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More "Cur" Quotes from Famous Books



... Dora alone, with strange perversity, persisted in ignoring his bad habits, his vulgar manners, his uselessness, his ugliness, and his impudence, and set me at defiance when I objected to him, by pressing him in her beautiful arms—happy cur that he was!—and laying her soft cheek against his villainous bristles, till in very disgust and jealousy I ceased to complain, and learned to submit quietly to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... he said; "I have done wrong, I have broken bounds, I am a cur. My gun ought to go to you, but when you take it away from me, you take all that I have in the world. The last shot which my mother's son will fire shall be through my own head.... What would you have? I did as you ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... Braxton Wyatt," he said, "an' I reckon he wuz the meanest, ornierest cur that ever lived. He liked to live on dirt, the dirtier the place he could find the better; he'd rather steal his food than get it honestly; he wuz sech a coward that he wuz afeard o' a rabbit, but ef your back wuz turned to him he'd nip you ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... doubt I should have struck him, too, if I had been in your place. I like you for standing up to him so bravely, and that's the reason I took your part, independently of my always trying to stop his bullying. Slodgers is a cur at heart, and I dare say you would lick him in the end if you could hold out long enough, although I wouldn't advise you to tackle him until you know how to use your fists better, if I am not by! I think ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... he ground out through his clenched teeth, "you know you can't bring out your gun. I know you. You poor cur! You thought you'd sell me up to the other side! I know your ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... corner, she met Abruptly, the horns of a cow That mooed, while the cur, At her heels, turned from her, And aimed at Miss Vain ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... where that he lay, They went to make the same assay.* *trial, experiment And when the queen it understood, And how the medicine was good, She pray'd that she might have the grains, To relieve him from the pains Which she and he had both endur'd. And to him went, and so him cur'd, That, within a little space, Lusty and fresh alive he was, And in good heal, and whole of speech, And laugh'd, and said, *"Gramercy, leach!"* *"Great thanks, For which the joy throughout the town my physician!"* So great was, that the belles' soun' Affray'd the people ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... you cur of a Mick," were, expurgated of unprintable blasphemy, the exact words of the semi-savage lord of the frontier, "but by the God that made us both I'll get you before another moon, dash dash you, and when I do I'll cut out your blackguard heart and eat it." Then bounding ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... of ages to come. As Ross looked at the new-created realistic image of her, he was amazed. "Why, I've always disliked her!" he cried. "I've been lying to myself. I am too low for words," he groaned. "Was there ever such a sneaking cur?" Yes, many a one, full as unconscious of his own qualities as he himself had been until that moment; nor could he find consolation in the fact that he had company, plenty of company, and it of the world's most ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... alia causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones,' says Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et maturiora sunt premia.' ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... was ready to squall at the sight of a cur, and run valorously away from a casually approaching cow; the field close beside it, where I rolled about in summer among the hay; the brook in which, despite of maid and mother, I waded by the hour; the garden where ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... English People are rendered provoking by his extraordinary language concerning his opponents. 'Numskull,' 'beast,' 'fool,' 'puppy,' 'knave,' 'ass,' 'mongrel-cur,' are but a few of the epithets employed. This is doubtless mere matter of pleading, a rule of the forum where controversies between scholars are conducted; but for that very reason it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary reader as an old bill ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... this time hath overslipp'd her thought, That she with painted images hath spent; Being from the feeling of her own grief brought By deep surmise of others' detriment: Losing her woes in shows of discontent. It easeth some, though none it ever cur'd, To think ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... if I did? A man as knows the use of an oar, may be trusted with one, even in a church, or an abbey. When your honour comes to hear what the dishes was, as Sir Wycherly's cook had never heard on, you'll think it as great a cur'osity as I do myself. If I had just leave to name 'em over, I think as both you gentlemen would look ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... a very odd way," said the other, "and a very bad way, to my taste and fancy. Look here, Flambeau, this Quinton—God receive his soul!—was perhaps a bit of a cur in some ways, but he really was an artist, with the pencil as well as the pen. His handwriting, though hard to read, was bold and beautiful. I can't prove what I say; I can't prove anything. But I tell you with the full force of conviction that he could never have cut ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Surely you are not surprised? I have learned what love is these last few days, have learned what a real man is like. I know you to be what he called you, a cur and a coward. I should never have learned this but for you, and I am grateful, very grateful. It is useless to swear and to threaten me with your fists. You dare not strike me, because, were you to injure me, you would lose your money. You have tried to degrade me, and you have ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... discover not a way to sadness, Nearer than I have in me, our two sorrows Work like two eager Hawks, who shall get highest; How shall I lessen thine? for mine I fear Is easier known than cur'd. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... windows broken, the shutters half shut, the way to the hall-door steps blocked up. They were forced to go round through the yards. Coach-houses and stables, grand ranges, now all dilapidated. Only one yelping cur in the great kennel. The back-door being ajar, the general pushed it open, and they went in, and on to the great kitchen, where they found in the midst of wood smoke one little old woman, whom they nearly scared out of her remaining senses. She ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... to their Conduct, and an Advantage to their Fame; But no discerning Judgment will consider it as ill Nature, in one Writer, to mark the Faults of another. A general Practice of that Kind wou'd be the highest Service to poetry. No Disease can be cur'd, till its Nature is examin'd; and the first likely Step towards correcting our Errors, is resolving to learn impartially, that we have ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... Laverick remarked. "He hasn't the nerve. He'll probably get drunk and blow his brains out. He's a broken-spirited cur, ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and carefully patrolled night and day by bands of dogs who recognize the limits of their domain and severely resent intrusion. In front of the Hungarian Crown a large dog, aided by a small yellow cur and a black spaniel mainly made up of ears and tail, maintained order. The afternoon quiet was generally disturbed about four o'clock by the advent of a strange canine, who, with that expression of extreme ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... he had misjudged Charnock in one respect, but saw that he had not. The fellow was a cur and would not have married Sadie if he had known about Helen's money. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... Gladstonians who think Home Rule heralds the millennium, and who babble of brotherly love, should note the neat speech of good Father Haynes, who said, "We would, if we could, pelt them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of heaven and the fires of hell, till every British bulldog, whelp, and cur would be pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." This is the feeling of the priests, and the people are under the priestly thumb. That this is so is proved by recent events in Dublin. None ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... won't be so very heavy if you take that course, and we will look after you when it is over. You, E., have been brought into this state through your miserable vices, drink, or whatever they may be. Cure yourself of the vices—we'll show you how—don't crown them by cutting your throat like a cur. You, F., have been afflicted with great sorrows. Well, those sorrows have some purpose and some meaning. There's always a dawn beyond the night; wait for that dawn; it will ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... and walked toward the stone station. The treacherous cur came running after me. "There's a side door," he whispered; "step in there behind the partition and take a look at her. She'll be done directly: she never stays more than fifteen minutes. Then you can use the telegraph at your ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... her in Philadelphia—at the station. She had smallpox. It was from her I got it. I was a coward—a cur. I left her to save myself. The money I had brought from home was nearly all gone. Ask her ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... thing about Ian, even though he is sometimes passionate and stubborn, and will probably have lots of trouble with himself by and by, there isn't a drop of sneaky cur blood in him, which is the only trait that need make a ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... Here, they know me as The Lodger. Will you have that? or will you have an appropriate nick-name? I come of a mixed breed; and I'm likely, after what has happened to me, to turn out a worthless fellow. Call me The Cur. Oh, you needn't start! that's as accurate a description of me as any other. What's ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... snapping eyes; there was a pitiless, contemptuous, murderous set to the lips and jaw; a fearful significance in the slowly-raising pistol hand and the pointing finger of the other. Limp as a wet rag, cowering like a lashed cur, terrified into speechlessness, Gleason dropped into the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... must not give your mind to believe those things; people will say anything. The Character is here reckoned admirable, but most of the facts are trifles. It was first printed privately here; and then some bold cur ventured to do it publicly, and sold two thousand in two days: who the author is must remain uncertain. Do you pretend to know, impudence? How durst you think so? Pox on your Parliaments: the Archbishop has told ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... is true," I replied. "Is it any wonder, then, that I hate the Tresidders, is it any wonder that I should thrash them as I would thrash a yelping, biting cur?" ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... cast a single glance at the direction in which the three chiefs had disappeared, and then began to retrace his own steps. It was his purpose to arouse Albert and flee at once to a less dangerous region. But the fate of Dick and his brother rested at that moment with a mean, mangy, mongrel cur, such as have always been a part of Indian villages, a cur that had wandered farther from the village than usual that night upon some ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... husks and potatoe parings. He fared as people usually do, who from vanity assume a station they are not qualified to fill. In the gutter he would have lived in unnoticed enjoyment. On the walk he got kicked by every passenger and bitten by every cur, till hungry and bruised he was glad to return to his proper ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... and, therefore, insolent magisterial cur, who has recently made himself an object of unenviable notoriety, by asserting that "the Irish would swear anything," has shown himself to be as stupid as he is malignant. Would, for instance, the most hard-mouthed Irishman in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... not!" returned Gabriel. "When first I saw him some boys were misusing him and he seemed to be but a brown cur with a dingy, matted coat; and I could wish that he had turned out to be of no account, for the look in his eyes took hold upon my heart; but I rubbed him well in the brook, and now see the full, feathery tail and silky ears. He is a ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... incomparable! my perfect!—What are you doing? Frisking beside that ugly black cur! He's no companion for a dog of your breeding and degree. Away, you vulgar-looking brute." And running across the road, she seized hold of a pedlar's dog, who was having a great game of romps ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... bishop's cur of late Disclosed rebellions 'gainst the State; So frogs croaked Pharaoh to repentance, And lice delayed the fatal sentence: And Heaven can rain you at pleasure, By Gage, as soon as by a Caesar. Yet did our hero in these ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... why? there wasn't nothin' to be seen. It was 'orrid dark, I can tell ye. Jist one or two stars a-shinin', like half-a-dozen farden dips in a great church; they only made darkness wisible. I began to feel all over a cur'ous sort o' peculiar unaccountableness, which it ain't easy to explain, but is most oncommon disagreeable to feel. It wos very still, too—desperate still. The beatin' o' my own heart sounded quite loud, and I heer'd the tickin' o' my watch goin' like the click of a ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... This is his trick!" growled Seaman Kellogg hoarsely. "Many a time I've heard him brag that he'd get even for the punishments that were put upon him. And now he has gone and done it—-the worse than cur!" ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... in the Church of St. Bartholomew a candle of wax, value one penny, saying therewith five Paternosters, five Ave Marys, and five Credos. On the following Friday he was to offer a candle of the same price before the crucifix, standing barefooted, and one before the image of cur Lady of Grace. This penance accomplished he appeared again at the court and compounded for absolution, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... essential, though it added to the danger of the enterprise. By sheer good fortune, however, they blundered against the life-boat. A dog barked, and Elsie had a thrilling struggle with Joey, who was furious that this unlooked-for insolence should go unanswered. The sleepless cur who yelped ashore speedily subsided, but it appeared to be an age before Suarez moved again. He knew, better than his companions, how ready the Indians were to note such sentinel challenges. Had the alarm continued, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... some farmer or other found his flock reduced in this way, until the whole neighbourhood was roused to excited indignation against the whole dog tribe. Suspicion fell in turn upon almost every poor cur of the neighbourhood, and many a poor canine innocent was done to death, some by drowning, others by poison, and more by shooting; until it seemed as if all the sheep and dogs of the countryside ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... Madam Tracy say if she knew it was her own son?" she soliloquized. "He is a young cur, but ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... will give it you for nothing. You are an infamous cur, my friend. Your name is Charles Blondet; you were steward in the household of De Langeac; twice have you bought the betrayal of the viscount, and never have you paid the money—it is shameful! You owe eighty thousand francs to one ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac

... the fierceness of these hunting bands from settlers and hunters; and once a friend of mine, an old backwoodsman, had a narrow escape from them. He had a dog, Grip, a big brindled cur, of whose prowess in killing "varmints" he was always bragging, calling him the best "lucififer" dog in all Canada. Lucififer, by the way, is a local name for the lynx on the upper St. John, where Grip and his ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... herding and all deeds of craftsmanship: and above these are men whom they call masters and lords who do nought, nay not so much as smithy their own edge-weapons, but linger out their days in their dwellings and out of their dwellings, lying about in the sun or the hall-cinders, like cur-dogs who have fallen away ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... "What a snarling, cross-bred cur you are! I should judge your own family will be the first to thank me for putting you under lock and key. Hell to live ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... mean about skipping out, Paul?" Bobolink exclaimed. "Oh! I hope now, you won't do anything like that. I'd feel dreadfully mean to sneak away. Always did hate to see a cur dog do that, with his tail ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... vanity came uppermost. As he neared the Red Lion he stopped suddenly, and the darkness seemed on fire against his cheeks. He would have to face curious eyes, he reflected. It was from the Red Lion he and Aird had started so grandly in the autumn. It would never do to come slinking back like a whipped cur; he must carry it off bravely in case the usual busybodies should be gathered round the bar. So with his coat flapping lordly on either side of him, his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and his hat on the back of his head, he drove at the swing-doors with an outshot chest, and entered ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... bound to champion every fighting cur who is getting the worst of it," said Mr. Cuthbert. "What has become of Mr. Farrant's favorite? I suppose he is fussing over it instead of studying ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... flames, We praise, we bless, we magnify your names. The slave is he that serves not; his the crime And shame, who hails not as the crown of Time That House wherein the all-envious world acclaims Such glory that the reflex of it shames All crowns bestowed of men for prose or rhyme. The serf, the cur, the sycophant is he Who feels no cringing motion twitch his knee When from a height too high for Shakespeare nods The wearer of a higher than Milton's crown. Stoop, Chaucer, stoop: Keats, Shelley, Burns, bow down: These have no part with ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the Commandments," observed Lansing, "any ass can shatter them with his hind heels, so why should he? If he must be an ass, let him be an original ass—not a cur." ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... contemplating the doctrines of the Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transparent splendour of Cicero's incomparable diction, we have been tempted to mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, "Cur quis non prandeat hoc est?" What is the highest good, whether pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, whether we can be certain of anything, whether we can be certain that we are certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be unhappy, whether all departures from right ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to marry him? What do you mean?" he said, not without irritation, and avoiding her gaze. "It is no affair of mine. I don't like the man, if that's what you mean. He is acting like—well, like the cur that he is, in putting on the screw as he is doing; but, of course, that is the way out of it, and the only way, and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assur'd, And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur'd; But thence I learn and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... of accounting for it. It sometimes seems as if the mere sight of happiness or success in others is the signal for its breaking out. As we have said, its two leading motives are cowardice and jealousy. Just as the cur will wait till the big dog has passed by, and then, slinking up behind, give a surreptitious snap at his heels, so the sneak, instead of standing face to face with his rival, and instead of entering into fair competition with him, creeps up unobserved ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... countenance, a pen behind his ear, and recommending his constrained customers in honeyed tones to be patient and orderly. Behind the substantial counter which was an impregnable fortification, was his popular son, Master Joseph; a short, ill-favoured cur, with a spirit of vulgar oppression and malicious mischief stamped on his visage. His black, greasy lank hair, his pug nose, his coarse red face, and his projecting tusks, contrasted with the mild and lengthened countenance of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... Hobinall our pastor whilere, That once in a quarter our fleeces did sheer; To please us, his cur he kept under clog, And was ever after both shepherd and dog; For oblation to Pan, his custom was thus, He first gave a trifle, then offered up us; And through his false worship such power he did gain, As kept him on the mountain, and us on ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... Mytton!" he screamed, his voice shrill with passion. "Out of the way, I say; I will crop his ears, the cur!" ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... a cur," he said. And his voice shook a little. "I don't wonder you won't speak to me. But there are some things that can't be left unsaid. I'm going down now, at once, to tell ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... on: "hit's fa'r fer one as 'tis fer t'other; y'u can't fight a man fa'r 'n' squar' who'll shoot you in the back; a pore man can't fight money in the couhts; 'n' thar hain't no witnesses in the lorrel but leaves; 'n' dead men don't hev much to say. I know it all. Hit's cur'us, but it act'-ally looks like lots o' decent young folks hev got usen to the idee-thar's so much of it goin' on, 'n' thar's so much talk 'bout killin' 'n' layin' out in the lorrel. Reckon folks 'll git to ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.

... outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped cur. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... anticipated, the captain came round a little a few hours after his insulting attack upon me. I think his temper frightened him when it had reference to me. Like others of his breed, he was a bit of a cur at the bottom. My character was a trifle beyond him; and he was ignorant enough to hate and fear what he could not understand. Be this as it may, he made some rough attempts at a rude kind of politeness when I went below to get some grog, and condescended to say that when I had been ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... only just time for a start and a response, 'M. Arture! And is it yourself?' before a howl of vituperation was heard—of abuse of all the ancestry of the cur of an infidel slave, the father of tardiness—and a savage-looking man appeared, brandishing a cudgel, with which he was about to belabour his unfortunate slave, when he was arrested by astonishment, and perhaps terror, at the goodly company of Marabouts. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this: I used t' work fer this party off 'n' on,—this party whose name I ain't a-mentionin'. He wuz in pol'tics too. Likewise run a quarry an' s'm'other things t' num'rous t' mention. 'Twas in the quarry I worked, mostly erbout 'lection time. Cur'ous, ain't it, whut good pay a feller'll git fer light work erbout 'lection time? Wall, this year I ain't hed proper treatment. This party 'lows money is tight, an' he's filled his quarry up with dagoes, damned dagoes." He paused ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... it's because)—Ver. 89. It must be observed that these words, commencing with "Sane, quia vero," in the original, are said by Phaedria not in answer to the words of Thais immediately preceding, but to her previous question, "Cur non recta introibas?" "Why didn't you come into the house at once?" and that they are spoken ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... released me and springing on the curate, seized him by the collar. "Why, you unhanged cur? Why? Or better, say it's not true—say something, else by the Lord I'll kill ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... so sure of that, my fine cur,' said the man, taking hold of the cudgel he had brought with him, and ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... whoever disputes the right of the Romish Church to act entirely as she may, is a heretic. In this way he treated as contemptuously as he could the obscure German, whose theses, that 'bite like a cur,' as he expressed it, he only wished to dismiss with ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... excited by the stranger's appearance, there were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur, which, after snuffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its tail between its legs, and skulked into its master's back-yard, vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his lungs, and babbled some unintelligible nonsense ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... pasteboard boxes, long and flat, square and oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencilings on one end; cryptic, that, is to anyone except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long slim box. Another stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents under "Slp Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing fragments as "Blk Nt Drs" and "Sun Par Val." Once you had the code key they translated themselves simply enough into such homely items ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... to recount my reasons," he replied calmly, as he put her arms away. "But I might point out the snarling cur, Siptah, for one, and a few other ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... lordship rarely let the opportunity pass without exhibiting his own precise knowledge of that language. "My lords," said the Scottish advocate, Crosbie, at the bar of the House of Lords, "I have the honour to appear before your lordships as counsel for the Cur[)a]tors."—"Ugh," groaned the Westminster-Oxford law lord, softening his reproof by an allusion to his Scottish nationality, "Cur[a]tors, Mr. Crosbie, Cur[a]tors: I wish our countrymen would pay a little more attention to prosody."—"My lord," replied Mr. Crosbie, with delightful readiness ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... in this sweet night, which stirred in one such sentiment, that ghoulish cur was like the omnivorousness of Nature. And it came to me, how wonderful and queer was a world which embraced within it, not only this red gloating dog, fresh from his feast on the decaying flesh of lamb, but all those hundreds ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... thought you had only to deal with some helpless creature you could bully. Stir your fat carcass, you ugly cur! I'm in a hurry." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... when he mixed it with Sharkey. Now the rag-chewing has begun over again, and Bob is doing the lordly contempt act just as Jeems did before the late unpleasantness. He has "retired"—wants Corbett to "go get er repertashun"—says "Corbett quit in the last go like er cowardly cur." It will take time to work the thing up, to resuscitate the old excitement, to set fools to betting wildly on their favorite; but when the pippin's ripe it will be pulled. There's not the slightest reason for ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... heard. He is making wigs for the actors. He is now our master, and does what he pleases with us. He is a good man himself, but his wife is Russian—and what a cur! She is robbing the people—simply awful! But here is the prison. Shall I drive up to the front? I think they don't admit ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... guiltless in the matter. It was that cur Atlee made the mischief. In a moment of weak trustfulness, I sent him over to Wales to assist my uncle in his correspondence. He, of course, got to know Lady Maude Bickerstaffe—by what arts he ingratiated himself into her confidence, I cannot say. Indeed, I had trusted ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... Urban Grandier shows how dangerous it was in the days of superstition to incur the displeasure of powerful men, and how easily the charge of necromancy could be used for the purpose of "removing" an obnoxious person. Grandier was cur of the Church of St. Peter at Loudun and canon of the Church of the Holy Cross. He was a pleasant companion, agreeable in conversation, and much admired by the fair sex. Indeed he wrote a book, Contra Caelibatum Clericorum, in which he strongly advocated the marriage of the clergy, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... has recorded some unforgettable types of those poor and notable lives, at once so humble and so lofty. He has described the village cur and the country doctor. But how we should have loved to encounter in his gallery, among so many living portraits, a picture of the university life of fifty years ago; and above all a picture of the small schoolmaster ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... knowledge of this matter, further than your belief resting upon the demeanour of this hound towards the Marquis of Montserrat. Surely the word of a knight and a prince should bear him out against the barking of a cur?" ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... "Three animals reach their worth in a year: a sheep, a cat, and a cur. This is a complement of the legal hamlet; nine buildings, one plough, one kiln, one churn, and one cat, one cock, one bull, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... like giving a mongrel cur a court trial for sheep-killing! This perverted infant simply needs—dingbats!" He shouted the last word. He twisted the radical off his feet, stooped, and laid the victim across a knee that was as solid as a tree-trunk, and with the flat of a broad hand ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... together. I have no doubt he did; but since the woman had no business there, and if my theory were right, was concealed in Parrish's chambers at the time, she could not have seen you, except in the way I explained to her. Poor soul! I feel rather a cur for trapping her, but you were in a tight hole, Wigan, and I had to get ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... on, with absurd little Satan running in a circle about him. On the way they met the "funeral dog," who glanced inquiringly at Satan, shied from the mastiff, and trotted on. On the next block the old drunkard's yellow cur ran across the street, and after interchanging the compliments of the season, ran back after his staggering master. As they approached the railroad track a strange dog joined them, to whom Hugo paid no attention. At the crossing another new acquaintance bounded toward them. This one—a half-breed ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... nobody could be more civil and obsequious than the inhabitants of the village. They would take off their hats, and make the humblest bows you ever saw. If the children were rude, they were pretty certain to get their ears boxed; and as for the dogs, if a single cur in the pack presumed to yelp, his master instantly beat him with a club, and tied him up without any supper. This would have been all very well, only it proved that the villagers cared much about the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... "You cur, you've squealed on me!" With his uninjured left hand he caught the other in his Oriental death grip, with all his consummate skill. Astonished at the sudden move, Shirley rose to his feet. But he ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... cried Max, with difficulty gulping down the lump that rose in his throat. What a cur he felt—he, the owner in the sight of these men, helpless to influence in the slightest degree the affairs of the great works called by his name. "But, lads—to my shame I say it—I am helpless. I am but just come from demanding of Monsieur ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... pipes after supper. "Two years ago I took a natcherlist out for a month, an' he was so tickled he said 'e'd send me a bunch o' books about bears an' wild things. He did! I read 'em. I laughed at first, an' then I got mad an' made a fire of 'em. Bears is cur'ous. There's a mighty lot of interestin' things to say about 'em without making a fool o' yo'rself. There ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... though he was without the power to make them continue in that shape for a longer period than that between sun and sun. He could make a wolf-dog step into the form of a handsome hunter; he could clothe an old cur with the skin of a very wise powwow. After his charm was spoken over a spaniel sneaking with his tail between his legs, you would see, in his stead, a white man doing the very same mean act of cowardice, with his ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... to hear me. I repeat the expression, and plainly in his own native tongue. I call him a cur of an Irishman." ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... adjective for us that expresses the midnight caterwaul—"ghastful." Bartholomew probably suffered from those two minor curses of humanity—the amorous cat and the wandering cur. But he has preserved for us a noble eulogy of the dog, and has a reference to the tale of the dog of Montargis, the standing example of canine ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... companies which you will, and ought to keep, where such conversations would be misplaced and ill-timed; your own good sense must distinguish the company and the time. You must trifle only with triflers; and be serious only with the serious, but dance to those who pipe. 'Cur in theatrum Cato severs venisti?' was justly said to an old man: how much more so would it be to one of your age? From the moment that you are dressed and go out, pocket all your knowledge with ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... Indian stoicism. He saw through the cracks in his hut the Indian fires, yet burning and smoking, and the dim figures still passing and repassing. There was also the faint hum to tell him that savage life did not yet sleep, and now and then a mongrel cur barked. But all things end in time, and after a while these noises ceased; even the cure barked no more, and the smoking ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... "He's a cur, Job!" he said strongly. "A snake in the grass! An oily scoundrel! I don't know how I know it, but I know it! A square man would have punched me the way I talked ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... Since the walks of life he trod He never wagged an unkind tale abroad, He never snubbed a nameless cur because Without a friend or credit card ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... see her. I'm going to tell her that I was a cur to write what I did to her the day I sailed. I—" He stopped short near the door, and faced his friend. His hands ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... "The cur!" he muttered, as he hurried forward, leaping over fallen blocks and fragments which showed still the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... temptation it was for the muscular policeman to swing around and shake the miserable wretch as one would a cur! ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... there, to show whose head is hit, The bad would sentence and the good acquit. In sparing everybody none you spare: Rebukes most personal are least unfair. To fire at random if you still prefer, And swear at Dog but never kick a cur, Permit me yet one ultimate appeal To something that you understand and feel: Let thrift and vanity your heart persuade— You might be read if you would learn ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... butt into my affairs. He's a sneaking cur. I won't stand for it. I'll get even with him. I'll tell Miss Douglas about his family. She'll never look at him again after that. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... 'creator', 'spectator', 'testator', 'coadjutor', 'assessor', to which in Walton's honour must be added 'Piscator' and 'Venator'. On 'curator' he who decides does so at his peril. On one occasion Eldon from the Bench corrected Erskine for saying 'c['u]r[)a]tor'. 'Cur[a]tor, Mr. Erskine, cur[a]tor.' 'I am glad', was the reply, 'to be set right by so eminent a sen[a]tor and so eloquent an or[a]tor as your Lordship.' Neither eminent lawyer knew much about it, but each was so far right that he stuck to ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... predictions of Burke were therefore justified. That once mighty intellect expended its last flickering powers in undignified gibes at the expense of Pitt and his regicide peace. Fate denied to him the privilege of seeing Malmesbury again expelled from France and whipped back "like a cur to his kennel." The great Irishman passed away, amidst inconceivable gloom, in his 68th year, at Beaconsfield (8th July 1797). In the view of Windham and other extreme Royalists, Burke was wholly right, and Pitt's weakness was the cause ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... bad song—in fact, the worst of all my songs—why, I dare say it wouldn't be a bad idea to sing it. By-the-bye, Talbot, you ought to learn to sing—at least, to hum tunes. I'll teach you how to whistle, if you like. I wonder if this Spanish cur likes music. I'll sing you a song, if you like, and I'll bet ten cents you never ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... replied Tom, in the most wretched tone he could assume; "I mean that my cousin loves another fellow, an Englishman, who has not a single penny which he can call his own, a wretched cur, a beggarly fortune-hunter. I fancy I can see him. He is one of those fellows who walk bearing all their fortunes on their backs. He was dressed in faultless evening dress; light kid gloves, patent leather boots, and a tall silk hat." (This was all false.) "If I am not mistaken, this fellow has ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... noble character in itself; disdain of many pleasures, a chief part of what is commonly called wisdom; disdain of the inevitable end, that finest trait of mankind; scorn of men's opinions, another element of virtue; and at the back of all, a conscience just like yours and mine, whining like a cur, swindling like a thimble-rigger, but still pointing (there or thereabout) to some conventional standard. Here were a cabinet portrait to which Hawthorne perhaps had done justice; and yet not Hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... whom thou seest transformed by vice. The violent despoiler of other men's goods, enflamed with covetousness, surely resembles a wolf. A bold and restless spirit, ever wrangling in law-courts, is like some yelping cur. The secret schemer, taking pleasure in fraud and stealth, is own brother to the fox. The passionate man, phrenzied with rage, we might believe to be animated with the soul of a lion. The coward and runaway, afraid where ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... was ten thousand times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... mighty cur'ous. A'most everyone goes somewhere by train nowadays—there's such a sight o' cheap 'scursions. I know a man wot got up i' the middle o' night, 'e did, an' more fool 'e!— an' off 'e goes by train down to seaside for the day—'e'd never seen the sea ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... a doll's sulky with a tiddy little pony no bigger than a dog. If I had children like that I'd give 'em all the chances goin' of breaking their neck, as they wouldn't be worth savin' for anythink but sausage meat. Well, this cur still kep' on at his larks, so soon as I got the team on the level,—it was at Sapling Sidin', runnin' into Ti-tree creek; I could hear the creek gurgling above the sound of the rain, and the white froth on the water I can see ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... husband should learn what happened in my room to-night, he would kill that man. What encouragement could I have given him? Innocence is never on its guard—but, [Drawing up.] the last I remember before I fell unconscious, he was crouching before me like a whipped cur! [Starts as she looks out of the window.] There is Mr. Thornton now—Ah! [Angrily.] No,—I must control my own indignation. I must keep him and Colonel Haverill from meeting before we leave Charleston. Edward Thornton would shoot my husband down without remorse. But poor Frank! ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard

... weight. Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task. Shaggy and lean and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow, and now with many a frisk, Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks the sturdy churl ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... thou call to thy god on behalf of a tyrant and a coward," she said excitedly; "thou shouldst have seen that man cowering at my feet like a beaten dog. I could have spurned him with my foot, as I would a cur." ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... size, and encouraged by the nods and winks of the wooers who sat near, Irus was only too ready to take up the challenge. "Hark to the old starveling cur!" he shouted. "How glib of tongue he is, like any scolding hag! Get thee to thy fists then, since thou wilt have it so, and I will knock all thy teeth out, if thou hast any left"; and he thrust Odysseus with ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... with you, you little cur!' broke out Sir Henry, with a shout of laughter, and giving Alphonse a good kick which sent him flying off with a ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... usuries, and I have borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe; and then you have called me unbeliever, cutthroat dog, and spit upon my Jewish garments, and spurned at me with your foot, as if I was a cur. Well, then, it now appears you need my help, and you come to me and say, 'Shylock, lend me moneys.' Has a dog money? Is it possible a cur should lend three thousand ducats? Shall I bend low and say, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... deaden This pain; then Roger and I will start. I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden, Aching thing, in place of a heart? He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could, No doubt, remembering things that were,— A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food, And himself a sober, respectable cur. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... language o'er, Bawd, hussy, drunkard, slattern, whore; On all the sex she vents her fury, Tries and condemns without a jury. At once the torrent of her words Alarmed cat, monkey, dogs, and birds: All join their forces to confound her; Puss spits, the monkey chatters round her; 30 The yelping cur her heels assaults; The magpie blabs out all her faults; Poll, in the uproar, from his cage, With this rebuke out-screamed her rage: 'A parrot is for talking prized, But prattling women are despised. She who attacks another's honour, Draws every living ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... I a cur last night?" cried Will eagerly. "Mike said there was a storm coming on, and that we'd better run in. Didn't I say, 'let's stop and shake out the fish,' as we ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... a common cur, though very uncommon to us, a black and white short-haired mongrel that we named "Watch." We always gave him a pan of milk in the evening just before we knelt in family worship, while daylight still ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... hysterics, however, there was no trace of a tear in her twinkling black eyes, although her fat little husband, who ambled meekly in her train, betrayed signs of great emotion, his red face all swollen from crying, and otherwise looking like a whipped cur. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... preserve appearances. People in Rome will talk about this,—that we removed Lygia as a hostage. While they are talking, she will remain in Caesar's palace. Afterward she will be removed quietly to thy house, and that will be the end. Bronzebeard is a cowardly cur. He knows that his power is unlimited, and still he tries to give specious appearances to every act. Hast thou recovered to the degree of being able to philosophize a little? More than once have I thought, Why does crime, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... first quarter, and the clouds through which she appeared to struggle, were light and fleecy, but rather cold-looking, such, in short, as would seem to promise a sudden fall of snow. Frank had passed the two first cabins of the village, and was in the act of parrying the attacks of some yelping cur that assailed him, when he received a slap on the back, accompanied by a gho manhi Dhea gliud, a Franchas, co wul thu guilh a nish, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... he said, with earnestness, "I don't want to take the money. I begin to see how it is; I see you're right. To tell the truth, I was afraid I'd been a little hard on the boy. I knew that young cur of a Freeman was to blame for it, and I was sorry on the girl's account and all; but I was hasty, I suppose. I shouldn't have done anything, though, about taking him back; but now that you've made me ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... of home and young and of all. But note keenly that this is incidental. It is immensely important at times, but it is distinctly secondary. The great simple plan of God is this: let the light shine. The darkness flees like a whipped cur, tail tightly curled down and in, before the real ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... time, a cat crossed the street, and jumped over the gutters, carefully. A cur sniffed at every tree, and hunted for fragments from the kitchens, but I did not see a single human being, and I felt listless and disheartened. What could I do with myself? I was already thinking of the inevitable and interminable visit to the small cafe at the railway ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... have heard. He is making wigs for the actors. He is now our master, and does what he pleases with us. He is a good man himself, but his wife is Russian—and what a cur! She is robbing the people—simply awful! But here is the prison. Shall I drive up to the front? I think they don't admit ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... If she was out with Mr. and Mrs. Chester for a good time, it was dollars to doughnuts that a fourth member of the party was that chap Pratt. Jennie was going altogether too much with the fellow anyhow, and though he was an ill-mannered cur (this was Daniel's opinion), he had money, and seemed to be pretty popular with other people. He certainly was blamed popular with Jennie and the Chesters. Confound it all, the Chesters were not so many! (this also was ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... suffer through disease, no beating vein Conveyes infection dangerous to the heart, No part impostum'd to be cur'd by Art, This body holds; and yet a feller grief Than ever skilfull hand did give relief Dwells on my soul, and may be heal'd ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... habits, people