam of hope, like the stray beam that steals through a gap in a thundercloud, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Joshua turned perfectly pale with rage, like the turkey cock when his wattles fade from scarlet into white. Before he could make any answer, however, Maqueda had vanished under the archway, so his only resource was to curse us, and especially Quick, who had caused him to fall from his horse. Unfortunately the Sergeant understood quite enough Arabic to be aware of the tenor of his remarks, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... was my state of mind at that period: for, though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, (sensible that all other efforts depended for their result upon this elementary effort, which was the conditio sine qua non for the rest), yet all availed me not; and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then undertook. Such was my frame of mind on reaching London: in fact it never varied. One canopy of murky clouds (a copy of that dun atmosphere which settles so often upon London) brooded for ever upon my spirits, which were in one uniformly low key of cheerless ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and which, on the 5th of May, 1836, in the Bay of San Sebastian, fired the first shot ever fired in battle from a warship under steam. She had been sold to the Spanish Government for use against the Carlists, who were the same sort of curse to Spain that the Stuarts were to Britain, and was then leading the British Auxiliary Steam Squadron under Commodore Henry. (The American Savannah is often said to have crossed the Atlantic under steam in 1819. But her log (ship's diary) proves that she steamed ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... and unmanly!—I should be ashamed to see her now.—I'll wait till her just resentment is abated—and when I distress her so again, may I lose her for ever! and be linked instead to some antique virago, whose gnawing passions, and long hoarded spleen, shall make me curse my folly half the day and all the ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... noxious influences under which too many of the children of the rich are so fatally reared. With every want gratified, pampered and fed to the very full, how often do we see them disappoint all the fond expectations of parents and friends, their money proving only a curse, while not unfrequently beggared in purse, and bankrupt in character, they prematurely sink to an ignoble or dishonored grave. Think of it, ye who are slaving in the service of Mammon, that ye may leave to your sons, the overgrown wealth which ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... present itself as the means of staving off so evil a day would be acceptable; and therefore he gave his sister the commission of making this second proposal to Miss Dunstable. In cursing the duke—for he did curse the duke lustily—it hardly occurred to him to think that, after all, the duke only asked for his own. As for Mrs. Harold Smith, whatever may be the view taken of her general character as a wife and a member of society, it must be admitted that as ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the waving palms, when desert winds do blow, In their dry rustling seem to sing a song he used to know; Or does he only curse the heat and wish that he were laid Beneath the spread of RUFUS' oaks ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... old body," said the man in black, "and little cares what her children say, provided they do her bidding. She knows several things, and amongst others, that no servants work so hard and faithfully as those who curse their masters at every stroke they do. She was not fool enough to be angry with the Miquelets of Alba, who renounced her, and called her 'puta' all the time they were cutting the throats of the Netherlanders. Now, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... such a refuge from the alarm of the enemy it must have proved a precious boon. Often were the pious band obliged to come early and lock themselves in to escape the fury of the mob, which would curse and mock without. But sometimes, unable to reach them or seriously to annoy them by their howlings, they would vent their spite upon the premises. Now it would be by breaking windows. Again, finding the windows guarded with thick board blinds, they would tear down fences, fill ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... expect? Not that little Tamerlane, as his father called him, should die just to be out of her path. It was no fault of his that he was his father's son, with—how could she doubt after what Sally had just said?—the curse of his father's form of manhood or beasthood upon him. And yet, might it not have been better that he should have died, the innocent child she knew him, than live to follow his father's footsteps? Better, best of all ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... out, "If he dies, then am I a traitor. May ten thousand devils tear me in pieces! Here, ye bloodhounds, take back your curse!" And flinging the blood-money at the feet of the priests, he flies from their presence, pursued by ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... instructions, and away they all went again to continue the hard, unvarying round of hauling and toiling and moiling, in heat and cold, wet and dry, with nothing to lighten the life or cheer the heart save a game at "crib" or "all fives," or a visit to the coper, that terrible curse ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... eye of Callum flashed delight upon a golden guinea, with which these last words were accompanied. He hastened, not without a curse on the intricacies of a Saxon breeches pocket, or SPLEUCHAN, as he called it, to deposit the treasure in his fob; and then, as if he conceived the benevolence called for some requital on his part, he gathered close up to Edward, with an expression of countenance peculiarly ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... actual battle is only a part. The curse goes far beyond the field of combat. The trampled dead and dying are but a tithe of the actual sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk—curse the man who brought thee up! Delcasse or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your guardian, who gave you to me for wife—what has your genealogy to do with this affront ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... bale it out than curse it," said Gaff sternly; for he felt that if there was to be anything attempted he ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the previous century, who in the intervals of war were disbanded and wandered about spending their pay, and thus constituted an excessively disintegrative element in the life of the time. A contemporary writer[13] describes them as the curse of Germany, and stigmatizes them as "unchristian, God-forsaken folk, whose hand is ever ready in striking, stabbing, robbing, burning, slaying, gaming, who delight in wine-bibbing, whoring, blaspheming, and in the making of widows ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... his literary ambition was a result of accidental necessity, and that had he lived as a boy in the society he was of as a very young man—for all its literary ornaments—we should have had of him only odes and songs. His generation was idler and took itself less seriously than ours. The primal curse was not imposed on everybody as a duty. In seven years of growing appreciation Congreve came to think the little graces and humours the better part. That I believe to have been the first cause of his early sterility; ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... like a flood that swallows everything that is not of faith. To avoid the curse we must hold on to the promise of ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... M'Adam screamed, his face dead-white save for the running red about his jaw. "Curse ye for a cowardly Englishman!" and, struggling to his feet, he ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... sure of it. But for that, he would certainly have come to the house, as he has done every evening for a month. Besides, he said so himself in the letter which he sent Dionysia by one of his tenants, and which she mentioned to you. He wrote, 'I curse from the bottom of my heart the business which prevents me from spending the evening with you; but I cannot possibly defer it any ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against! O God! O God, he is worse than a murderer! How can he answer it to his country? The blood of the slain is upon him, the curse of widows and orphans, the curse of Heaven." St. Clair came East to explain. Hobbling into Washington's presence, he grasped his hand in both his own and sobbed aloud. He was continued as governor, but had to resign his major-generalship, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... South Africa, and ask yourselves: Has the British Government been a blessing or a curse to this sub-continent? ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a curse, were probably arguing about "science and religion." But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing—he saw what was not there. He saw that Commandant O'Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... sense enough to think of that," said her husband. "The curse of their origin is on them, I suppose. I tried to imagine them when I was only fit to imagine a man hating a woman with ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... in the storm grew worse, The boldest heart did quail; The pious prayer—the wicked curse— Were mingled with the gale. On, on they flew, with fated force; They struck the deadly reef: They sank! and through the wind so hoarse Was heard ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Billee, "and it's going to be hard to beat that bunch. Well, maybe the curse has died out, but I'm afraid not—I'm afraid not," he added with an ominous shake of his head as he went to the corral to arrange about selecting the ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... sins, and condemned to eternal death; that they are enemies to, and at enmity with, God; that they have neither will nor power by nature to will and to do that which they ought, and which is well-pleasing to God; that they have forsaken God, and are under the curse of the law; and that they are the children, subjects, and servants of the devil, the world, and their own lusts; that God left not all men in this lost state and condition, but provided an all-sufficient remedy, namely, Jesus Christ, and ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... need, be the more ready, as actually happened, to use his pen in defence of authority. He had not compromised his independence and might fairly laugh at angry comments. "I wish," he said afterwards, "that my pension were twice as large, that they might make twice as much noise." "I cannot now curse the House of Hanover," was his phrase on another occasion: "but I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking King James's health, all amply overbalanced by three hundred ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... for a boy, but there is one touch true to life in it—which is the cursing. This must have come to me by revelation; and in after years in Cairo I never heard a native address another as "Afrit! Ya-hinzeer—wa Yahud—yin uldeen ak?"—"curse your religion!"—but I thought how marvellous it was that I, even in my infancy, had divined so well how they did it! However, now I come to think of it, I had the year before read Morier's "Haji-Baba" with great admiration, and I doubt ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... he was stricken to death, but he would not fall unavenged. With his great sword Hautclere he smote the Caliph on his head and cleft it to the teeth. "Curse on you, pagan. Neither your wife nor any woman in the land of your birth shall boast that you have taken a penny's worth from King Charles!" But to Roland he cried, "Come, comrade, help me; well I know that we two shall part in great sorrow ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... inadvertence suffered by the Puritan child. In truth, Solomon's unwholesome caution, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," was all too strictly observed in those conscience-ridden Puritan days. I had a child's lively disapproval of Solomon, since the curse of his sarcastic comment came down with the Puritan strain in my own blood, and I have a smarting ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... electors of the State "on its own merits." But however politicians may waver, our suffrage women must not have a doubt, but must persist in the demand for full recognition in both platforms. We must exact justice and if they do not give it, the curse be on their heads, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... his head; ever labouring to infuse fresh valour into his beaten, disheartened followers. That the governing party had any right to be in power, or possessed any virtue of any kind, or were, in fact, anything but an incubus and a curse to the Banda Oriental, she would not for one moment admit. To her mind her country always appeared like Andromeda bound on her rock and left weeping and desolate to be a prey to the abhorred Colorado monster; while ever to the deliverance ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... made his whole being tremble. He thought of what his boy had been to him; he thought of what he had been to his boy. He seemed to see his past life acted out before him in a moving picture, and in all he saw himself a curse and not a blessing—time, money, health, peace, character, soul, all squandered. And still the picture moved on, and passed into the future: he saw his utterly desolate home—no boy was there; he saw two ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... and the tree spreading from one side to the other], was the tree of life, producing twelve fruits, and yielding its fruit according to each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more: and they shall have no need of light of a lamp, and light of the sun; because the Lord God will give ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... to us to go on, and thundered out on her to take care what she was about and not be abusive; but this brought a fresh volley on him, heralded by a derisive laugh. 'Ha! ha! fine talking for the likes of you, Winslows that you are. But there's a curse on you all! The poor lady as was murdered won't let you be! Why, there's one of you, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dereliction of her penance would be accompanied with a curse upon her children may have impressed itself upon her mind. Mothers will understand better than other persons what this mother suffered from ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the sanction of his inflexible veracity, may be received as a striking instance of human insensibility and inconsideration. As he was passing by a fishmonger who was skinning an eel alive, he heard him 'curse it, because it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "A curse upon you, you who have plundered Tanith! Hatred, vengeance, massacre, and grief! May Gurzil, god of battles, rend you! may Mastiman, god of the dead, stifle you! and may the Other—he who ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... is the curse of kings to be attended By slaves, who take their humours for a warrant To break into the bloody house of life, And on the winking of authority To understand a law. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... easier to understand the second fact revealed to us. No sorrow there. "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. There shall be no more curse ... no pain, nor sorrow, nor crying, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." That is not hard to believe. Sin is the chief cause of our sorrow on earth. If there be no sin there; if all are ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... on that little trip without a good deal of moral cudgeling when it came to the point, although he threw down his scythe with a muttered curse on his lips for the man who was playing such ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... done. She wept, 'tis said, as it were without ceasing, from the time she left the gardens; but to the priest would answer never a word to all his threats, entreaties, or promises; except once, when that wicked minister said to her, 'that except she in reality and truth would curse Christ and sacrifice, he would report that she had done so, and so liberate her and return her to the palace:'—at which, 'tis said, that on the instant her tears ceased, her eyes flashed lightning, and with a voice, which took the terrific tones ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... innocence; he surveys them more in sorrow than in anger, while John is on fire with wrath and indignation, and hurls maledictions at him; but Ivan, poor Ivan, hurt beyond all hope or help, is utterly mute; he does not utter one word. Of what use is it to curse the murderer of his wife? It will not bring her back; he has no heart for cursing, he is too completely broken. Maren told me the first time she was brought into Louis's presence, her heart leaped so fast she could hardly breathe. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer to-day will curse to-morrow, only one thing endures—character!" These weighty words bid all remember that life's one task is the making of manhood. Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man. The forces that increase happiness ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... long arms in a fury of impatience. "God, have I killed every man of sense? Are you all gone mad? Silence! Do you hear? Silence! And let me hear what he has to say," with a movement towards Count Hannibal. "And look you, sirrah," he continued with a curse, "see that it be ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it: and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His face; and His names shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... the education of the future man and mother of men. In the child is seen the parent of other generations, one who, as he is well or ill-directed, will strengthen or weaken the great work of human happiness, bearing with him a blessing or a curse for the community. Therefore whatever may be the pains or expenditure required in the cure of incipient faults, as of incipient disease, we know that society will be repaid more than a thousand-fold in the happiness of its members, in evil prevented and good propagated, in the ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... to encourage me in what are called my vices? You may say what you please, my dear sir, but if that is the case, I had rather be a telegram from the seat of war than a reasonable and conscious character in a romance; nay, and I have a perfect right to repudiate, loathe, curse, and utterly condemn the ruffian who calls ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Madeira and the country which we are about to penetrate. This is one of the most delightful climates in the world, the west coast of Africa one of the worst. Once well in the interior, the swamp fevers, which are the curse of the shores, disappear, but African travelers are seldom long free from attacks of fever of one kind or the other. However, quinine does wonders, and we shall be far in the interior before the bad season ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... study and amusement that were to follow. Here again, the wisdom of nature's law of compensation was demonstrated. A grave question of the utmost importance to the progress of mankind was for them forever settled. The discovery had dawned on the minds of these people that labor, no longer a curse, was in reality ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... voices, the clink of coin, the loud laughter had ceased. There was a silence that manifestly had followed some unusual word or action sufficient to still the room. It was broken by a harsh curse and the scrape of a bench on the ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... responsibility, and no result followed, except his dismissal and the employment of another lad of more ability and probably less innocence. Captain Grant was the man most likely to have come to a discovery in the matter, and most heartily did he curse his luck—his "usual luck"—of giving away a fortune by selling a cargo a day too soon. But being kept at home by uncomfortable toes, no suspicious mortal, such as abound in the lounging-rooms of insurance-offices ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that bad happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make even people ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... bridges pointed to, Alice. The Moors are intellectual mummies." Allen carefully turned two pages, and encouraged by a nod of approval from Mrs. Gorham proceeded. "Why, Miss Gorham, if a Moor happens to sit down upon a tack he doesn't curse or swear or rail at fate; he simply murmurs, 'It is written,' and carefully replaces the tack for some ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the thoughts of Nat much of the time, and the first question for discussion was pretty thoroughly investigated before the time of the meeting. We do not know precisely what the question was, only that it was a common one, such as "Which is the greater curse to mankind, war or intemperance?" Suffice to say, that it was discussed on the evening appointed, in a manner that was creditable to all who participated, though the palm was readily conceded to Nat. The success of the first debate created a strong appetite for more, and from week ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... introductory in their nature. We felt that they were necessary to a history of the Colored race in the United States. We desired to explain and explode two erroneous ideas,—the curse of Canaan, and the theory that the Negro is a distinct species,—that were educated into our white countrymen during the long and starless night of the bondage of the Negro. It must appear patent to every honest student of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... own, and mother would turn me from her door if I brought her Bessie as my wife. As it is, I dread going to her with all these heavy bills. It was a foolish thing to bring Mrs. McPherson home, and I said so at the time. That woman has been a curse to every one with whom she ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... behind them, half a cry and half a curse, caused the two men to turn towards the door. There stood Ebenezer Brown, his accustomed pallor changed to ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... half-hour, that he had been vanquished. The little half-hour was expired, the lady and gentleman were taking their little dessert and half-cup of coffee, the note was paid, the horses were ordered, they would depart immediately; but, owing to an unhappy destiny and the curse of Heaven, they were not ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a curse been pronounced upon this city? What can be done? What are the magistrates ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... comin' w'en I shall lay down an' my stammerin' tongue goin' to lie silent in my head. I want a house not made with han's but eternal in the Heavens. That Man up there, is all I need; I'm goin' to still trus' Him. Before the comin' of Chris' men was kill' for His name sake; today they curse Him. It's nearly time for the world to come to en' for He said "bout two thousand years I shall come again" an' that time is ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... got into the Kaiser's people too: Prince Eugene is grown heavier with his drills than we ourselves. He is often three hours at it;—and the Kaiser's people curse us for the same, at a frightful rate. Adieu. If the Devil don't get thee, he ought. Therefore VALE. [OEuvres de Frederic, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and others of their ilk, to know that their able, and in some case, unwitting allies in America, who condone Bolshevist atrocities, apologize for Soviet shortcomings, appear before Congressional committees and other agencies and contribute weak attempts at defense of this Red curse are ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... association it may be felt as a good in itself, and be desired as intensely as any other good; with this superiority over money, power, or fame, that it makes the individual a blessing to society, while these others may make him a curse. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... again Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron, to ask their forgiveness, both for his sin against the Lord God, in not having hearkened unto His word, and for his sin against them, in having chased them forth and intended to curse them. Moses, as before, prayed to God in Pharaoh's behalf, and his petition was granted, the plague was taken away, and in a rather surprising manner. When the swarms of locusts began to darken the land, the Egyptians caught them and preserved them ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... heard the mate—it must have been like the first time woman ever heard man—curse and swear, she turned pale, and ran quickly, quickly into the saloon, and—came out again? No, indeed! not with all the soul she had to save, and all the other sins on her conscience. She shook her head resolutely, and was ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... captain stepped up to her with a smothered curse so that she moved back, frightened. But he did nothing. He was too enraged to speak. She was a woman, and he could not strike her to the ground. Before her sallow venom he was helpless. He was a man and she was a woman, and he ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... and thy praying and thy almsgiving, God knows it was an ill day when I set eyes on that fair face of thine!" Yet this was in no way his true thought, for in spite of his lower nature the Count loved her, but it is ever the curse of anger in a man that it shall wreak itself most despitefully on his nearest and best. And Itha, who had learned this in the school of long-suffering, answered never a word, but only prayed the more ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... and, indeed, cruel to the poor infant not yet born, who you cannot think of with any patience, if you have the common affection of a mother, and not do that for it which should at once place it on a level with the rest of the world, and not leave it to curse its parents for what also we ought to be ashamed of. I cannot, therefore," says he, "but beg and entreat you, as you are a Christian and a mother, not to let the innocent lamb you go with be ruined before it is born, and leave it to curse ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... one curse," observed Harman, "worse than another on any such property, it is to have for your agent an outrageous partisan—a man who is friendly to one party and inimical to another—a fellow who scruples not to avail himself ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... earnest love and of earnest hatred, and that meanness which made it necessary to him to have a master. In truth, what the planters of Carolina and Louisiana say of black men with flat noses and woolly hair was strictly true of Barere. The curse of Canaan was upon him. He was born a slave. Baseness was an instinct in him. The impulse which drove him from a party in adversity to a party in prosperity was as irresistible as that which drives the cuckoo and the swallow towards the sun when the dark and cold ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the sultry plain of Bengal. God made this river to be a blessing, but man has turned it into a curse. The Hindoos say the River Ganges is the goddess Gunga; and they flock from all parts of India to worship her. When they reach the river they bathe in it, and fancy they have washed away all their sins. They carry away large bottles of the sacred water for their friends ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... fool and a liar!" she answered contemptuously. "You will love her all your days, and you know it. You will grow to curse the memory of this hour in which you threw away the only chance you will ever have of winning her. The only chance, mind, I will answer for that. I wish you good-evening, Mr. Greatson. You are excused. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... most clearly proved, to be burnt. All had been equally guilty, but one example was deemed sufficient on the present occasion. Our poor musicians felt severely the want of the feasts they had been used to in Spain, and their harmony was now stopt, except one fellow; but the soldiers used to curse him, saying they wanted maize not music. It may be asked, how we did not lay our hands on the herd of swine belonging to Cortes in our present state of starvation? But these were out of sight, and the steward alleged they had been devoured ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... did not shrink from inflicting penalties, the very mention of which makes the blood run cold. Suspecting, if not alternately envying and despising, all women who were not nuns; writing openly of the whole sex (until unsexed) as the snare and curse of mankind; and possessed by a Manichaean belief in the power and presence of innumerable demons, whose especial victims were women; they erected witch-hunting into a science; they pandered to, and actually formalized, and justified on scientific grounds, the most cruel and cowardly ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... stand a trial for sacrilege. Such an offence—penetrating in disguise into the house of the Pontifex Maximus, when his wife was engaged in the secret rites of the Bona Dea—would place him under a curse, and not only prevent his entering upon his quaestorship, but would disfranchise and politically ruin him. Clodius would seem not to have been a person of sufficient character or importance to make this trial a political event. But not only had he powerful backers, but his opponents ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the words used for cursing anything. These were simply 'A Pox take it', the curse being supposed to take effect at once. If the curse were pronounced over an image of a person the words were 'A Pox on thee, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... curtains with his left hand and backed slowly out facing them, the deadly revolver shining ominously in the other. Not a man moved: Slavin glowered at him from the floor, an impotent curse upon his lips. Then the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... undoubtedly proved the most destructive canker of the Roman state. It destroyed its vitality. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse, destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest labor, making men timorous yet cruel, idle, frivolous, weak, dependent, powerless. The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this incubus, the standing disgrace of the pagan world. Paganism never recognized what is most ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... knowing 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 ribs again, as if ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... disappointment. I was fortunate in Mr. Bolton's acquaintance, passing my time very agreeably at his hospitable mansion; but those who, in such a case, should find a Waterford inn their resource, would curse the Tyrone, and set off for Dublin. The expenses of this passage are higher than those from Dublin to ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... corruption of the first agent, the revolutionary machinations of others, and the incomprehensible acquiescence of the only honest man who has assented to it. I wish that his honesty and his political errors may not furnish a second occasion to exclaim, 'curse on his virtues, they have ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... since it is the will of the stars I should be thus tormented. This is the effect of the malicious conjunctions and oppositions in the third house of my nativity; there the curse of kindred was foretold. But I will have my doors locked up;—I'll punish you: not a man shall ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is,—what do you suppose?—"He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... eloquence of his could induce the widow to relinquish her resolution, took her message to the Squire. Mr. Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal to make the amende honorable to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son. It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle, since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent his "Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and brusque ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... moving object approaching her, nearer and nearer—it seemed to be groping in search of her—and her blood froze with horror when at last a cold hand touched her cheek, and she beheld a pair of eyes glaring at her through the gloom. A low, mocking laugh—a whispered curse—and the object glided away; then ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... independence, young men, full of adventurous spirit, proceed in search of new fields of labour, where they may reap at once the enjoyments of domestic life, whilst they industriously work out the curse that hangs over the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... castle, which owned every cottage and all the surrounding land, and where one single day of feasting would have nourished for a mouth all the poor inhabitants of the parish, not one child was given to partake of the plenty. The curse of barrenness was on the family of the lord of the manor, the curse of fruitfulness ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... strait it came with strong force while I look up angry to the gallary. Befor I come to your country I worship the Scotland of my books, my 'Waverly Novel,' you know, but now I dwell here since six months, in all parts, the picture change. I now know of the bad smell, the oath and curse of God's name, the wisky drink and the rudeness. You have much money here, but you want what money can not buye—heart cultivating that makes respect for gentle things. O! to be spit in the eye in one half million of peopled town. Let me no longer be ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... me, and thou shalt have the curse of the head of thine house. Had thy voice not become so strangely like my father's, I had never ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his brain. The light behind them, streaming in through the open door, confused him, made him feel as though this were all a trick of the nerves, a kind of chaotic nightmare; and with a muttered curse at his own folly in imagining for one moment that Iris Wayne herself stood before him, he fell back on the couch and closed ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... us draw the curtain close before that Sunday afternoon at Stiffner's, and hold it tight. Behind it the great curse of the West is in evidence, the chief trouble of unionism—drink, in its most selfish, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... was his curse;— Is there a vice can plague us worse? The wretch who digs the mine for bread, Or ploughs, that others may be fed, Feels less fatigue than that decreed To him who cannot think ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... that Mutty Loll, too, high caste; that Circar Brahmin,—Kooleen Brahmin,—all same Swamy (god); that Circar foot all same Baboo head; that Circar shoe all same Baboo turban. 'Spose Baboo not make that Circar bhote-btote salaam, that Circar say curse, that Circar ispeak jou-jehannam (go to hell). Master und-istand i-me? I ispeak ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... not to know how to possess that noblest of blessings, it ought not on that account to be proscribed from the face of the earth. When the sun disappears from the horizon of the Northern regions, the inhabitants of those countries do not curse his rays, because they are still shining upon others more favored ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... surprised to hear his words repeated, the Yankee lost somewhat of his confidence as he replied, "well now sure-LY, you officers didn't think nothin' o' that—I expect I was in a mighty rage to find my small bore gone, and I did curse a little hearty, to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... personages, its daily chances of battle and danger, its hairbreadth escapes, its strange encounters, its prevailing anarchy and violence, its normal absence of order and law—as he had continually and customarily before him in Ireland. "The curse of God was so great," writes John Hooker, a contemporary, "and the land so barren both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score miles, he should not ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... committed. It is ardent spirits that fill our 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
