"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... admiration by this flow of the right sort of talk, "Mr. Denney, did you ever read 'Little Rosebud, or is Beauty a Curse to a Poor Girl?' That sounded just like the detective in that—you remember—where he's talkin' to Clarence Armytage just after he's overheard the old lawyer tell Mark Vinton, the villain, 'If this child lives, you are a ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the conversion of the Indians is, that the system of oppression and cruelty followed in dealing with them, makes them curse the name of God and our holy religion: as the friars in Chiapa write me, nothing short of a miracle can make the Indians believe in Jesus Christ, when they see the execrable and manifest contradiction that exists between His gentle and beneficent doctrines and the conduct of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... his chair, as though he wanted to mitigate as much as possible his terrifying strength and immensity. What for did a fine man like him help to make cordite, the material of militarism, which is the curse of the nations? She wished he could have heard R.J. Campbell speak on peace the other night at the Synod Hall; it was fine. But probably he was a Conservative, for these big men were often unprogressive. She examined him carefully ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... all seven good fairies had spoken, so she stepped forth, her face distorted with hatred and envy, and said: "So I am not thought good enough to be a guest here: you despise me because I am old and ugly. I shall make a gift, and it shall be a curse. When your fine young lady becomes sixteen she shall fall asleep, and nothing you can do will be able to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... lots. Young and slave as I was, I felt the pang of separation from my loved and revered mother; child that I was I mourned for mother, even before our final separation, as one dead to me forever. So early to be deprived of a fond mother, by the "law," gave me my first view of the curse of slavery. Until this time I did not know what trouble was, but from then until the tocsin of freedom was sounded through the glorious Emancipation Proclamation by the immortal Abraham Lincoln, I passed through hardship after hardship, ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... the cabin, clearly outlined against the flickering light of the interior, was a man. And as Sheila watched another streak of fire burst from the door, and she heard the shrill sighing of the bullet, heard the horseman curse. But he did not stop in his flight, and in an instant he had crossed the river. She saw him for an instant as he was outlined against the clear sky in the moonlight that bathed the crest of the slope, and then he ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... who publicly declared that he desired the election to the Duma only to work for the extermination of the Jews of Poland. By the way, it is strange to notice how the word "exterminate," which thirty years ago in the days of Bismarck and Eduard von Hartmann as Ausrotten was subject to the curse and condemnation of the Poles, has now come to honor, and how ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... They fought upon that day till the ground was heaped with their dead, while, as the foremost fell thick and fast, their comrades, says the Roman, sprang upon their piled-up bodies, and hurled their javelins at the enemy as from a hill. They fought like men to whom life without liberty was a curse. They were not defeated, but exterminated. Of many thousand fighting men went home but five hundred. Upon reaching the place of refuge where they had bestowed their women and children, Caesar found, after the battle, that there were but three of their senators left alive. So perished ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... relief at command, he was in his way as "brazen-bowelled" at work as he was "golden-mouthed" at expression, and he had ample leisure. But the inability to undertake sustained labour, which he himself recognises as the one unquestionable curse of opium, deprived us of an English philosopher who would have stood as far above Kant in exoteric graces, as he would have stood above Bacon in esoteric value. It was not entirely De Quincey's fault. It seems to be generally recognised now that whatever occasional ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that bad happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make even people who had only vulgar standards ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... greatness was in his will, sagacity, watchfulness, and devotion to public affairs. Factions could not oust him, because he was strong; the King would not part with him, because he was faithful; posterity will not curse him, because he laid the foundation of the political greatness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... gods, but it is all of no use; the Father of the Gods tears the ring from his finger, and then they untie him and tell him to take himself off where he will. And now, as he goes, he lays a terrible curse on the ring. To every one who shall ever gain it, he swears, shall come ill luck, misfortune, sorrow, terror, and death; let him rule the world if he will, never shall he be happy; everyone shall long for the ring, and to him who gets it, ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... Elverton, after the door was shut in my face of the only man I ever tamed my spirit to ask aid from: yes, the cowardly hypocrite that dared not deny me to my face, sent his lacquey