regarded him as crazy and left him severely alone. He had never been known to molest anyone, but sought rather to avoid meeting human beings, so he was suffered to remain there in his lonely hut on the mountain with no one but a stray cur ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... that you insulted me, striking me on the face with a glove, because I offered certain civilities to a maid of honor to the Princess of Plassenburg. You wounded me in the arm. Your father, of whose death I have heard but now, cast me forth like a cur-dog from a chamber window. Between you ye have shamed me, and would shame me worse—for the sake of the murderess of mine ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... smile on his sanctified countenance, a pen behind his ear, and recommending his constrained customers in honeyed tones to be patient and orderly. Behind the substantial counter which was an impregnable fortification, was his popular son, Master Joseph; a short, ill-favoured cur, with a spirit of vulgar oppression and malicious mischief stamped on his visage. His black, greasy lank hair, his pug nose, his coarse red face, and his projecting tusks, contrasted with the mild and lengthened countenance ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... dispraised Hercules. As with Hercules, so with the physical activity he represents,—no one dispraises, if few practise it. Even the disagreement of doctors has brought out but little skepticism on this point. Cardan, it is true, in his treatise, "Plantae cur Animalibus diuturniores," maintained that trees lived longer than men because they never stirred from their places. Exercise, he held, increases transpiration; transpiration shortens life; to live long, then, we need only remain perfectly still. Lord ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... A mongrel cur might have kept up, much less a seasoned thoroughbred. Up and down hill ahead of him the car swayed and wallowed laboriously in an unused, gully-washed road. There was constant shade in which to stop and pant, there were frequent streams in which to lie for a moment, half submerged, and cool his ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... Smith, taking the opportunity of filling his glass while his comrade's back was turned; "we're a nat'ral cur'osity." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be a cur to grumble. Life has been very ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... parrot's language o'er, Bawd, hussy, drunkard, slattern, whore; On all the sex she vents her fury, Tries and condemns without a jury. At once the torrent of her words Alarmed cat, monkey, dogs, and birds: All join their forces to confound her; Puss spits, the monkey chatters round her; 30 The yelping cur her heels assaults; The magpie blabs out all her faults; Poll, in the uproar, from his cage, With this rebuke out-screamed her rage: 'A parrot is for talking prized, But prattling women are despised. She who attacks another's honour, Draws every living thing upon her. Think, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... gwine keep yo' cur'osity up long. You see, Sistah Griggs, you done 'lucidated one p'int to me dis night dat meks it plumb needful fu' ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... Every dog has that same nature about him. I've seen it proven many times. We had an old dog named Mose, who was never known to chase anybody. He used to lie there asleep on our front porch by the hour. Then next door there was a little cur that somehow took to chasing after wheels and wagons. You've heard how dogs yap-yap whenever they do that, ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... great boy-flogger at Montaigu College. If for flogging poor little children, unoffending school-boys, pedagogues are damned, he, upon my word of honor, is now on Ixion's wheel, flogging the dock-tailed cur that turns it.' Pantagruel's education was now humane and gentle. Accordingly he soon took pleasure in the work which Ponocrates was at the pains of rendering interesting to him by the very nature and the variety of the subjects of it. . . . Is it not a very ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... way to Ancrum, scourging himself. If ever there was an ungrateful cur, it was he! Why could he find nothing nice to say to that girl in return for all her pluck? Of course she would get into trouble. Coming to see him at that time of night, too! ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... while contemplating the doctrines of the Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transparent splendour of Cicero's incomparable diction, we have been tempted to mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, "Cur quis non prandeat hoc est?" What is the highest good, whether pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, whether we can be certain of anything, whether we can be certain that we are certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be unhappy, whether all departures from right be equally ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... might call royster, no way of the world but just that; but get him off to Boston, or any place where there were shells to be bought, and he'd come home fairly drunk with 'em, his trunk busting out and all his money gone. Seems cur'ous, too, for such an old rip as Dym Scraper, to care for such things; but we're made sing'lar,—one one way, and 'nother one t'other. That's so, I reckon, in your part of the world ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... she gritted, in a swift surge of anger. "I am afraid to face this country alone. I admit my helplessness. But so help me Heaven, I'll make you pay for this dirty trick! You're not a man! You're a cur—a miserable, contemptible scoundrel!" ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... word still holds him," said Thorpe, evenly. "As I understand, he asked her to marry him and she consented. He was never released from his promise—did not even ask for it. He slunk away like a cur. In the sight of God he is bound to her by his own word still. He should go to her and either fulfil his promise or ask for release. The tardy fulfilment of his promise would be the only atonement ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... reached the next stage, the diggers were before us; and when our men began to unsaddle at a hut about fifty yards from where they were feeding their horses, one of them, the biggest blackguard to look at of the lot, and though the fiercest probably the greatest cur, shouted at us to put the saddles on again and 'get out of that.' He had warned us in the morning that they'd had enough of us, and, with a volley of oaths, advised us to be off. Fred, who was in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... attempt to frighten us into again postponing the Day of Conquest! Know now, spineless weakling, that the time is ripe, and that the Fenachrone in their might are about to strike. But you, foul traducer of your emperor, shall die the death of the cur you are!" The hand within his tunic moved and a ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... and have known these things, since the form of man was separated from the dust. The knowledge and enforcement of them have nothing to do with religion: a good and wise man differs from a bad and idiotic one, simply as a good dog from a cur, and as any manner of dog from a wolf or a weasel. And if you are to believe in, or preach without half believing in, a spiritual world or law—only in the hope that whatever you do, or anybody else does, that is foolish or beastly, may be in them and by them mended ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... utterly overwhelmed and broken down, and had shown only the cringing spirit of a detected and whipped cur, Mr. Arnot's complacency would have been perfect. But as it was, the affair had gone forward in a jarring, uncomfortable manner, which annoyed and irritated him as would a defective, creaking piece of mechanism in one of his factories. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... cleverness, so that through all his torture he would be obliged to admire and respect her skill—she had let her temper get the better of her, and had shown him a side of herself that, she was well aware, was most unrefined, so that he had been able to leave her, not as a humbled, beaten cur, as she had intended, but feeling what she knew ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... care. Then he stood up, and his eyes fixed themselves on a curious heap under the table. It was a tumbled pile of pale blue, dirty white, with a four-legged dash of yellow. And out of the heap he made the forms of two small sleeping children, each hugging in their arms an extremity of a yellow cur pup, also sound asleep, in the shaft of sunlight which flooded in through the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... road to the farm gate. A cur yelped at their feet as they approached the house, and an old man, coatless and slippered, opened the door, holding an oil lamp high above his head. "Down, Rover! What ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... now, you cur?" he cried, "Look at her then. You will never see another face as beautiful, not in the whole length and breadth of your cursed country. Look—while you have the chance! By heaven, whoever you are, chief of the devil himself, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... breeding. Since the walks of life he trod He never wagged an unkind tale abroad, He never snubbed a nameless cur because Without a friend ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... of the Prophet," he muttered, "is it for this I have fed the girl and clothed her with linen from Beni Mazar all these years!" And he turned upon his heel, and kicked a yellow cur in the ribs; then he went to the nearest cafe, and making huge rolls of forcemeat with his fingers crammed them into his mouth, grunting like a Berkshire boar. Nor did his anger cease thereafter, for this meal of meat had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... is apt to leap to a conclusion, rendered easy by the attractiveness of the witness and the feeling that the defendant is a "cur anyway," and ought to be ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... Villabuena, an old captain of our's before the war. He resigned when Zumalacarregui took the field, and joined the Carlists, and it seems they've made him a colonel. A surly, ill-conditioned cur he always was, or we should not be standing here without a word of kindness or ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... damned drunken cur! You vile-mouthed liar! ... I may be an Isbel, but by God you cain't slander thet girl to my face! ... Then he moved so quick I couldn't see what he did. But I heerd his fist hit Bruce. It sounded like an ax ag'in' a beef. Bruce fell clear across the room. An' by Jinny ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... "You rotten-hearted Dutch cur," and Chard seized the captain by the beard with his left hand and clenched his right threateningly, "brace yourself up, or I'll ring your neck like a fowl's, and send you overboard after them. Think of your wife and family—and of ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke

... cook I informed him that Scotty was a damned liar; that it was I who had been with him; that he ran like a white-livered cur under fire from his cookhouse and didn't stop until he had reached the wagon lines; that he was there without being relieved and that he would shortly have another tale ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... dog is usually small or much more so than the common cur. they are party coloured; black white brown and brindle are the most usual colours. the head is long and nose pointed eyes small, ears erect and pointed like those of the wolf, hair short and smooth except on the tail where it is ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... there came running up a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and she felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long. But the springing tears were checked when two rough men came up, while a black cur ran barking up to Maggie, and threw her into a ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous

... they compare favorably with the whites; they are easily handled, true and obedient; there is less viciousness among them; they are more patient; they have great constancy. The character of the white, as you know, runs to extremes; one has bull-dog courage, another is a pitiful cur; one is excessively vicious, another pure and noble. The phases of the character of the white touches the stars and descends to the lowest depths. The blacks character occupies the inner circle. Their status is mediocrity, and this mediocrity ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... undistinguishable in the hazy atmosphere; with the village church looming brown and dingy through the uncertain light; with every winding path and cottage door, every gable end and gray old chimney, every village child and straggling cur seeming strange and weird of aspect in the semi-darkness, Phoebe Marks and her Cousin Luke made their way through the churchyard of Audley, and presented themselves before a shivering curate, whose surplice hung in damp folds, soddened by the morning mist, and whose temper was ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... aside his upper garment; and to the old man's answer and anxious exclamation: "How badly you look, Philip!" he answered crossly: "Like a man who deserves a kick rather than a welcome; a booby who has submitted to have his nose pulled; a cur who has licked the hand of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... brother," Wrayson answered, "if possible, a more contemptible little cur than the man himself was. His only interest is to discover the source of his brother's income. He wants money! Nothing but money. The other is a much more dangerous person. His name is Heneage, and he is an acquaintance of my own, a barrister, and a ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... huic foederi Moabitico ad amussim respondent. Appellat suum foedus Jeremias 'foedus novum; ab eo, quod cum majoribus populi Israelitici gypto exeuntibus pepigerat DEUS, omnino diversum.' Idem etiam de Moabitico foedere dicit Moses. Causam reddit Jeremias cur novum DEUS pactum, Sinaiticum aboliturus, molitus fuerit; nempe, quod Israelit, prpotentiore gratia destituti, Sinaiticum illud irritum fecissent, prceptis ejusdem non obtemperando, (ver. 32.) Eandem causam et Moses manifesto designat; 'Nondum,' inquit, 'dederat vobis JEHOVA mentem ad cognoscendum, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... my darling wife! I should be a cur, and worse than a cur—a thankless wretch—to wish to restrain you in anything!" he answered, sealing his agreement ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... worthy Knight, being then but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young Popish Cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prickeared cur for his pains, and instead of being shown the way, was ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... sinister face. It was Rama Ragobah! For fully a minute we stood silently face to face, each expecting the assault of the other. It was Ragobah who spoke first. "She is mine, body and soul; and the English cur may find a mate in his own kennel!" He bent toward me and hissed these words in my very face. His hot breath seemed to poison me. It made me beside myself. I knew he meant to take advantage of his physical superiority ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... tan-smelling bow-legs!" the enraged Populus retorted at a shout. "Who is this Mule, that he should represent the majesty of the bailiwick of Grelot? A cur whose very name is enough to relegate him to limbo; whose deeds are ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... as he would, he could not disguise his inward contempt for this petty jack-in-office,—and his keen glance was, to the perverse nature of the ill-conditioned boor he addressed, like the lash of a whip on the back of a snarling cur. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... boxes, long and flat, square and oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencillings on one end; cryptic, that is, to any one except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long, slim box. Another stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents under "Sip Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing fragments as "Blk Nt Drs" and "Sun Par Val." Once you had the code key they translated themselves simply enough into such homely items as ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... omnipresent—is the Disagreeable Girl. She is a disappointment to her father, a source of humiliation to her mother, a pest to her brothers and sisters, and when she finally marries, she slowly saps the inspiration of her husband and very often converts a proud and ambitious man into a weak and cowardly cur. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones,' says Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et maturiora ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... followed, would lead him past Stillyside. Slowly and without special aim he continued to walk, ruminating and still drawn onwards, lured by the time and scene, until the sound alike of mastiff and of cur had ceased, the grasshopper refused to pipe upon the dusty road, and the too distant bullfrog was no longer heard gurgling to its mates, but all was silent, lying as in a trance, both heaven and earth. And then he paused, and lapsing into meditation, stood unconscious of surrounding ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... have been, in the question of brute courage Dupont had yet to prove lacking. His every instinct was an Apache's: left to himself he would strike always from behind, and run like a cur to cover. But cornered, or exasperated by opposition to his vast powers—something which he seemed quite unable to understand—he could fight like a maniac. He was hardly better now, when he found himself thrown off and ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... dismissed this subject before he remarked: "Dum cur'ous that towline breaking. I overhauled every foot on't. I'd a bet my bottom fo'pence on its drawin' ten ton. Haul in the slack end 'n' let's hev ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... temptat insanos acuens furore dentes, 80 cur te, summe Deus, precemur unum. Vexamur, premimur, malis rotamur; oderunt, lacerant, trahunt, lacessunt, ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... on her way from Cardiff to Rangoon, which we fell in with early on the voyage, the captain came on board the Hampshire to lunch, and afterwards several of our passengers returned the visit. One of them brought back a small cur, which made the fourth dog on board—rather too many, as they were always in the way. Their number was soon reduced 50 per cent. One day what was known as the "sailor's dog" mysteriously disappeared. Some thought it had been thrown overboard, but it probably fell over accidentally, ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton

... goes) she makes a lovely corpse. Something quite childish and eternal in us, something which is shocked with the mere simplicity of death, quivers when we read of those repeated blows or see Sikes cursing the tell-tale cur who will follow his bloody foot-prints. And this strange, sublime, vulgar melodrama, which is melodrama and yet is painfully real, reaches its hideous height in that fine scene of the death of Sikes, the besieged house, the boy screaming within, the crowd screaming without, the murderer ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave a scar behind. He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies; And, as he was dispos'd, could prove it, 175 Below the moon, or else above ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... pilot thee to the place yonder, if my fealty to the prior—that is—if—I mean—though I was never a groat the richer for his bounty; yet he may not like strangers to pry into his garners and store-houses, especially in these evil times, when every cur begins to yelp at the heels of our bountiful mother; and every beast to bray out its reproaches at her great ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... omnes Te deos oro, Robinson cur properes amando Perdere? cur apricum Oderit campum, patiens ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... the wild and lurid nationalists of every tribe disport themselves in frenzied movements of hate and antagonism. An irate old colonel (very gouty) said to me the other day: "A man who forgets his duties to his own country and settles in another is a damnable cur. So much for these dirty foreigners who ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... there is no object in the world, except your children or your own self; in which the meum is so powerful, and the tuum so weak. You caress your own dog, and kick a strange one; you are pleased with the clamorous barking of your own cur, and you curse the same noise from another. The feeling is as powerful, almost, as that of a mother, who thinks her own ugly cub a cherub compared to others, and its squallings the music of the spheres. It is because there is no being that administers so ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... waiting for his master, and his anxiety is disinterested. The biped cur was waiting for the first streak of dawn to slip away to some more distant and safe hiding-place and sally-port than the Dun Cow, kept by a woman who was devoted to Hope, to Walter, and to Mary, and had all her wits ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... have gone back to the city and, in fact, his father was writing for him. But he couldn't leave Beckwiths', apparently. At any rate he stayed on and met Nelly every day and cursed himself for a cad and a cur and a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... an authentic instance of the inconsolable grief displayed by a small cur-dog at the death of his master:—A poor tailor in the parish of St. Olave, having died, was attended to the grave by his dog, who had expressed every token of sorrow from the instant of his master's death, and seemed unwilling to quit the corpse even for a moment. After ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... intellect expended its last flickering powers in undignified gibes at the expense of Pitt and his regicide peace. Fate denied to him the privilege of seeing Malmesbury again expelled from France and whipped back "like a cur to his kennel." The great Irishman passed away, amidst inconceivable gloom, in his 68th year, at Beaconsfield (8th July 1797). In the view of Windham and other extreme Royalists, Burke was wholly right, and Pitt's weakness was the cause of all ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... hound took your money. Your dog barked and awakened the boy and he loaded the gun and followed. The fellow had a good start and he didn't get him until near daybreak. It's been a stiff pull for the youngster and he seems to feel it was his fault that this cowardly cur you sheltered learned where you kept your money. If that is true, I hope you won't be ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... and was about giving further elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the traces of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... the whole business was that I left Hallville soon after this and went to San Antonio to take day report, and one day I picked up a paper, and read an account of how Bill Bradley had been assassinated by a cowardly cur who had a grudge against him. He was stabbed in the back, and thus ended the career of Bill Bradley, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... newsboy's paper, thrust to him, offered him the glaring lie in great black letters for a penny. He had torn the thing across, flinging it away angrily. There would be a libel suit to-morrow and such an apology as this editorial cur had never dreamed he had it in him to write. He heard men talk of it in the subway and laugh, and saw them turn wondering eyes to meet his glare. He made short his trip home, anxious to enlist under his father's ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... making money at this business when, in an evil moment, I was induced to merge it in the Cur-Spattering—a somewhat analogous, but, by no means, so respectable a profession. My location, to be sure, was an excellent one, being central, and I had capital blacking and brushes. My little dog, too, was quite fat and up to all varieties ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... feet. "And you have known this three months and never told us! Is that any way to treat your friends? Do you suppose we want to lie by and see you licked off this dam like a yellow cur? It's no use for you to ask this to be kept quiet, Boss. I won't ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... but some farmer or other found his flock reduced in this way, until the whole neighbourhood was roused to excited indignation against the whole dog tribe. Suspicion fell in turn upon almost every poor cur of the neighbourhood, and many a poor canine innocent was done to death, some by drowning, others by poison, and more by shooting; until it seemed as if all the sheep and dogs of the countryside would be ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... to pass a knot of boys just come out of school. At once one of the urchins took up a stone and threw it at him, the others clapped their hands, and hooted after him, "Hit him! Knock him over! Mad dog!" Away ran the unhappy cur, and all the boys yelling after him, throwing dirt, and striking at him with sticks. What next? Everyone in the street ran to the door, and saw the brute tearing down the way, with his tail between his legs. ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... quoting another and a bigger Jock than himself. "But it's a pity. That fellow is not only a puppy, he is a cur. I never saw anybody who needed a thrashing more." And he went and coiled himself in a hammock, ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... short-haired, sharp-eared, gaunt, and sinewy, with long legs and body. In height and length he ranges from a fair-sized fox terrier to a collie. I fail to see anything in him resembling the Australian dingo or the "yellow cur" of the States. The Ibilao have the same dog in two colors, the black and the "brindle" — the brown and black striped. In fact, a dog of the same general characteristics occurs throughout northern Luzon. No matter what may ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... it. There are in the Quiver of the God a great many different Darts; some that wound for a Day, and others for a Year; they are all fine, painted, glittering Darts, and shew as well as those made of the noblest Metal; but the Wounds they make reach the Desire only, and are cur'd by possessing, while the short-liv'd Passion betrays the Cheat. But 'tis that refin'd and illustrious Passion of the Soul, whose Aim is Virtue, and whose end is Honour, that has the Power of changing Nature, and is capable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... brush like a dog shaking a groundhog, Brackett told me that he never felt so surprised and hurt in his life. He hadn't cal'lated on that bear coming out for a good two minutes more; but mebbe the bear had stronger objections to smoking than Brackett knew. If it hadn't been for Brackett's little cur dog, that he supposed wasn't fit for nothing but barking at chipmunks, I reckon the bear would have chawed and thumped the life out of him. The cur seemed to tumble to the situation right away, and ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... ignaris etiam servilium literarum libri non studiorum instrumenta sed coenationum ornamenta sunt. Paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in adparatum. "Honestius" inquis "hoc impensis quas in Corinthia pictasque tabulas effuderim." Vitiosum est ubique quod nimium est. Quid habes cur ignoscas homini armaria citro atque ebore captanti, corpora conquirenti aut ignotorum auctorum aut improbatorum et inter tot milia librorum oscitanti, cui voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique? Apud desidiosissimos ergo videbis quicquid orationum historiarumque est, tecto tenus ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... inch, not a stone;" "war to the knife;" "one grand effort," etc. But the very best talkers were speedily discouraged by the shrugging of shoulders and ugly glances of the soldiers, that were like those of a snarling cur. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... though it is probably, an error of the transcribers. The real name Cyrus could not be unknown to Plutarch. In the text of Appianus (Mithridatic War, c. 103) the name is erroneously written Cyrtus; in Dion Cassius, it is Cyrnus. The Cyrus, now the Cur, flows from the higher regions of the Caucasus through Iberia and Albania, and is joined by the Araxes, Aras, above the point where the united stream enters the Caspian on the west coast. The ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... "My cur-like son," he replied, "cannot presume to such bountiful praise and golden commendation; but if, by the virtue of your Highness' excess of happiness, he does indeed realise your words, he will be a source of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... of the room feeling like a whipped cur. "Why, she is a perfect savage!" I thought. "But then what else can ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... not touch him, Bryan! [To the Presbyterians.] Whichever cur of you will carry this Escapes his fellow's fate. None ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... him to do such a foolish action. It was a hair-brained business altogether, sir; and I am glad you had the wisdom, Fred, to keep out of it. The idea of two lives being risked to save that of a wretched cur is too absurd; if you had offered the girl who owned it five shillings to buy another it would have ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... he such a lumpish, leaden, Aching thing, in place of a heart? He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could, No doubt, remembering things that were,— A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food, And himself a sober, respectable cur. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... about skipping out, Paul?" Bobolink exclaimed. "Oh! I hope now, you won't do anything like that. I'd feel dreadfully mean to sneak away. Always did hate to see a cur dog do that, with his tail between ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... ensued—a pistol was discharged that lit up rock and bush for a period, and showed two figures grappling together—all was then darker than ever. The contest continued—the combatants clenched each other, and panted and groaned, and rolled among the rocks. There was snarling and growling as of a cur, mingled with curses in which Wolfert fancied he could recognize the voice of the buccaneer. He would fain have fled, but he was on the brink of a precipice and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... kings; and, as each of them left his throne to his descendants, Sparta had two kings, instead of one, from this time on. One member of the royal family, although he never bore the name of king, is the most noted man in Spartan history. This is Ly-cur'gus, the son of one ruler, the brother of another, and the guardian of an ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... participation. What is it when the detection of the secret involves open shame and penal servitude? Can a man of genuine courage be a thief? Is not courage after all at the very bottom of all manly honour, of all sound honesty, all true self-respect? How shall a thief be other than a lurking cur, whose whole soul, such as it is, is bent to a mean suspicion that he is suspected, a continuous terror-stricken watchfulness, a sleeping and waking dread of an awful hand-clap on the shoulder? There are constitutional differences in thieves, ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... that extraordinary letter, I should have supposed you had been actuated by a mad infatuation for the cur, Levison; its tenor gave the matter a different aspect. To what did you allude when you asserted that your husband had driven ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... "Copernicus. Cur ergo hesitamus adhuc, mobilitatem illi formae suae a natura congruentem concedere, magisquam quod totus labatur mundus, cujus finis ignoratur, scirique nequit, neque fateamur ipsius cotidianae revolutionis ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... the office of Le Combat in order to seize Pyat and consign him to durance, but he was an adept in the art of escaping arrest, and contrived to get away by a back door. At the Hotel-de-Ville Rochefort, on being interviewed, described Pyat as a cur, and declared that there was no truth whatever in his story. Public confidence completely revived on the following morning, when the official journal formally declared that Metz had not capitulated; and, in the evening, Paris became quite jubilant at ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... You needn't look at me. I've tried my luck before now, and it was damned bad luck. So here I am, a musty old curmudgeon; and there's Ayre, a snarling old cur!" ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... sexu, rarum non esse feram, id quod omnium votis dignissimum est. Nam cum sapientia tantum generis humani ornamentum sit, ut ad omnes et singulos (quoad quidem per sortem cujusque liceat) extendi jure debeat, non vidi, cur virgini, in qua excolendi sese ornandique sedulitatem admittimus, non conveniat mundus hic omnium longe pulcherrimus."—ANNAE MARIAE ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... "You—cur!" she cried, with the fury of one beating barehanded at a barred door. "You had no right to do such a thing ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... he answered nothing. "Then, as I said, you are a coward and a cur, who insults peaceable men and weak women. If I know Viking right, it has no room for you." Then he picked up his coat, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... how far we have come, after all, and from that gathers courage for the rest of the way. Thirty-two years have passed since I slept in a police station lodging house, a lonely lad, and was robbed, beaten, and thrown out for protesting; and when the vagrant cur that had joined its homelessness to mine, and had sat all night at the door waiting for me to come out,—it had been clubbed away the night before,—snarled and showed its teeth at the doorman, raging ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... met Abruptly, the horns of a cow That mooed, while the cur, At her heels, turned from her, And aimed ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... those three coming out down the steps of stone and into the street; to wit the dwarf, the maiden, and the stately lady: but when he stood still to abide their coming, and looked toward them, lo! there was nothing before him save the goodly house of Bartholomew Golden, and three children and a cur dog playing about the steps thereof, and about him were four or five passers-by going about their business. Then was he all confused in his mind, and knew not what to make of it, whether those whom he had seemed to see pass aboard ship were but images of a ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... 'n' on,—this party whose name I ain't a-mentionin'. He wuz in pol'tics too. Likewise run a quarry an' s'm'other things t' num'rous t' mention. 'Twas in the quarry I worked, mostly erbout 'lection time. Cur'ous, ain't it, whut good pay a feller'll git fer light work erbout 'lection time? Wall, this year I ain't hed proper treatment. This party 'lows money is tight, an' he's filled his quarry up with dagoes, damned ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Man of Kamschatka, Who possessed a remarkably fat Cur; His gait and his waddle were held as a model To all the fat dogs ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... young jail-bird will stand in my way. Ah, my fine fellow, it's no such secret where your grandfather spent twenty-one years of his life; and you'll have a sup of the same broth some day. You don't keep a dog like that yelping cur for nothing; and I'll tell the gamekeeper to have his ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... gotter live some. Dar, it done struck five bells—dat mean ten-thirty, unerstan'—an' you's gotter git half-a-dozen ob yo' bob-tailed nags ready fo' de ridin' lessons yo' tells me yo' gives de yo'ng ladies at six bells,—dat's eleben o'clock,—Sattidy mawnin's. I's pintedly cur'us fer ter see dem lessons, I is. Lak 'nough befo' de mawnin's ober yo'll take a lesson yo'-self," and Jess ended his tirade by throwing an arm across each silky neck and saying to ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... hopes, joys, and sorrows, if he had any, behind a vacant grin, as Mitchell hid his behind a quizzical one. He never resented alleged satire—perhaps he couldn't see it—and therefore he got the name of being a cur. As a rule, he was careful with his money, and was called mean—not, however, by the Oracle, whose philosophy was simple, and whose sympathy could not realise a limit; nor yet by ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... ever prided himself on his truth-fronting intellect, and had freely uttered his scorn of the credulous mob! He who was his own criterion of moral right and wrong! No wonder he felt like a whipped cur. It was the ancestral vice in his blood, brought out by over-tempting circumstance. The long line of base-born predecessors, the grovelling hinds and mechanics of his genealogy, were responsible for this. Oh for a name ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... David, all his storms