... kindness with ingratitude, I would follow you through every danger, and, in studying to 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, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... said, "money is a curse. It has been a curse to me. If I have had my fun, God knows I have paid ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... wastefull vengeance That shall flye with them: for many a thousand widows Shall this his Mocke, mocke out of their deer husbands; Mocke mothers from their sonnes, mock Castles downe: And some are yet vngotten and vnborne, That shal haue cause to curse the Dolphins scorne. But this lyes all within the wil of God, To whom I do appeale, and in whose name Tel you the Dolphin, I am comming on, To venge me as I may, and to put forth My rightfull hand ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... crimes that are difficult of detection and uncertain of punishment. He that has obliterated his neighbor's brand or misapplied his own, is held as, in the age of tribal government and ownership, was held the remover of his neighbor's landmarks. A word goes forth against him potent as the levitical curse, and all the people ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... in love even than the princess, thought to himself, "There surely must be some reason for this very sudden attraction which I feel towards her. She must have been my beloved wife in a former existence. Perhaps a curse was laid upon us; and now that is removed. If so, the recognition ought to be mutual; at all events I will try what I can do to produce the same feeling in her which ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... it," he insisted, a little doggedly. "I have spent too many of my years on the treadmill. A man was born to be either an egoist and parcel out the earth according to his tastes, or to develop like Dartrey into a dreamer.—Curse you!" he added, suddenly shaking his fist at the tall towers of the Houses of Parliament. "You're like an infernal boarding-school, with your detentions and impositions and castigations. There must be ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never do that,' she said. 'He is under some curse, I think. He complains he is forever doomed to be under the influence of inferior women. Inferior women are quite a hobby of his.' I remarked that she seemed to know him very well and her eyes became dead blank again. I asked ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... they prayed and trembled. Father Mathias gave them absolution; some cried like children, some tore their hair, some cursed, and cursed the saints they had but the day before invoked. But Amine stood unmoved; and as she heard them curse, she ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace! Pardon, ye demigods, for I am only a child who suffers. But while I write all this I can not but curse you. Why did you not sing of the perfume of flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, of the vine and the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty? You must have understood life, you must have suffered; the world was crumbling to pieces about you; you wept on its ruins and you despaired; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Sturge, "and custalorum. He'll make a Star-Chamber matter of it. . . . The poor fellow's raving, I tell you. A curse on your inhumanity! But I can wait for my revenge at Portsmouth. Approach, fellows, and knock off ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no length of time, Will I be won; but, with my latest breath, I'll curse thee here, and haunt thee after death. [Exit ABEN. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... alone gazing sadly after her. Was this his father's curse—that all who loved him must reap pain and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... prospect of the immediate annexation of Texas as a slave State. This did not take place until nine years later, but the propaganda, the object of which was the extension of slave territory, could not be maintained by those Who contended that slavery was a curse to the country. Virginia, therefore, and other border slave States, as they became committed to the policy of expansion, ceased to tolerate official public utterances ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... to the edge of her carefully smoothed blue serge skirt. You would have said never a care, much less a sorrow, had shadowed her dawning life. And that is what it means to be young—and free from the curse of self-pity, and ignorant of life's saddest truth, that future and past are not two contrasts; one is surely bright and the other is sober, but they are parts of a continuous fabric woven of the same threads and into the same ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... seen that peculiar look but on three or four occasions similar to the one I am narrating, when I knew he was pondering upon the baleful curse that had cast its withering blight upon all around, until the manhood and humanity were crushed out of the people, and outrages such as the above were looked upon with complacency, and the perpetrators treated as respected and worthy citizens,—and that he was realizing the great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have cursed thee, their curse should fructify. Thou shouldst not do anything that may have the effect of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Gilfoil's place. The chief had a deluded notion that the major could circulate on a roving commission and pick up spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once anyway, was a convention wherein there were no spicy bits of gossip to be picked up—curse words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words, but not gossip—everything focused and was summed up in the one main point: Should the majority rule the machine or should the machine rule the majority? So the major sat there at the far inside corner of the table doing nothing at all—Devore ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... monument is shown, Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone! Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays, And smears his tombstone, as he marr'd his plays. R. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... to be really good. The boy has a smattering of English and French, and says he has been at school. I have never seen any sign of a school in any of the villages so far. He says "the English soldier drink, drink, he no good," and shakes his head, as though the national curse would end in our losing the war. We discovered in a corner four barrels of mysterious looking stuff that attracted flies. These were full of cheese floating in water, little more than stiff curd, but palatable, and this along with biscuits ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... have destroyed her father's enemies during her nocturnal metamorphoses. In Ireland, too, are many legends of werwolves; and it is said of at least some half-dozen of the old families that at some period—as the result of a curse—each member of the clan was doomed to be a wolf for ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Pleasure, Shall at home engross my Leisure; Farewel London, I'll repair, To my Native Country Air: I leave all thy Pleasures behind me, But at home my Wife will find me; Oh the Gods! 'tis ten times worse, London is a milder Curse. ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... dear Edgar, in having found the woman you have always dreamed of and hoped for; you will have all the charms of love without its troubles; it is folly to believe that love is strengthened by its own torments and stimulated by sorrows. A storm is only admired by those on shore; the suffering sailors curse the raging sea ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... opportune, for this Continent is threatened with permanent and peculiar danger, produced by the feudal condition of women. I allude to the increasing curse of Mormonism, a consequence of woman's legalized inferiority or nonentity. With power from your local situation and undoubted sphere, to influence, for all time, the destiny of every civilized country, the members of your Convention, conscious of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... almost entirely superseded the Bertillon system throughout the world, and there is little doubt that it will ultimately become universal. Thousands of criminals who would otherwise have escaped a full measure of punishment for their misdeeds curse its author. It is in this department that police science has been brought to its highest pitch of ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... He repeated the curse at intervals till he reached his rooms, the hateful rooms that he rarely visited at this hour of the day. He was not, however, thinking of their hatefulness now, as he had come ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... orphan's curse drag you down to the hell you merit," is Natalie's last word as she walks swiftly out of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... leaning defiantly upon his 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. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... beside her husband's grave, in Bridlington Priory Church yard, and she said to a hundred people there: 'Here lies my husband, foully murdered. The coroner's jury have brought their verdict against Robin Lyth the smuggler. Robin Lyth is as innocent as I am. I know who did it, and time will show. My curse is upon him; and my eyes are on him now.' Then she fell down in a fit, and the Preventive men, who were drawn up in a row, came and carried her away. Did anybody tell you, darling? Perhaps they keep ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the hunchback with dignity. "It was but a manifestation of the wanderlust, at once the curse and the blessing of my misshapen existence. Behold in me, sir, the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... gave Anizy to his nephew St.-Genebaud, the first bishop of Laon, to be held and the revenues thereof to be applied by the bishops of Laon for ever to the benefit of the poor of that diocese. He coupled the gift with a solemn curse and anathema upon all who should ever disturb or misapply the donation. From that time to 1789 Anizy was a lordship of the bishops of Laon, who in time were made dukes ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... subject before them, they should proceed earnestly, and with little delay, to mature some measure which would meet the demand of the people. "Let us tolerate no further procrastination," said he; "and while we justly hold the President responsible for the trouble and mal-administration which now curse the South and disturb the peace of the country, let us remember that the national odium already perpetually linked with the name of Andrew Johnson will be shared by us if we fail in the great duty which is now ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the pleasures which had been the passing extravaganza of relief, from dull lives elsewhere. The Parisienne of that Paris spent a thousand francs to get her pet dog safely away to Marseilles. Politicians of a craven type, who are the curse of all democracies, had gone to keep her company, leaving Paris cleaner than ever she was after the streets had had their morning bath on a spring day when the horse chestnuts were in bloom and madame was arranging her early editions on the table of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... were received, sheltered, sent to Industrial Homes, or returned to friends and parents; that temperance meetings were held, and drunkards, male and female, sought out, prayed for, lovingly reasoned with, and reclaimed from this perhaps the greatest curse of the land; that Juvenile Bands of Hope were formed, on the ground of prevention being better than cure; that lodging-houses, where the poorest of the poor, and the lowest of the low do congregate, were visited, and the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... purpose taking to new homes in a distant land, that they may never disgrace the Home they have been sheltered in; and for those who have been torn away from us, that they may be preserved from temptation, and from becoming a curse. Then shall we joyfully take them forth, and in God's good time return, and again fill up this spacious Home, and feel it the greatest privilege of our life to labour among the poor neglected little ones of the streets of these large cities. Share then ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... patiently waiting to meet her, Till I'm thoroughly sick of this gloom; It is ten by my Benson repeater— It was six when I entered the room! But I must not begin to grow weary, And to stamp, and to fret, and to curse! The surroundings are certainly dreary, But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... her when that race-week was over. In one sense it was not her fault if we were; for a girl more thoroughly free from every species of coquetry, and with less of that pitiful ambition of making conquests, which is the curse of half the sex, it was impossible to meet with. But she was to blame for it too, in another way; for to know her, and not love her, would have been a reproach to any man. Lively and good-humoured, with an unaffected buoyancy of spirits, interesting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... The passengers from the New England States and those from the South got into a discussion on the subject of slavery, which lasted three days. The Southerners were finally worsted, and when their arguments were exhausted, they fell back on the old story, by saying: "Oh! curse a nigger, he ain't half human anyhow; he had no business to be a nigger, etc." One of the gentlemen then turned to the Irish judge, and asked his opinion of the merits of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... man of strong animal passions. When I see red, I daresay I'm just a brute beast. But I'm a physical coward. Owing to this paralysis of fear, this ghastly inhibition of muscular or nervous action, I have gone through things even worse than that South-African business. I go about like a man under a curse. Even out there, when I don't care a damn whether I live or die, the blasted thing gets hold of me." He swung himself away from the table and shook his great clenched firsts. "By the grace of God, no one yet has seemed to notice it. I suppose I have a swift brain and as soon as the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... "I choke! Do you not see how they look at us, at us Huguenots, in the street? How they, who live here, point at us and curse us? How the very dogs scent us out and snarl at our heels, and the babes cross themselves when we go by? Can you see the Place des Gastines and not think what stood there? Can you pass the Greve at night and not ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of alcohol in any form with opium-eaters undergoing cure is worse than useless, almost invariably redoubling their suffering from loss of opium, and frequently rendering the craving for a return to their curse an incontrollable agony. I therefore leave it entirely out, alike of my pharmacopia and my ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... violently. It seemed that he did see her, for he moved a step or two in her direction. Then he stopped, to curse, and the rage that leaped into the heavy voice ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... over, is the emblem of three things—ignorance, impurity, sorrow. And all men who are rent away from Jesus Christ, or on whom His beams have not yet fallen, this text tells us, have that triple curse lying upon them. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... And feel the curse to have no natural fear, Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes, Or lurking love ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to us to commit suicide in order to spite another. But in China such suicides occur every day, because it is believed that a death on the premises is a lasting curse to the owner. And so the Chinese drowns himself in his enemy's well or takes poison on his foe's door-step. Only a few months ago, a rich Chinese murdered an employee in a British colony, and knowing that inexorable British law ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... over. It's your affair, you know." And Peter went away, leaving Hugo to curse and bite his nails in impotent rage. Peter really was far ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... a necessity that all who turned aside from it and attempted to forget it were justly despised by their fellows and were some of them money-makers, some of them sybarites, but all of them perverted men, whose hard eyes, weak mouths, and fear of every trial sufficiently proved the curse that was upon them. I told him as heatedly as one can speak lying back in a canoe to a man beyond a little river that he, being older than I, should know that everything in a full man tended towards some place where ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... a mere child for a companion.' And then he uttered an exclamation of terror, and sprang forward—and I know nothing clearly that followed. I saw him drag that old woman fairly from under the horses' feet. I heard the driver curse, and saw him strike his frightened horses, and they reared and plunged, and I saw him fall; but it all seemed to happen in one second of time—and how I got him home, and got Dr. Archer, and kept it from Abbie, I don't seem to know. Oh ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... in the words of the Most High, as recorded by the prophet: "Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark; and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?" (Is. xxix: 15.) Those on whom a divine curse is thus pronounced are described as endeavoring to hide their works in the dark. This description applies, most assuredly, to those associations which meet only at night, and in rooms with darkened windows, and which require their members solemnly to promise or swear that they will ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... the imputation of the sin of our first parents to their posterity, any further than as some way the cause or occasion of man's mortality, seems almost entirely groundless; and that both man, and the other subordinate creatures, are hereafter to be delivered from the curse then brought upon them, and at last to be delivered from that bondage of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... greater curse than the thief, for he simulates a virtue to which the latter makes no pretension. The book-plate of a certain French collector bore this text from the parable of the Ten Virgins: 'Go ye rather to them that ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... for those still living. Among the many tokens of good will from all parts of the country and beyond the sea, there were some curious and amazing missives. One Southern woman took the occasion to include me in her curse of the 'mean, hateful Yankees.' To offset this, I had a telegram from the Southern Forestry Congress assembled in Florida, signed by president and secretary, informing me that 'In remembrance of your birthday, we have ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... for their country; but there are many aged men who, like myself, cannot fight, there are many women whose husbands are away in Gamala or Jerusalem, and these may not be able to afford to assist others. Therefore, it is well that you should have means of paying for what you require; otherwise the curse of the widow and ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... dog-hole so hot, we were obliged to open the window!—And as for accommodation—I recollect I had to borrow two nasty chairs from the people below, who on the next Sunday borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!—Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... highest reason. Men woefully deceive themselves, yearning for women whose image in their minds is a mere illusion, women who scarce for a day could bring them happiness, and whose companionship through life would become a curse. Be it so; Piers knew it, dwelt upon it as a perilous fact; it had no application to his love for Irene Derwent. Indeed, Piers was rich in that least common form of intelligence—the intelligence of the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Rajpoot in Mahona; and the present Rajah—Jode Sing—is her son. Gunga Buksh is a Pausee, but the family call themselves Rawats, and are considered to be Rajpoots, since they have acquired landed possessions by the murder and ruin of the old proprietors. They all delight in murder and rapine—the curse of God is upon them, sir, for the murder of their ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Coriander, have you? No? Well, you have not seen the loveliest and best girl in the world, then. But, as I was saying, old Coriander was preparing for a year's campaign in this city, and allotted a great deal on a real, live gorilla which had been captured in the wilds of Africa somewhere. Oh, curse that gorilla; I wish I had been dead before I ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... so angry in his sermon that he afterwards forgot the Lord's Prayer. He urged that "this had happened some time ago." III. When some women went out after the sermon, he called after them, and told them that if they would not stop to receive the blessing they would have his curse; "not guilty." IV. He had cohabited with a servant girl, and an illegitimate child was born; "others do the same thing." V. He forgot the cup at the communion; "that happened long ago." VI. He said to the officer, "All are ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Indian or a pirate, creeping through the jungle to the sack of a treasure train. So I wormed on towards the noise. As I came near to it, I went more cautiously, because in one of the pauses of the noise, I heard a muttered curse, which told me that the unseen noise-maker was a man. If I had been wise I should have stopped there; for I had learned all that I came out to learn. But I was excited now. I wished to see everything, before creeping away unseen ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... can make is the kindness and affection of his own family; command and fear are no longer his weapons. Such an one I have known who, having been very imperious in his youth, when he came to be old, though he might have lived at his full ease, would ever strike, rant, swear, and curse: the most violent householder in France: fretting himself with unnecessary suspicion and vigilance. And all this rumble and clutter but to make his family cheat him the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his very purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of the old Scriptual prophecy—"Babylon is fallen—is fallen! Her princes, her wise men, her captains, her rulers, and her mighty men shall sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, saith the King who is the Lord of Hosts." And truly it seemed as if the curse which had blighted the city's bygone splendor had doomed even its ruins to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... will no longer be the synonym of treason and betrayal—his name will be rescued from the infamy each passing year of the existence of our country has heaped upon it, and the Copperheads of the present day will receive the anathemas of all coming generations, till their very names shall be a curse too horrid for mortals to apply, and thenceforth be only echoed in the lowest ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... patriarch of the fishing-fleet and local preacher on Sundays. Some of the younger men grumbled that "there was no tellin': the season had been tricky from the start." The spider-crabs—that are the curse of inshore trammels—had lingered for a good three weeks past the date when by all rights they were due to sheer off. Then a host of spur-dogs had invaded the whiting-grounds, preying so gluttonously on the hooked ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... have gone down, down, until I can scarce make a living as a draughtsman in a shop. The curse of monopoly has caused my ruin. I did not succumb to fair competition. I am now enlisted in a fight against the usurpers of the free rights of the people, and I declare to you all, that I am in this fight in dead earnest. ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... light grew sweet for me, Once more grew fair the fields and valley streams, I thought with how small profit men take heed To worship with bowed heads, and suppliant hands, And sacrifice, the everlasting gods, Who take small thought of them to curse or bless, Girt with their purples of perpetual peace! Thus blindly deemed I of them;—yet—and yet— Have late well learned their hate is swift as fire, Be one so wretched to encounter it; Ay, have I seen a multitude of good deeds Fly up ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and order the invalid to go into the country for a change of air? The old man will be sure to send my cousin to live in the pavilion, which is at the bottom of our garden. In that way you will be able to see her, unknown to our uncle, and marry her; then let him and Villebrequin curse ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... elementals who live in the hidden waters: they rule the dreaming heart: their curse is forgetfulness; they lull man to fatal rest, with drowsy fingers feeling to put out his fire of life. But the most of all, dread the powers that move in air; their nature is desire unquenchable; their destiny is—never ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... peace.' Then blushed King Halfdan deep, and drew his gauntlet off, And long-divided hands now firmly clasped each other, A mighty pressure, steadfast as the mountain's base. The old man then absolved him from the curse which lay Upon the Varg i Veum,[1] on the outlawed man. And as he spake the words, fair Ingeborg came in, Arrayed in bridal dress, and followed by fair maids, E'en as the stars escort the moon in heaven's vault. Whilst tears suffused her soft and lovely eyes, she fell Into ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... and I must love the little turreted city for other less intrinsic recollections. Thither came to see me the learned and modest Bekker; and it was there, after several delightful rambles, I said farewell to Southey." Often have I heard Landor express his great liking for "The Curse of Kehama." One may obtain an idea of how this admiration was reciprocated, from Southey's criticism on "Gebir," in the Critical Review for September, 1799. Of Gebir's speech to the Gadites, he says: "A passage more truly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... cruel white monsters! plague poison their breath, And sleep never visit the place of their bed! On their children and wives, on their life and their death, Abide still the curse of an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... To bring that up against me! To turn from me! When you need never have known. (Under a grinding, agonized breath.) Curse her! ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... of the dairying that he positively gloried in was going to town with the butter. He frequently remained in for two or three days, as often as not spending all the money he got for the butter in a drunken spree. Then he would return to curse his luck because his dairy did not pay as well as those ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... forest is getting something too hot for us. Tyrrel has decreed that we must go elsewhere, where we are less known. It would be a thousand pities to go without this treasure, since it really lies beneath our hand. A curse upon Long Robin, say I, for keeping it hid all these years! It was a scurvy trick! and Miriam was privy to it. I will raise no hand to help her. She may die with her vow unfulfilled for all I care. Had she but acted fairly by us, then would we have given yon ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... window!" snapped Charolais. "Do you want to be recognized, you great idiot?" Then he added, more quietly, "They're still there all right, curse them, in front of the ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... River alone is estimated to transport yearly four hundred million tons of sediment, or about twice the amount of material to be excavated from the Panama Canal. This material is the most fertile portion of the richest fields, transformed from a blessing to a curse by unrestricted erosion.... The destruction of forage plants by overgrazing has resulted, in the opinion of men most capable of judging, in reducing the grazing value of the public lands ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... a satire, published by Fores on the 3rd of March, 1815, has reference. It is entitled, The Blessings of Peace, or the Curse of the Corn Bill, a very rough affair, etched by George (as it appears to me) from the design of an amateur whose hand may be recognised in more than one of his caricatures. A foreign vessel is approaching our shores laden with best wheat at 50s. a quarter. A figure ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise Thy heart-born anguish of a thousand cries: Could lock, with impious hands, their teeming store, While famish'd nations died along the shore; Could mock the groans of fellow men, and bear The curse of kingdoms, peopled with despair; Could stamp disgrace on man's polluted name, And barter with their gold ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... believe in Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had been the curse of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... I shall ever forget? It is my curse that I shall always remember. But that is at an end, Tita. I swear it! I hope I shall never see her again. If you ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... it is at an enormous price, and it is impossible for labourers to provide for their families at such prices. It is to corn merchants and dealers in grain whose very existence they have been taught to curse and deprecate that the good people of this country must now look for near five months to come for subsistence." "If we have not an early harvest, God knows what will be the consequences," is ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... toil, and age on age improves: The Muse alone unequal dealt her rage, And graced with noblest pomp her earliest stage. 20 Preserved through time, the speaking scenes impart Each changeful wish of Phaedra's tortured heart; Or paint the curse that mark'd the Theban's[54] reign, A bed incestuous, and a father slain. With kind concern our pitying eyes o'erflow, 25 Trace the sad tale, and own ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... to bless the curse, To heal the mind by touch of heart, To make me feel my better part, And ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair! But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, And every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... 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 work by the arrival ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Jansenists, it was the execrated freethinkers whom the church and mankind had to thank for the change. The most enlightened Catholic of to-day ought to admit that Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, were the true reformers of his creed. They supplied it with ideas which saved it from becoming finally a curse to civilisation. It was no Christian prelate, but Diderot who burst the bonds of a paralysing dogma by the magnificent cry, Detruisez ces enceintes qui retrecissent vos idees! Elargissez Dieu![103] We see the same phenomenon in our own day. The Christian ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of the world; but now I'm afeard, if God hasn't sed it, that the devil himself's there. You're frettin' for 'fraid of a family; but has God sent us any but this one yet? No—an' I wouldn't be surprised, if the Almighty should punish your guilty heart, by making the child he gave you, a curse, instead of a blessin'. I think, as it is, he has brought little pleasure to you for so far, and, if your heart hardens as he grows up, it's more unhappy you'll ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the saying, Love your friend and hate your enemy. But that is not what I say. I say, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who use you badly. That is what God does. He makes the sun rise on everybody, good or bad. He sends the rain to fall on everyone, ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... her. She went away when I stood in the sorest need of a little talk with her—she went away, and left me to my loneliness and my suspense. I am a poor deformed wretch, with a warm heart, and, perhaps, an insatiable curiosity as well. Insatiable curiosity (have you ever felt it?) is a curse. I bore it until my brains began to boil in my head; and then I sent for my gardener, and made him drive me here. I like being here. The air of your library soothes me; the sight of Mrs. Valeria is balm to my wounded heart. She has ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... "and I cannot. But at the going down of the sun I will speak to my people." And accordingly, that very evening, Bible in hand, on the green before the meeting-house, Dr. Eaton addressed the people, denouncing the curse of Meroz on those who came not up to the help of the country, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Yuchovitch. Watchful was she as any cat—and harmless as a tame rabbit. If she caught the maids at fault, she found an excuse for them at the same time. If she was quite exasperated with the stupidity of Yakub, the dvornik, she pretended to curse him in a phrase of her own invention, a mixture of Hebrew and Russian, which, translated, said, "Mayst thou have gold and silver in thy bosom"; but to the choreman, who was not a linguist, the mongrel phrase conveyed a sense of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... guilt of the proposal in the feeling of its strangeness and absurdity, he flung her from him and burst into a fit of laughter. Irritated by this almost to frenzy, the woman fell on her knees, and in a loud voice that approached to a scream, she prayed for a curse both on him and on her own child. Mary happened to be in the room directly above them, heard Edward's laugh, and her mother's blasphemous prayer, and fainted away. He, hearing the fall, ran upstairs, and taking her in his arms, carried her off to Ellen's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Curse on my faithless Fortune! Curse on my Stars, and curst be all—but Love! That dear, that charming Sin, though t'have pull'd Innumerable Mischiefs on my head, I have not, nor I cannot find Repentance ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... with the visions and imaginations of such things, than to be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest situation any other than the greatest curse. Gentlemen, I have had my day. I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to you for having set me in a place wherein I could lend the slightest help to great and laudable designs. If I have had my share in any measure giving ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... regions in that quarter, were anciently called Ethiopians and Nigritae, which we now call Moors, Moorens, or Negroes; a beastly living people, without God, law, religion, or government, and so scorched by the heat of the sun, that in many places they curse it when it rises. Of the people about Lybia interior, Gemma Phrysius thus writes: Libia interior is large and desolate, containing many horrible wildernesses, replenished with various kinds of monstrous beasts and serpents. To the south of Mauritania or Barbary ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... these trials, for he is being reserved for a greater deed than the dealing with mere men; his enemy is Glam the thrall; the revenant of a strange, unearthly man who was himself killed by an evil spirit; Grettir contends with, and slays, this monster, whose dying curse on him is ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... that all seven good fairies had spoken, so she stepped forth, her face distorted with hatred and envy, and said: "So I am not thought good enough to be a guest here: you despise me because I am old and ugly. I shall make a gift, and it shall be a curse. When your fine young lady becomes sixteen she shall fall asleep, and nothing you can do will be able to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... lines; the second in four lines, an explanation, a regret, a reiteration of the first; the third, without preliminary crescendo, breaking out into passionate adjuration in vivid metaphor, a poignant appeal which is at once a blessing and a curse. In the closing line is a satisfying return to the first phase,—and the thing is done. One is so often reminded of the poverty of men's invention, their best being so incomplete, their greatest so trivial, that one welcomes ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... called to his. He wanted to forget everything that had gone before, the horrors through which he had passed, both physical and spiritual,—the dying struggles of the senile nation, born in intolerance, grown in ignorance and stupidity which, with a mad gesture, had cast him forth with a curse. He had doffed the empty prerogatives of blood and station and left them in the mire and blood. The soul of Russia was dead and he had thought that his own had died with hers, but from the dead thing ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... that has passed—I have seen him lying so—white—dead—and red with his own blood—that I had shed. You asked me why I have at last returned, and I reply, because I will no longer bear that sight. It is the curse of Cain that hangs over a murderer's soul, and follows wherever he goes. I tell you the form of my dead friend went with me always—sleeping, he lay beside me; waking, he lay at my feet. When I looked into the shadows, he was there, and when ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... having suspected a design against him—as, for instance, after having won a girl's affections from a rival or overcoming him in the ball play—he has already secured himself from all attempts by counterspells. It then becomes a serious matter, as, should he succeed in turning the curse aside from himself, it will return upon the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... have been buried, for I requested next day that they should be. Many of our young noblemen, seeing me with them everywhere, were full of fire in this engagement, and showed a great deal of courage; amongst whom I came across Gramont, Termes, Boissy, La Curse, and the Marquis of Mirebeau, who, as luck would have it, found themselves at it without any armor but their neck-pieces and gaillardets (front and back plates), and did marvels. There were others who ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... utterly naked, with the skin of a rhinoceros all cracked with the weather, sat there, and had sat day and night, summer and winter, motionless for twenty years. He never prays, he never washes, he does not keep Ramadan, and yet he is a saint. Of course I expected a good hearty curse from such a man, but he was delighted with my visit, asked me to sit down, ordered his servant to bring me sugar-cane, asked my name and tried to repeat it over and over again, and was quite talkative and full of jokes and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... understand it this way," says he. "1. It flowed from His pure grace and mercy that God sacrificed His only Son for us. 2. The Son became man and was made under the Law, and He has redeemed us from the Law and from the curse of the Law. 3. He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, for which He suffered, died, shed His blood, descended into hell, rose again, and thus overcame sin, death, and hell, and merited for us forgiveness ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... and find a refuge in Georgia. No slavery was to be allowed, and the sale of rum was forbidden throughout the whole colony. For Oglethorpe knew how the Redman loved "fire-water" and how bad it was for him, and he wanted the settlement of Georgia to be a blessing and not a curse to the Redman, as well ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the arms! And all the arms I see! The handless wrists! The hands with shattered fingers! The monstrous harvest which a mighty wind Bends me-ward with a curse! Oh! Mercy! Mercy! Old Cuirassier, groaning with outstretched hands— Horrible agonized hands with bloody wrists!— Mercy! Poor little Private of the Guards, Who slowly raise your livid face to mine! Look not upon me with those glazing eyes! Why do you creep upon me through the ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... and kicked and half starved, while your adopted mother pockets her twenty-five francs a month, and you'll belong to nobody, and wonder why the deuce you're alive, and wish you were dead; and, if you remember to-day, you'll curse me for not having had the decency ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... you snivelling brat,' the fellow said with a curse. 'Come, mistress, you'd best not ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... word, I do not see much difference after all, between the belief of the ignorant Russians, or Spaniards, or Portuguese, or other European people, and these unhappy blacks," exclaimed Harry one day when we were discussing the subject. The fearful curse of the country, however, is the belief in witchcraft. When a person is seized with illness, he always believes that some enemy has caused it, and is not satisfied until the witch or wizard is discovered, who is immediately compelled to swallow poison, ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... to curse the War Department—in Spanish, so she would not understand. His second was to laugh, and his third to burst into tears. How his father had suffered! Then he remembered that to-night, he, the said Don Mike, was to have the proud privilege of returning from Valhalla, of bringing the light of joy ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... during his Australian visits, and how I had wondered at his stories that Krupp's, Vicker's, and other great gun-building concerns were financially operated by political, war-hatching syndicates; that the curse of militarism was throttling human progression, and that the doctrine of "non-resistance" was noble and Christianlike, for "all they that take the sword shall perish ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom slashed-O is a letter, curse this arrangement). If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse *this* arrangement even ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... lips flashed into a vehement scorn. 'You allow them a value in themselves, apart from the Christian's test. It is the modern canker, the modern curse! Thank God, my years in London burnt it out of me! Oh, my friend, what have you and I to do with all these curious triflings, which lead men oftener to rebellion than to worship? Is this a time for wholesale trust, for a maudlin universal ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out the light!' Complimented upon the manner in which he played Lear, he angrily exclaimed: 'Played Lear, played Lear? I play Hamlet, I play Macbeth, I play Othello; but I am Lear!' Possibly the art of the tragedian has known no loftier triumph than in Forrest's rendition of Lear's curse upon the unnatural daughter: ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature. But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak—why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse— that I could not understand. I thought it was very likely some obscure influence of common forms of speech, some traditional or inherited feeling—a vague notion that suicide is a legal crime; words ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... kindly and beneficent hold until their characters are formed and their faculties and dispositions trained to the sure pursuit of some form of useful industry. Capacity of the Indian no longer needs demonstration. It is established. It remains to make the most of it, and when that shall be done the curse will be lifted, the Indian race saved, and the sin of their oppression redeemed. The time of its accomplishment depends upon the spirit and justice with which it shall be prosecuted. It can not be too ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... parlour-maid. Both had fainted or been stunned by the explosion on their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged splinters, but the iron framework—"Curse it"—remained a tangled, maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on her back—and—something that looked like blood. The policeman who followed him was strong and adroit. Together they detached the glass ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... bless you, Olympia! That removes a curse from me—I—I mean that fills me with a courage that is not my own, I have learned yours or stolen it. But you will forgive me, for I mean to use it all in ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... screaming.) Oh dear! Oh dear! There! Listen to that precious daughter of yours, filling the house with her yells. (She presses her hands over her ears.) Oh, that child will be the death of me! (Throws herself down upon the couch.) She ought never to have been born. Her existence is a mistake and a curse. ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... in a neighbouring church, and the clashing of their bells was almost maddening. Curse the clamouring bells! they seemed to know that he was listening at the door, and to proclaim it in a crowd of voices to all the town! Would they never be still? They ceased at last, and then the silence was so new and terrible that it seemed ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... themes that civilisation is a curse and not a blessing excited the derision of his best friends. Others said that he stole the idea. But we may be sure that as he copied his daily portion of music with the civilisation of the Salons clamouring unheeded around him, his mind reverted rather to those ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... "The gods, to curse Pamela with her pray'rs, Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares; The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state, And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate. She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... me to death." But most of the murderers—and among them Attin, who confessed that never had he seen any one more assured in the presence of death—affirmed that Coligny said nothing beyond the words first mentioned. No sooner had Besme heard the admiral's reply, than, with a curse, he struck him with his sword, first in the breast, and then on the head.[988] The rest took part, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... changed into the metal he had so coveted, and when at length, wearied and faint, he stretched his aching frame on his hitherto luxurious couch, this also was transformed into the substance which had now become the curse of his existence. The despairing king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of education is one of the great reflections on the intelligence of the human race. One of the greatest of contemporary writers has characterized it as "a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future." Even the humblest of us—who would willingly believe the system efficient, who have no desire to invite criticism as to our opinion—are forced to acknowledge that there is something ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... "veronal" and "medinal." When it is not desired to put the patient to sleep but merely to render insensible a particular place, as when a tooth is to be pulled, cocain may be used. This, like alcohol and morphine, has proved a curse as well as a blessing and its sale has had to be restricted because of the many victims to the habit of using this drug. Cocain is obtained from the leaves of the South American coca tree, but ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... side with Coleridge. Malice is not always of the heart. There is a malice of the understanding and the fancy. Neither do we think the worse of a man for having invented the most horrible and old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too apt to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat, to say nothing of the kettle, by our shocking [far too ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of passion, Vera, with all its sophistry and its deviations. You are practising the arts of a Jesuit. Remember that you yourself bade me, only yesterday, not to leave you. Will you curse me for not yielding to you? On whom does the responsibility rest? Tell me who the ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... stage on the way to self-consciousness and self- control. Entertainment was doubtless the basic curse ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Clementine with redoubled energy and emotion. "Do not curse him, Monsieur Leon! He has suffered so much! Ah! ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is a reason for that. You have driven away the Black Plague! Every year at the second attack there she was holding her feet between her hands. By night she lighted a fire; she warmed herself and boiled roots. She bore a curse with her. This morning the very first thing which I did was to get up here. I climbed up the beacon tower; I looked well all round; the old hag was nowhere to be seen. I shaded my eyes with my hand. I looked up and down, right and ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... light of the Moon! Curse her! it's the least she can do after all the trouble she ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... tongue, the Virgin's trophies, Who for us our Maker bore; For the curse of old inflicted, Peace and blessing to restore. Sing the songs of praise unending Sing the world's majestic Queen. Weary not nor faint in telling All the gifts ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... sell themselves to a faction whose subversive principles they abhor, their forefathers of all preceding ages would protest against their base degeneracy; the children of the generations to come would curse their memory; all reflecting men of the present time would accuse them of black ingratitude,—ingratitude to the mighty dead among their Pontiffs, to whom they are indebted for their very name, their city's fame, its honored State, its very existence in modern times; ingratitude, above all, to ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... cut off his hair, did he?" he bawled, "and at dead of night, too! Bring the offenders aft on deck here, and step lively, so that I can tell whom to punish, from their heads, that the ship may be freed from the curse!" "I ordered it done," Eumolpus broke in, "and I didn't order it as an unlucky omen, either, seeing that I had to be aboard the same vessel: I did it because the scoundrels had long matted hair, I ordered the filth cleared ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... idea originated in the Orient, where Nature placed no special penalty on idleness. Indeed, labor may have been a curse in Asia. Morality is crystallized expediency, and both, as we are told, are matters of geography, as ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... upon Mephistopheles with fierce anger and curses him. 'I meant exchange!' he exclaims. 