blown o're, Wafted by Prodigies to Jordans shore, (So swift a Revolution, yet so calm) Had cur'd an Ages wounds with one days Balm; Here the returning Absolon his vows With Israel joyns, and at their Altars bows. Perhaps surpriz'd at such strange blessings showr'd, Such wonders shewn both t'Israels Faith, and Lord, His Restoration-Miracle he thought Could ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... tua pervideas oculis mala lippus inunctis, Cur in amicorum vitiis tam cernis acutum, Quam aut aquila, aut serpens ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... aliis tu unquam feceris; an hoc tibi nunc fieri dignum sit? severus aliis, indulgens tibi, cur. ab uxore exigis ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... old he-goat, the one-eyed, what shall be My saying of a knave, his fashion and degree? I rede thee vaunt thee not of praise from us, for lo! Even as a docktailed cur thou art esteemed of me. By Allah, without fail, to-morrow thou shalt see Me with ox-leather dress and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... to the woman who was ten thousand times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... lives most the life of Jesus in this age and declares best the power of Christian Science, will drink of his Master's cup. Resistance to 317:9 Truth will haunt his steps, and he will in- cur the hatred of sinners, till "wisdom is justified of her children." These blessed benedictions rest upon 317:12 Jesus' followers: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;" "Lo, I am with you alway," - that is, not only in all time, but in all ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... "Cur animam in ista luce detineam amplius, Morerque, nihil est. Cuncta jam amisi bona, Mentem, arma, famem, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... number of dogs which had strayed in through the open doorway. When an attendant (in shirt-sleeves) proceeded to walk round and sprinkle the rough boards with resin, the dancers fairly yelled with delight, for a hungry cur closely followed him, greedily devouring the stuff as it fell! But although in those days the Yukon gold-digger was as tough a customer as ever rocked a cradle in the wildest days of Colorado, there was a rough and friendly bonhomie amongst the inhabitants of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... 278, and Cimber et Danjou, Archives cur., vi. 167. As by this time both Papists and Huguenots knew Catharine de' Medici to be a woman utterly devoid of moral principle, it may fairly be considered an open question whether there was any one in France more deceived than she was in supposing ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... groups before the church dissolved. Some returned to their houses, after picking up all the news that was going; others, before departing, were for spending an hour in one of the two gathering places of the village; the cur's house or the general store. Those who came from the back concessions, stretching along the very border of the forest, one by one untied their horses from the row and brought their sleighs to the foot of the steps for their ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... drowning kitten, whenever he can. Notwithstanding all this, his music gains ground, for it walks with him from end to end of the street. He is your only performer that requires not many entreaties for a song; for he will chant, without asking, to a street cur, or a parish post. His only backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that he never dines; for he sings for bread, and though corn has ears, sings very commonly in vain. As for his country, he is an Englishman, that by his birthright may sing whether he can or not. To conclude, he is reckoned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various

... don't mean to forsake it; that will be but a kind of mongrel cur's trick. Well, are you for ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... disgrace ours and theirs? When you kick a mongrel cur it lies down on its back and holds up its paws, whining. But the thoroughbred acts quite otherwise; you may kill it, but you cannot conquer it. We would not lie supine under the assault of the blundering bully. Disgrace cannot be inflicted from without,—it can only come to a man ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... founded as it were Upon the Decalogue, He classes with the minister, The rural pedagogue, And as a sort of angel-cur Regards his ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... his temper). Cur! [Exit, to enlist, into cupboard. Before he has time to realise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various

... found a waving foot with his right hand; wrenched it mightily. There was a sharp snap and the foot dangled limp in his fingers. He had broken the ankle. With a howl of pain his assailant let go and dropped to the floor to crawl away like a whipped cur. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... Pope, he said, is the Church of Rome; the Romish Church is the Universal Christian Church; whoever disputes the right of the Romish Church to act entirely as she may, is a heretic. In this way he treated as contemptuously as he could the obscure German, whose theses, that 'bite like a cur,' as he expressed it, he only wished to dismiss with ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... attributed, to the Natural Life, and, which God bestows upon such his Servants as he pleases. But the condition of those who have attain'd to the UNION, to whom God has given that which I told you could not be properly express'd by the word POWER, is that second State of the Blind-man cur'd. Take notice by the way, that our Similitude is not exactly applicable in every case; for there is very seldom any one found that is born with his Eyes open, that can attain to these things without any ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... slowly, and there was little detail in it. The Reign of Terror had come and gone, its high priests swallowed in the fury which they had created. Danton had died like a man, Robespierre like a cur; and then the end—cannon clearing the mob from the streets of Paris. A new era had dawned for France, but the future was yet on the knees of the gods. Had Raymond Latour escaped the final catastrophe? Were Sabatier, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... fell a-pondering over all the comfort and help that I might have been and that I might have had, if I had been but a little of a trembling cur to creep and crawl before abbot and bishop and baron and bailiff, came the thought over me of the evil of the world wherewith I, John Ball, the rascal hedge-priest, had fought and striven in the Fellowship of the saints in heaven and poor men ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... "but you don't. And whether you strike it or I win it, it's about the same. It's all luck. But it's mighty cur'o's about Chrismiss,—ain't it? Why do ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... He has cur'd since his coming thither, in less than a Fortnight, Four Scaramouches, a Mountebank Doctor, Two Turkish Bassas, Three ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... moral courage and returned to the ranch. When a man looses his last grip on his self-respect he sinks with cruel rapidity. "Poker" John told himself that he was betraying his niece's affection, and with this assurance he told himself that he was the lowest-down cur in the country. The natural consequence to a man of his habit and propensity was—drink. The one time in his life when he should have refrained from indulgence he drank; and with each drink he made the fatal promise to himself that it ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... grandes. The French translation has gros carlins, "large pug-dogs." Bernaldez calls these dogs, gozcos pequenos, "small curs." "Cur" is the common meaning for gozque or gosque. See Oviedo, lib. XII., cap. V., for a description of these native dogs which ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... resolve itself presently into straight rows of lamps. Few people were in the streets at that hour, and when I reached the dim building of the Old Market, I found it cold and deserted, except for a stray cur or two that snarled at Samuel from a heap of trodden straw under a covered wagon. Despite the fact that I was for all immediate purposes as homeless as the snarling curs, I was not without the quickened pulses which attend any situation that a boy may turn to an adventure. A ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... 'The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of guards. Why can't the fool take care ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... clock, the pendulum swung back and forth, the ticking went on, and its white old-fashioned face, looked out in calm serenity; but the dog was gone. It was all natural as life. The lighting of the gas had frightened the cur back to his yard, and as the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... wife can seldom be seen. When, on Sunday, the pair went to church through the main street of Kisfalu, an insignificant village in the Pesth county, every one looked after them, though every child, nay, every cur in the hamlet, knew them and, during the five years since their marriage, might have become accustomed to the spectacle. But it seemed as though it produced an ever new and surprising effect upon the by no means sensitive inhabitants of Kisfalu, who imposed no constraint ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... sheltering thorn they sit, Divide the simple meal, and drain the cask: The swinging cradle lulls the whimpering babe Meantime; while growling round, if at the tread Of hasty passenger alarm'd, as of their store Protective, stalks the cur with bristling back, To guard the scanty ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... with passion. "If? If? Head of God, man! do you dare talk to me in 'ifs'? Philip de Commines, when you were little in your own eyes, when you were the humble fetcher and carrier to that Bully of Burgundy whom I crushed, when you were the very hound and cur of his pleasure, fawning on him for the scraps of life, I took you up, I!—I! Now you are Lord of Argenton, now you are Seneschal of Poitou, now you are Prince of Talmont, and I have made you all these, I!—I! and you answer me with an 'if'! But the hand which raised you up can drag ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... and the question arose, what mode of composition was likely to be the most lucrative? Were he to continue to indite panegyrical verses, like those to Clarendon, he stood a chance of having a few guineas tossed to him now and then by a patron, like a crust to an unfortunate cur. Were he to translate, or write prefaces for the booksellers, he might pay his bill for salt, if diligent enough. For Satires as yet there was little demand. The follies of the more fanatical of the Puritans were too recent, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... this time, you cur of a Mick," were, expurgated of unprintable blasphemy, the exact words of the semi-savage lord of the frontier, "but by the God that made us both I'll get you before another moon, dash dash you, and when I do I'll cut out your blackguard heart and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... observe, also, a little, insignificant looking dog, who is apparently asleep, and, for aught I know, dreaming about the exploits of the day. You will no doubt smile, and wonder what exploits such a cur is able to perform; but I assure you that if he is at all like some of the gipsy dogs I have heard of, he has been taught a good many very shrewd tricks. The dogs of the gipsies are sometimes trained ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... the other lower his eyes, or alter the expression of his countenance; "Well, what do you stare at? Oh! I forgot—you may well stare. It is the first time that you have seen an Asturian caballero beaten at any thing by a cur of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... more objectionable trick was his habit not only of asking preposterous or indiscreet questions, but of setting people by the ears out of sheer curiosity. The appearance of so queer a satellite excited astonishment among Johnson's friends. "Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" asked some one. "He is not a cur," replied Goldsmith; "he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." The bur stuck till the end of Johnson's life. Boswell visited London whenever he could, and soon began ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen









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