'I meant to make it good with money! I meant not robbery and murder. I curse the deed. Thou, not I, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last, granted, saves him—not, indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the destroyer ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye have robbed me, even this ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... heard this, turned to Kirkpatrick with a mild rebuke in his eye. "Balaam blessed, when he meant to curse!" said he; "but some curse, when they mean to bless. Such prayers are blasphemy. For, can we expect a blessing on our arms, when all our invocations are for vengeance rather ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... to get rid of his father. Oh, that you could learn to see clearly! that the film might be removed from your eyes! But your indulgence must confirm him in his vices! your assistance tend to justify them. Doubtless you will avert the curse of Heaven from his head, but on your own, father—on yours—will it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... said, addressing the senseless corpse; "I know you do but counterfeit to frighten me, but I am not frightened," she added, with an hysterical attempt to laugh; and then instantly changing her tone, entreated him to "speak, were it but to curse my folly. Oh, the rudest word you ever said to me would now sound like the dearest you wasted on me before I gave you all. Lift him up," she said, "lift him up, for God's sake!—have you no compassion? He promised to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... been told to take them to the Destructor, and he was going to do so. He was dragging the cart out of the yard when Crass rushed up and lifted the bundle off and carried it into the paint-shop. Sawkins ran after him and they began to curse and swear at each other; Crass accusing Sawkins of intending to take the things to the marine stores and sell them. Sawkins seized hold of the bundle with the object of replacing it on the cart, but Crass got hold of it as well and they had a tussle for it—a kind of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... prize indeed, my lord and uncle! how seems she to thee as a bride? The dainty Irish maid I'll bring. I know the ways and paths. One sign from thee to Ireland I'll fly; Isolde, she is yours! The adventure delights me!" Curse on the infamous villain! Curse on thy head! Vengeance! Death! Death to ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... THINK he said you—am almost sure—had done him a very great service once, possibly without knowing the full value of it, and he wished he had a fortune, he would leave it to you when he died, and a curse apiece for the rest of the citizens. Now, then, if it was you that did him that service, you are his legitimate heir, and entitled to the sack of gold. I know that I can trust to your honour and honesty, for in a citizen of Hadleyburg these virtues ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... Solons or Solomons in these respects, nor quite so much wiser than the laws themselves, as sometimes we are hastily induced to suppose." "Miserable must be the fate of that community where the ministers of the law are themselves disposed to disregard it;" "government will become a curse;" "and this whether such a betrayal of public trust springs from the delusions of false philanthropy or fanatical prejudices, no less than when it comes ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... that praise, that it wanteth not grammar; for grammar it might have, but it needs it not; being so easy of itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his mother-tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the mind, which is the end of speech, that hath it equally with any other tongue in the world: ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... with him; but if, having enough to live upon in the manner befitting his character and rank, he still wants to make more, and to die rich, then money is the principal object with him, and it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it after him. For you know it must be spent some day; the only question is whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or some one else. And generally it is better for the maker to spend it, for he will know best ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... around you many voices, which will make a great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark. Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back before they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... knowing all the time what he owed her, remembering her courage, her unselfishness, her loveliness. "Curse her!" he muttered, amid the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner. Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures: 'Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!' still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... But what is worse They know not yet who broke the code, And the dread Chiswick Fathers' curse Still hovers sadly, unbestowed Nay, there are wild false tales about And hideous accusations made; Men say old Piper led the rout With that young fellow from "The Glade," While old maids murmur with a tear, "I'm told it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... the instrument to execute for her this decree of fate, to bind it permanently, a lifetime curse. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... day the mother came to me in despair and showed me a letter written by the son of the father, which she had opened; the contents were as follows: "Miserable father, when you receive this letter I shall be no longer in this world; but before dying I wish to curse you. You have been the disgrace of the family. You have caused misery to our mother and her children by your crimes. Why did you bring me into this world? For a long time I have felt evil instincts developing in me like a cursed ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... enemies, which was perhaps the highest strain ever reached by man, without divine assistance; yet how little is that to what our Saviour commands us? "To love them that hate us; to bless them that curse us; and do good to them that despitefully ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... led on to the subject of religion from the study of the legal sanction; this very term "sanction," which is derived from Roman law, pointing in the same direction, since it originally stood for the curse which was appended in order to secure the inviolability of ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... believed in God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The Dies irae filled him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... head, dethrone the reason, brutalize, debase and ruin men in soul and body as do wine and brandy. The difference lies there, and all men see and feel it, make what excuses they will for self-indulgence and deference to custom. The curse of drink is too widely felt. There is scarcely a family in the land on which its blight does not lie. The best, the noblest, the purest, the bravest, have fallen. It is breaking hopes and hearts and fortunes every day. The warning cross that marks the grave of some poor victim hurts your eyes ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... suddenly strike him blue But he'd get some grass for his starving sheep in the teeth of that Jackaroo. So he turned and he cursed the Jackaroo, he cursed him alive or dead, From the soles of his great unwieldy feet to the crown of his ugly head, With an extra curse on the moke he rode and the cur at his heels that ran, Till the Jackaroo from his horse got down and he went for the drover-man; With the station-hand for his picker-up, though the sheep ran loose the while, They battled it out on the saltbush plain in the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... spots, these blemishes of beauty? My child, my child! was't perjury in him Made thee so fair act now so foul a sin? Hath[372] he deceived thee in a mother's hopes, Posterity, the bliss of marriage? Thou hast no tongue to answer no or ay, But in red letters write,[373] For him I die. Curse on his traitorous tongue, his youth, his blood, His pleasures, children, and possessions! Be all his days, like winter, comfortless! Restless his nights, his wants remorseless![374] And may his corpse be the physician's stage, Which play'd ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... had yet been more tolerable to contemplate if it were not attended with the loss of all those men I had carried with me upon promise of happy success. They, seeing themselves in so great jeopardy, did not only curse their setting out upon the expedition, but the fear and awe which I had impressed upon them, to dissuade them from returning when outward bound, as they had several times resolved upon. Above all, my sorrow was redoubled by the remembrance of two sons whom I had left at school ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... They shook their fists at the mines and the works as if they had been the haunt of the devil. I couldn't bring myself to skulk. I rode Nell right down to the station and sat there till the last carload pulled out with the men and women standing together on the platform to curse me." ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... a quivering," and then as Gerrard looked at her beautiful face, he remembered his own scarred features, and something between a sigh and a curse came from his lips. ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... as he took it into his hand. He read it aloud to his companion with an unfaltering voice; but, when he laid it down, a silence ensued; nor was he seen to smile again that night. [Footnote 11] "The curse is heavy," said he at parting, "but Cortes may live to disappoint it."—"Aye, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... that Mariora was not alone. Half an hour had nearly elapsed when we heard footsteps in the distance approaching. We listened. Who was coming? Which of us would recognize those footsteps first? I did. It was he! he for whose sake I had brought down a curse upon my head. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... himself with money as often as he needed it and cap, by putting on of which, and wishing to be anywhere, he was straightway there; these he got, by his own free election and choice, conceded to him by the Upper Powers, and they proved a curse to him rather than a blessing, he finding out when too late that "the god Wish is not the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in one of those dozing fits of stupefaction that precede the close of existence, suddenly started, "Dinna ye hear?—dinna ye hear?—he's owned!—he's owned!—I lived but for this. I am a sinful woman; but if my curse brought it down, my blessing has taen it off! And now I wad hae liked to hae said mair. But it can not be. Stay"—she continued, stretched her head toward the gleam of light that shot through the narrow slit which served for a window—"is he not there?—stand out o' the light, and let me look ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... politicians were trimming their speeches and shaping their resolutions to please each political faction. John Brown took the floor and made a speech that threw the convention into consternation. He denounced slavery as the curse of the ages; affirmed the manhood of the slave; dealt "middle men" terrible blows; and said he could "see no use in talking." "Talk," he continued, "is a national institution; but it does no good for the slave." He thought it an excuse ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... iron, supple as a whip, with his science picked up from Swedish quartermasters and Japanese gendarmes, from mates and crimps in all parts of the world, would always be in her eyes an infant compared to the monstrous Syrian! Not that it mattered a tinker's curse, but— ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... itself into insensible metal, but had now softened back again into flesh. Perceiving a violet, that grew on the bank of the river, Midas touched it with his finger, and was overjoyed to find that the delicate flower retained its purple hue, instead of undergoing a yellow blight. The curse of the Golden Touch had, therefore, really been ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... minutes they were tumbling over the wall of the farm-yard, wet, muddy, and breathless, but unobserved. But as they ran towards the barns the king gave vent to something between a groan and a curse, and all about ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... case, Yellow Brian found all the land desolate, and liked it. The more wasted the land, he reflected, the more chance for that sword of his to find swinging-room. As he had ridden, news had come from the east—news of the Wexford killing and the curse that was come upon the land. Owen Ruadh O'Neill was not yet dead, but Brian knew that he had prophesied truly. Ireland's day was ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... before them will hire girls at less than any one could exist on in decency. When they meet these same girls in the hall or when they come directly into contact with them in their work they may be polite enough, but their politeness is not worth a tinker's curse. Justice must come first. Only if the employer pays a fair day's wage can he expect a fair day's work. "Even then," he protests, "I can't get it." And this is, unfortunately, in large measure true. As Kipling said some few years ago, and it ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... thing, and that thing was the end forever and ever, for him.... His heart was sick in him and he longed most desperately to break away from these other women and the sham of talk and dash off to dark solitude where the primitive man could have his way, could tramp and fight and curse and sob and break his heart in decent privacy. He faced with loathing the refinements ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... speech, Mittie had risen and turned her burning cheek towards the window. She felt as if a curse were resting upon her, to be thus excluded from all participation in Miss Thusa's blessing, in the presence of Bryant Clinton. Yes, at that moment she felt the value of Miss Thusa's good opinion—the despised and contemned Miss ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... conveying the same divine knowledge to our unhappy neighbors, who are wading through a sea of blood in order to attain it? These were in Scotland the topics of every conversation: with these doctrines the pulpits echoed: and the famous curse of Meroz, that curse so solemnly denounced and reiterated against neutrality and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... laugh'd outright, When on his battle-ground he saw, That every savage tooth and claw Had got its proper beauty By doing bloody duty; Himself, the hapless Lion tore his hide, And lash'd with sounding tail from side to side. Ah! bootless blow, and bite, and curse! He beat the harmless air, and worse; For, though so fierce and stout, By effort wearied out, He fainted, fell, gave up the quarrel; The Gnat retires with ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... they will soon be known. If Mr. Ludolph were in Germany he would be a noble. It is his intention to go there this fall, and take his wealth and Christine with him, and assert his ancestral titles and position. Christine could not marry in this land without incurring her father's curse, and I think she has no disposition to do that—her ambition is fully in accord ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... their blind malice was too eager to remember this. Another person by continually dunning a poor debtor to pay him half a sovereign had driven him to commit suicide! So ran their bitter tongues. Backbiting is the curse of village life, and seems to keep people by its effects upon the mind far more effectually in the grip of poverty than the lowness of wages. They become so saturated with littleness that they cannot attempt anything, and have no enterprise. To transplant them to the freer atmosphere of a great ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... and said:—"My father, as you promise me to pray God for me, I will tell it you. Know, then, that once, when I was a little child, I cursed my mother;" and having so said he began again to weep bitterly. "O, my son," said the friar, "does this seem to thee so great a sin? Men curse God all day long, and he pardons them freely, if they repent them of having so done; and thinkest thou he will not pardon thee this? Weep not, be comforted, for truly, hadst thou been one of them that set Him on the Cross, with the contrition that ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... country cottage afloat. In the forepart lived the native owner, and his family, their crew, our cooks and servants; for they played many parts in our service. And in the afterpart, room for a life, a dream, the joy or curse & many days ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... to watch, this struggle between mother and child. The one sparing neither blow nor curse, the other silent and active as a cat, watching every movement of his adversary, and ready for the slightest chance of escape. The crowd, careless of the rights of the case, cheered on both, and only interfered when the woman, having secured the boy in her grip, bade fair to bring ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... o'erflows the cup of joy, And love, more mighty than the heart's control, Surges in words of passion from the soul, And vows are asked and given, shadows rise Like mists before the sun in noonday skies, Vague fears, that prove the brimming cup's alloy; A dread of change—the crowning moment's curse, Since what is perfect, change but renders worse: A vain desire to cripple Time, who goes Bearing our joys away, and bringing woes. And later, doubts and jealousies awaken, And plighted hearts are tempest-tossed and shaken. Doubt sends a test, that goes a step too ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it is peculiarly incumbent on us here to-day so to act throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage, for which we will receive their blessing and not their curse. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... bawdy house, or a bawdy house of it; for nothing is to be seen in any room but scurvy beds and bare walls. But (not so much to dishonour it) it is an university of poor scholars, in which three arts are chiefly studied: to pray, to curse, and to write letters. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... "Oh, labour is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified. Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and horses? ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... possessed him. Was that the Christ out there whom he had been seeking? And what did he expect of him? To come out there to his enemy? To the man who had been in many ways the curse of ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... there, by her godly life and many kind deeds, she had inspired the love and reverence of the whole community. When the pest came in 1150—that awful black death which killed the people by hundreds—they turned to her in their despair and begged her to intercede with them and take away this curse of God, as it was believed to be. Through an entire night, within her grotto, the good Rosalia prayed that the plague might be taken away and the people forgiven, and the story has it that her prayers were answered ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... rough and tumble of public schools, universities and sport, and now throbbing under the stress of the new deadly game, to understand poor Doggie Trevor? They had no time to take him seriously, save to curse him when he did wrong, and in their leisure time he became naturally ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... 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
... it?" said Camilla. "I tremble lest you should be discovered. Oh slavery! what a curse. Our fathers sowed the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind! What," continued she, as if speaking to herself, "What are your plans? Have ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... The burghers, having put down the nobility and achieved their independence, lay aside their arms. They are busy in manufactures and trade. The despots and the republics prefer to hire foreign adventurers, the "free companies," who were a curse to Italy. Their occupation, which was a profitable one, was taken up by natives. These were the condottieri. Their leaders introduced cavalry and more skillful methods of fighting. But the battles were bloodless games of strategy, and military energy declined. At ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... naught but a bit of solder. Give it to me!' But Saint Patrick took it to a smith instead, and the smith told him the truth about it, and Saint Patrick put a curse on the Tinkers, that every man's face should be against them, and that they should get no rest at all but ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Eyries, County Cork, Father Gerald Dennehy said: "Any Catholic who either as policeman or as agent of the government shall assist in applying the draft, shall be excommunicated and cursed by the Roman Catholic Church. The curse of God will follow him in every land. You can kill him at sight, God will bless you and it will be the most acceptable sacrifice ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... Wellesley as Chief Secretary. The young man, whose fame was yet unattained, showed himself as clearheaded in the cabinet as in the camp. He made every attempt to suppress the party demonstrations which have been the curse of Ireland, and induced the Wexford people to discontinue their annual celebration of the battle of Vinegar Hill. If he could have suppressed a few other anniversaries in the north, it would have been a blessing to the United Kingdom. In ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Gunter, and a sort of sigh broke from some of the others, as if words were incapable of expressing their feelings—as, indeed, they were! The skipper was standing by the companion-hatch at the moment with a handspike in his grasp. A deep-toned curse issued from his lips when the fish went down, and he dashed the handspike to ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... "By the curse of the sin of the sack of Chitor, is my palace, then, a midden for the crawling offal of all the Howrah streets? First this Rangar—next a sweeper hag—what follows? What bring you next? Go, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... know it, and mock me! How often have I not agonised to cease, but the tyrant keeps me being! I curse ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... about him: and, though at first they had been inclined to look askance at his advances, they were won over by the frank open manners of their noisy neighbor, whose piano-playing and terrific disturbance overhead had often made them curse:—(for Christophe used to feel stifled in his room and take to pacing up and down like a caged bear).—They did not find it easy to talk to him. Christophe's rather boorish and abrupt manners sometimes made Elie Elsberger shudder. But it was all in vain for the engineer to try to keep ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the keeper's room for that night, and the two men sat up with me. I was accosted with many interrogatories, to which I gave little answer, but complained of the hurt in my leg. To this I could obtain no reply, except "Curse you, my lad! if that be all, we will give you some ointment for that; we will anoint it with a little cold iron." They were indeed excessively sulky with me, for having broken their night's rest, and given them all this trouble. In the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... haughtily. "No, indeed, Aunt Sally. I can forgive and forget much, but you are greatly mistaken if you think I can go to such lengths as that. He closed his doors against me with a curse, for no reason on earth but that the man I loved was born north of the Mason and Dixon line. There never was a nobler man living than Jack, and papa would have seen it if he hadn't deliberately shut his eyes and refused to look at him. He ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... more. They flatter the General; they coddle him. They give him the highest seat. They pretend to respect him. They defend him from all slanders. They are proud of the General. He is their man. I look into the religious newspapers, and in one column I behold a curse on the stock-jobbing of Wall street, and in the next, the praise of the beneficence of General Robert Belcher. I see the General passing down Wall street the next day. I see him laughing out of the corner of his left eye, while his friends punch him in the ribs. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Canouge, the latitude and longitude of which have been given in a previous note. The Sanskrit name means "the city of humpbacked maidens;" with reference to the legend of the hundred daughters of king Brahma-datta, who were made deformed by the curse of the rishi Maha-vriksha, whose overtures they had refused. E. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... barnacles!" yelled Comrade Bannerman. He shook his fists at the plutocrats and cursed until he made me sick. He was a tank-town nut who didn't like to work; had built up a theory that work was a curse and that the "idle classes" had forced this curse on the masses, of which he was one. He believed that all the classes had to do was to clip coupons, cash them and ride around the country in Pullman palace cars. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... your affair, you know." And Peter went away, leaving Hugo to curse and bite his nails in impotent rage. Peter really was ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... mother, and all the other tomfoolery I could not understand. Katy," and pausing in his walk, Mr. Cameron came close to his daughter-in-law, who was lying with her face upon the sofa. "Katy, be glad your baby died. Had it lived it might have proved a curse just as mine have done—not all, for Bell, though fiery as a pepper-pod, has some heart, some sense—and there was Jack, my oldest boy, a little fast, it's true; but when he died over the sea, I forgave all that, forgetting the chair he broke over a tutor's head, and the scrapes ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... What curse shall I call down On hearts so dull? May they the race still run For wealth and high renown! And when with much ado The false good they have grasped—ah, then too late!— May they discern ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... to labour with their own hands for these hundred years; and during all that time there has not been a dishonest person, a gentleman, or a madman amongst us. And shall I be the first to break the customs of the family, and perhaps bring down a curse on all our heads? What could I have more if I were a lord or a macaroni, as I think you call them? I have plenty of victuals and work, good firing, clothes, warm house, a little for the poor, and, between you and ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... countenance common to the Helot race. He was of the ordinary stature, and his frame was not characterised by any appearance of unusual strength; but he trod the earth, with a firm step and an erect crest, as if the curse of the slave had not yet destroyed the inborn dignity of the human being. There was a certain delicacy and refinement, rather of thought than beauty, in his clear, sharp, and singularly intelligent features. ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... well as the witness of treachery. I have been oftentimes forced to associate with vice in every shape; and yet when in misery, when oppressed, when writhing under tyranny, I have been sometimes tempted to curse my race, the thought of the kind, the good old man, has come over me like a visitation from heaven, and my malediction has been changed into a prayer, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... wept because they had been caught in the steerage. She wept because she was ashamed, and because people were too kind. She was at once delighted and desolated. She wanted to outpour psalms of gratitude, and also she wanted to curse. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... German, after a while. "For years I have tried to get in touch with native officers. Here and there I have found a Sepoy who would talk with me, but you are the first officer." He was brown-studying, talking almost to himself. He did not see the curse in ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... takes her. She went away when I stood in the sorest need of a little talk with her—she went away, and left me to my loneliness and my suspense. I am a poor deformed wretch, with a warm heart, and, perhaps, an insatiable curiosity as well. Insatiable curiosity (have you ever felt it?) is a curse. I bore it until my brains began to boil in my head; and then I sent for my gardener, and made him drive me here. I like being here. The air of your library soothes me; the sight of Mrs. Valeria is balm to my wounded heart. She has something to tell me—something that I am dying to hear. If ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... by those who need it most,—the city which is Not set on a hill, the candle that giveth light to None that are in the house:—these are the heaviest mysteries of this strange world, and, it seems to me, those which mark its curse the most. And it is true that the power with which this Venice had been entrusted, was perverted, when at its highest, in a thousand miserable ways; still, it was possessed by her alone; to her all hearts have turned which could be moved by its manifestation, and none ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... not be allowed to approach our settlements from the east. God is on our side, and will fight our battles for us, and deliver our enemies into our hands. Brigham has received revelations from God, giving him the right and the power to call down the curse of God on all our enemies who attempt to invade our Territory. Our greatest danger lies in the people of California - a class of reckless miners who are strangers to God and His righteousness. They are likely to come upon us from ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... cruel. I knew it. I should have died, if you had come between us. Oh, Wilfrid's father, I love you!—I have never had a very angry word on my mouth. Think! think! if you had made me curse you. For, I could! You would have stopped my life, and Wilfrid's. What would our last thoughts have been? We could not have forgiven you. Take up dead birds killed by frost. You cry: Cruel winter! murdering cold! But I knew better. You are Wilfrid's father, whom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... his relief, now began to jeer him, and to demand of him a speech, merely to occupy the time while ropes necessary to his deliverance were being brought. This so enraged the major, that in addition to swearing he would not be drawn up by such a set of inhuman rascals, he commenced to curse his hard fate. A few moments more and he became calm, and looking up beseechingly in the clergyman's face, which was reflected by the light of a lantern, he enjoined him to hasten to his wife, Polly Potter, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... woman gave us the child. Away we went with it aboard the sloop, and made sail, and never dropped anchor till we reached the port of Dublin. Then our captain sold the sloop, and we all went aboard a ship and sailed for America. We didn't reach it though. We had done a cursed deed, and God's curse was to follow us. Our ship went down, and we were left floating on a raft; we were well-nigh starved, when a ship fell in with us, and we were taken on board. The captain was a kind-hearted man, and he said he would take care of the little fellow; and as our captain—he that's gone—had ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... a malady— (Striking his heart and forehead.) And here, and here, A mortal malady.—I am accurst: All nature curses me, and in my heart Thy curse is fixed; the truth must be laid bare. It must be told, and borne. I am the man, (Abused, betrayed, but how it matters not) Presumptuous above all that ever breathed, Who, casting as I thought a guilty Person Upon Heaven's righteous judgment, did become An ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... what this means to me," said Quinnox gravely, as they paused to rest. "She will call me your murderer and curse me for my miserable treason. I am the first to dishonor the ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... more accurately. Certainly "it" appears to be as good a description as any, since there is no consciousness of sex in the thought patterns. I wonder what sort of ... and to my surprise I swore! I do not ordinarily curse or use obscenities—not because they are obscene but because they are a poor and inexact means of conveying ideas or impressions. But in this case they were particularly appropriate. No other words could ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... I began to curse boldly at him, calling him by all the obscene terms I had ever learned or heard. This, and the astounding fact that I no longer squirmed nor cried out, but physically yielded to him, as limp as an empty sack, brought him to a puzzled stop. But he ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... waste, this howling wilderness, this country vast and desert idle, places scooped out of the solid rock, and the mighty foundations of the round world laid bare, that the lower organism of God's human family may find their proper sustenance; but truly the curse must have gone forth more fearfully against them, and with a vengeance must it have been proclaimed, by the sweat of their brows must they obtain their bread. No doubt it was with the intention of obtaining ours, thus reaping the harvest ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... buy them for me after all. Curse him," he added violently. "What cruel luck! And I've been thinking all day of what I'd do ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... churchwardens and 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
... child, so harsh and so bitter! And sometimes the reproach seemed to have the strange power of actually turning her love to the hatred she was charged with, and at such times she could scarcely refrain from crying out in her overmastering wrath to invoke a curse from the Almighty on her daughter's head, to reply that it was true, that she did hate her with a great hatred, but that her hatred was as nothing compared to that of her God, who would punish her for denying His existence with everlasting ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... that Lord John had found himself some years before in that no-man's-land which is formed by the half-defined frontiers between Peru, Brazil, and Columbia. In this great district the wild rubber tree flourishes, and has become, as in the Congo, a curse to the natives which can only be compared to their forced labor under the Spaniards upon the old silver mines of Darien. A handful of villainous half-breeds dominated the country, armed such Indians as would support them, and ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ever the slave Snaps the shackles that bind him, and leaps Into life in the heart of the brave The sense of the might that now sleeps— To which people, which side shall I cleave? Which fate shall I curse with my own? To which banner pray Heaven to give The triumph? Which ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... performs good works with that end in view, he shames his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. 10, 4), and he falls under the curse of God for placing his own merits alongside of the merit of the Redeemer's sacrifice. In no other connection has Luther spoken against good works. He has rather taught men how to become fruitful ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... explorations as were made were with the one object of getting through it or around it. In fact, as late as 1787, opinion in Europe was divided as to whether the discovery of the New World had been a blessing or a curse. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... continent? And why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... got home, 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 life ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the roadside, a low saloon that was the curse of the place, and she saw from the distance a figure come out of the door. Her heart gave a fearful throb, for it was a slender figure, clad in black, hatless and with disordered hair and clothing. In a moment more, as Helen clutched the rail beside ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... end of the previous century, who in the intervals of war were disbanded and wandered about spending their pay, and thus constituted an excessively disintegrative element in the life of the time. A contemporary writer[13] describes them as the curse of Germany, and stigmatizes them as "unchristian, God-forsaken folk, whose hand is ever ready in striking, stabbing, robbing, burning, slaying, gaming, who delight in wine-bibbing, whoring, blaspheming, and in the making of ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... think," she declared, with upturned eyes, "that this is the 'oly Sabbath! Never mind, Solomon. The Lord will punish 'em. I shall pray to Him not to curse them ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with this matter. You know what I mean. What's the decision?" Luck scowled at the pretty girl on his wall calendar, and began to rub his right foot with the left and to curse the janitor with that part of his brain ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... be in doubt about it for yourself, consult some spiritually-minded person who possesses experience in the matter. Not, on the one hand, the man who will tell you that it is the greatest curse the Church has ever known; nor, on the other, the one who would have it ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... None. If, without the sum Which Beauseant offers for thy hand, this day Sinks to the west—to-morrow brings our ruin! And hundreds, mingled in that ruin, curse The bankrupt merchant! and the insolvent herd We feasted and made merry cry in scorn, "How pride has fallen!—Lo, the bankrupt merchant!" My daughter, thou hast ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... could now present itself as the means of staving off so evil a day would be acceptable; and therefore he gave his sister the commission of making this second proposal to Miss Dunstable. In cursing the duke—for he did curse the duke lustily—it hardly occurred to him to think that, after all, the duke only asked for his own. As for Mrs. Harold Smith, whatever may be the view taken of her general character as a wife and a member of society, it must be admitted that as ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... you were 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 ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... I not give to see you? Oh, this fearful curse of poverty! I must find some means of escape from my difficulties, or go mad. I cannot live without you. I have planned a thousand impossible schemes, which I have been obliged ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... filled with salt. It was no easy task to relinquish the use of tobacco and it cost him many a struggle and much determined effort. In writing to Wordsworth he says:—"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five years. I have had it in my head to do it (Farewell to Tobacco) these two years; but tobacco stood in its own light when it gave me headaches that ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... are so fatally reared. With every want gratified, pampered and fed to the very full, how often do we see them disappoint all the fond expectations of parents and friends, their money proving only a curse, while not unfrequently beggared in purse, and bankrupt in character, they prematurely sink to an ignoble or dishonored grave. Think of it, ye who are slaving in the service of Mammon, that ye may leave to your sons, the overgrown ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... could keep thousands of spindles running and make hundreds of pairs of stockings in a day, and yards and yards of woollen stuff, and socks and shirts and all, why grandfather'd've thought everybody'd have shirts and socks and comforters and shoes, and there'd be no more hard work and empty bellies. Curse the damned things! We works longer hours, and there's just as many bare feet and poor devils shivering for want of clothes. The machines were to give us everything, blast 'em! The workers are rotten fools! ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... meditated some fearful act, and that he considered his own life in great jeopardy. If he fell, and he anticipated he should fall, he committed his daughter to my care; and he gave me a written injunction, wherein, as you will find, his blessing is bestowed upon her for obedience to him, and his curse laid upon her in the event of a breach of duty; commanding her, by all her hopes of happiness hereafter, to fulfil the solemn promise he had made me—provided I should claim her hand within a twelvemonth of his death. The unfortunate ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... children and grandchildren will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of the country. Similarly we should take the greatest care about naturalization. Fraudulent naturalization, the naturalization of improper persons, is a curse to our Government; and it is the affair of every honest voter, wherever born, to see that no fraudulent voting is allowed, that no fraud in connection with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... rampant for his arms. From an actor of playes he became a composer. He dyed Apr. 23, 1616, aetat 53, probably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monument (Dugd. p. 520), on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shall remove his bones. He dyed a papist." The inaccuracy of Davies's version of facts otherwise known warns us against too great a reliance ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... be a name abhorred; And every nation that should lift again Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain." ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted By present sense ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Conscience (and you know Tom the Conscience of one dead Man is worth ten of those that are living) I have had very few good Days Sleep since I got there. Ah Tom! poor Ireland! poor Ireland! it plagued my Heart while I was trifling away Life there; but my Curse on it, I never thought it would have broke my Rest thus when I was dead. I have tumbled and toss'd from one Side to the other (and by the by, they make these cursed Coffins so narrow 'tis a Plague to be in them) first ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... he said. 'I'm worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn't the power, or the insight, or the training. Only the desire. She's cursed with the curse of Reuben. She won't do line-work, because it means real work; and yet she's stronger than I am. I'll make her understand that I can beat her on her own Melancolia. Even then she wouldn't care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I don't believe ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... subject race has extinguished all sympathy for our own, and has hidden from us the ties of a common origin, common interests, and of a common glory, then, indeed, are we separated from our brethren, and the curse of slavery has fallen upon us as well as upon them. Your Commissioners found nothing in themselves to justify them in attributing such sentiments to the people of the State; and unitedly recommend the adoption by you of the amendment to the Constitution proposed ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... was Hamish's answer to this gay invitation? The Gaelic tongue is almost devoid of those meaningless expletives which, in other languages, express mere annoyance of temper; when a Highlander swears, he usually swears in English. But the Gaelic curse is a much ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... observation of human life made him remark, 'Sir, there is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than by displaying a superiour ability or brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time; but their envy makes them curse him in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... be destroyed; it ought not, it will not be permitted to exist." "The curse of the French revolution, and subsequent wars and commotions in Europe, are to be attributed to its example; and so long as it exists, no prince will be safe upon his throne; and the sovereigns of Europe are aware of it; and they have determined ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... wine-producing country in the world; and that the time is not far distant when wine, the most wholesome and purest of all stimulating drinks, will be within the reach of the common laborer, and take the place of the noxious and poisonous liquors which are now the curse of so many of our laboring men, and have blighted the happiness of so many homes. Pure light wine I consider the best temperance agent; but as long as bad whisky and brandy continue to be the common drink of its citizens we can not hope to accomplish a thorough reform; for human ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... I think plainly shewed them to be the owners of the goods, and the others no more than servants. Though benevolent nature has been very bountiful to these isles, it cannot be said that the inhabitants are wholly exempt from the curse of our forefathers: Part of their bread must be earned by the sweat of their brows. The high state of cultivation their lands are in, must have cost them immense labour. This is now amply rewarded by the great produce, of which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... wisely, Roger," said his uncle. "It may be that he will gain the day, it may be that he will lose it; but certain it is that he who brings civil war into a land brings a heavy curse." ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... blame them? If they deliberately find enough satisfaction for their needs in the company of a circle of men friends and the casual pleasures of the town, selfishness is the last epithet with which their behaviour can be charged. Unselfishness has been their curse. No sane person would, of his own accord, become the automaton that a Government office requires. Pressure on the part of relations, of parents, has been brought to bear on them. The steady employment, the graduated income, the pension—that ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... strength, I too shall receive such portion of our blessings as I may deserve. But if the cowards sit at ease and the good and brave are out of heart, then I fear that I shall get a portion, a larger than I care to think, of something that is no blessing but a curse." ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... day saved thirty thousand people from starvation; but with this day my ability ceases. As the Government are bent on starving us, I see no alternative but to leave these poor people to perish, without our being witness of their distress. I curse the day I ever served the Neapolitan Government. We have characters, my Lord, to lose; these people have none. Do not suffer their infamous conduct to fall on us. Our country is just, but severe. Such is the fever of my brain this ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... party were about to sally forth on their perilous path to safety, Gyng stood and cried angrily: "Well, why hasn't some one bundled up that moth-eaten Caliban? Curse it all, must I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Scriptual prophecy—"Babylon is fallen—is fallen! Her princes, her wise men, her captains, her rulers, and her mighty men shall sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, saith the King who is the Lord of Hosts." And truly it seemed as if the curse which had blighted the city's bygone splendor had doomed even its ruins to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fond of Lynde, too—though you mayn't believe it. I'm fond of her for her mother's sake and I'd like to see her happy. I didn't want to give her to Harmon that time three years ago but I couldn't help myself. He had the upper hand, curse him. It wasn't for my own sake, though—it was for my wife's. However, that's all over and done with and I'll do the best I can to atone for it. So you won't marry your minister because your father ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... we were repaid with charming views of hill and vale, a softly-rolling scene dotted with little gray and brown fields, clumps of woodland, rail-fenced pastures, and cabins of the crudest sort—for in the autumn-tide, the curse of malaria haunts the basin of the Big Bone, and none but he of fortune spurned would care here in this beauty-spot to plant his vine and fig-tree. Now and then our path leads us across the winding creek, which in these upper ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... quietly; "I came to speak to you; I came to put my curse on you. Many have put their curses on you silently; I do so to your face. My son lies between life and death in your prison—your prison. Whether he lives or dies I curse you for what you have done to poor wives ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... found. Hunt's up, friend Julian! First your heels, old stag! But by and by your horns, and then your side! 'Tis venison much too good for the world's eating. I'll go and sift this business to the bran. Robert and him I have sometimes seen together!—God's curse! it shall fare ill with any man That has connived at this, if I ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... believe in the existence of small beings, of vaguely defined form, called Zluidni who bring zlo or evil to every habitation in which they take up their quarters. "May the Zluidni strike him!" is a Little-Russian curse, and "The Zluidni have got leave for three days; not in three years will you get rid of them!" is a White-Russian proverb. In a Little-Russian skazka a poor man catches a fish and takes it as a present to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... heard him curse the Durwan, and then he ran once more, because the stars were growing pale and time was precious. He was weary and tired when he crept into the compound outside the sleeping bungalow on the hill-rise, and he ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... frenzy, and quivering ears, that magnified every sound, she waited for a reproach, a curse; either would have been some little relief. But no! a silence ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... and more, I've buried away in my heart so deep That, howso tired I've been, I've kept Eyes waking when near me another slept, Lest I might mutter it in my sleep? And now at the last to blab it clear! How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse Will the men do—spit on my name, and curse; But then up in heaven I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... a sad thing to be dependant on these low persons; the wise among the ancients were never so wrong as when they panegyrized poverty: it is the wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Loretto, and he assured me that I might have asked Monsignor Caraffa to give me letters for all the hospitals on my road to Rome, and that everywhere I would have met with the same reception. "The hospitals," he added, "are all under the curse of Saint-Francis, because the mendicant friars are not admitted in them; but we do not mind their gates being shut against us, because they are too far apart from each other. We prefer the homes of the persons attached to our ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... freed fallen Europe from the unity Of Tyrants, and been blest from shore to shore: And now—what is your fame? Shall the Muse tune it ye? Now—that the rabble's first vain shouts are o'er? Go! hear it in your famished country's cries! Behold the World! and curse your victories! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... spring on that more blood-stained and terrible beast of prey who could kill not only with claws and teeth but with a word from his lips, a wave of his hand!—the world would be rid of the ferocious curse. Ay, his eye, which had yesterday scorned to look at the multitudes who had hailed his advent, was that of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... says, that he then saw the king curse his crown, and strive to swallow the affront; but that tears of spite rolled down his cheeks and fell upon his clothes. Whilst he was thus tormenting himself, Davoust, obstinately persisting in his opinion, said that the emperor was misinformed, and remained ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
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