to tell me he was unwell, and could not be disturbed by beggars. May the curse—' ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... Jew! fable or not a fable, thou, when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe,—thou, when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee,—couldst not more certainly have read thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled brain, than I when passing forever from my sister's room. The worm was at my heart; and confining myself to that state of life, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... and name. To scream would be to invite their ready knives to her heart—to the heart of any woman who might rush to her succor. The cry died in her throat, and, trembling with dread and excitement, she clung to the door post and crouched and listened, for stifled mutterings could be heard, a curse or two in vigorous English, a stamping of impatient ponies, a warning in a woman's tone. Then, thank God! Up at the storehouse corner a light came dancing into view. In honest soldier tones boomed out the query "What's the matter, Six?" and then, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... ask me then, whether I think that a statute of absolute prohibition would stop this flowing curse, I reply that at least it would put the influence of authority on the right side. It would lend it the force of consistent endeavor. As it is, it would be far better if the public sanction had no expression; ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... our affection for all He thus taught: 'If ye love them which love you what new thing do ye? for even the fornicators do this; but I say unto you, pray for your enemies, and love them which hate you, and bless them which curse you, and offer prayer for them which despitefully use you.' And that we should communicate to the needy, and do nothing for praise, He said thus: 'Give ye to every one that asketh, and from him that desireth to borrow turn not ye away, for, if ye ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... bull. In dying, he recommended to them this Evangelical poverty as the foundation of their institute; and lest this foundation should be undermined by the prudence of the flesh, he forbade in the strongest terms, on pain of the curse of the Almighty, and of his also, the introduction into the order of ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... which he is not wholly well-informed, and be able to listen, even to ask intelligent questions, in matters with which he has no minute acquaintance. Such a man, if he steers clear of the contempt for indefinite views which is often the curse of men with clear and definite minds, makes the best kind of talker, stimulating and suggestive; his talk seems to open doors into gardens and corridors of the house of thought; and others, whose knowledge ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... He would go back each night for new gossip; and first he heard that old man Granitch was meaning to have all the conspirators arrested and sent to jail; but then it was said that young Lacey had left the hospital and vanished, no one knew where. And they never knew; never again did he appear to curse the strikers at the Empire, nor to break the hearts of chorus-girls on the Great White Way! His grim old father's hair turned grey in a few weeks; and while he went on to fill his contracts with the Russian government, all men knew that his heart was eaten ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... and rarely sober; the relief his absences had been was denied her entirely; and in some sunny corner of the uninhabited rooms up-stairs she spent her days, toiling at such sewing as was needful, and silent as the dead, save as her life appealed to God from the ground, and called down the curse of Cain upon a head she would have shielded from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... God, a curse of man upon us!" continued grandmother, now no longer with terrifying voice. Besides, she spoke as calmly as if she were merely reciting to us the history of some strange family. "Your great-grandfather. Job Aronffy, he who lies in the first niche, bequeathed ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... my brother, and the best boy that ever lived. Curse them!" he cried, shaking his clenched fist; "curse the Yankees. What right have ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... infantry looked very far from cheerful, and darted glances full of suppressed hatred at the yellow-faced major. And when, dead-tired, they had finished the drill, and were putting away their guns in the corner, they would curse the very uniform they wore as if it ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... loose and began to curse Macdonald with a bitterness that surprised the Government agent. What struck him most, though, was the obvious anxiety of Northrup to quiet his partner and to gloss over what he had said. Thinking of it later, Gordon wondered why the Dane, who had as much ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... her golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the compensation or the curse which is ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... holds and can drag a man to his undoing just as thoroughly as the "long as ye both shall live" curse from the altar-rails, with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden" lifting the roof off. In this manner was Dicky Hatt kidnapped, and he considered it vastly fine, for he had received an appointment in India which carried a magnificent salary from the Home ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... not mind about the books. Doubtless they were well enough in their way, a source of practical knowledge. But he did not care a curse about books or knowledge or faith as he walked through the snow across that gleaming white patch in the dusky forest. His heart cried aloud in forlorn protest against the surging emotions that beset him. His eyes stung. And he fought against that inarticulate ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... governor, understanding his father was in court, said he granted some minutes to the old man to converse with and bless his son. "Shall I give my blessing to a rebel?" cried the aged parent—"I hereby give him my curse." Rostophchin ordered the culprit to be executed, and then turning to the Frenchman, said, "Your preference of your own people was natural. Take your liberty. There was but one Russian traitor, and you have witnessed ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... treated alike and robbed from start to finish. When Albert had turned his back upon him, and, worse than that, taken away his best client, as he afterwards learned, the old scoundrel suffered the worst blow to his vanity he ever received. "Curse the fellow!" he would say to himself. "I'll pay him and have revenge if I live long enough, and I'll never rest till I do. No man ever got the best of me, and in the long run no man ever shall!" Like an Indian he bided his time, though waiting and watching with his merciless ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... skirt. If she do, she wouldn't think of what caused it—above all it's being a bullet. Well, I must be off! It will never do to keep the young lady waiting. If she don't feel disappointed at seeing me, bless her! If she do, I shall curse her! What's passed prepares me for either event. In any case, I shall have satisfaction for the slight she's put upon me. By God I'll ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... long ago," answered Palmer, smiling sardonically. "If the fall of Adam and the curse of Cain are fables,—as they are, of course,—they are just as true as AEsop's fables, for all that. They hit off human nature. But man isn't all. I've never belonged to any church, as I've often told you. But the longer I live the more I trust in ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... that thou hast gained for us much prey in the island of our foes through tobacco. For they that carry, mix, and weigh it, practise all manner of fraud; and by its indulgence some are led on to habitual drinking, some to curse and swear, and some to seek it through blandishment, and to lie in denying their use of it—not to speak of the injury it inflicts upon many, and its immoderate use upon all, body as well as soul. ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... waste of the Bacon Food there, surely, A'tim. Why do you not replenish the stomach that is but a curse to you, being empty, at the ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... all-but-human serve! Monsters made of stone and nerve; Towers to threaten and defy Curse or blessing of the sky; Shafts that blot the stars with smoke; Lightnings harnessed under yoke; Sea-things, air-things, wrought with steel, That may smite, and fly, and feel! Oceans calling each to each; Hostile hearts, with kindred speech. Every work ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... "Curse him!" cried Sir Robert, "what shall I do now? he cost me the d—-l and all of money, and I have not had him a twelvemonth. Can you lend me a ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... little rusty iron shelf, fixed in the corner, was our tinware. Although called tinware, it really was zinc, and was susceptible, through much hard work, of a high polish, but this "polishing tinware" was a fearful curse to the poor prisoner. It consisted of a jug for water and a bowl for washing in and a pint dish for gruel. There were strict and imperative orders, rigidly enforced, that this tinware should be kept polished, the result being that the men never washed ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... did. I began to throw again six feet above the bush, for a salmon often shifts his ground after rising. One cast—a second—another trout rises which we receive with an anathema, [Footnote: Anathema: a curse.] and drag the fly out of his reach. The fourth throw there is a swirl like the wave which arises under the blade of an oar, a sharp sense of hard resistance, a pause, and then a rush for dear life. The wheel shrieks, the line hisses through the rings, and thirty yards down the pool the great ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... days, my sleepless nights— my wandering brain—my hunger and thirst—my wretched, wretched life for long, long lonesome years. All these things you did not know of, young gentleman, when you and your companions threw stones at me. Don't think I would curse you for it. No, no. Come near, my children. I bless you, ay! from my heart, all of you. You who ill-treated me and you who never ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... Iximche, on the Ratzamut. Build there houses and a city, and construct a road on which all the people may pass and rest. Abandon Chiavar. As for you, people, if you succeed, may my words come to you as a curse." Thus spoke the king Qikab to our ancestors. Then the commands were given to the rulers, and the words of the king were sent to our ancestors. Nor did the Quiches ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... deplorable, for though barley may still be had it is at an enormous price, and it is impossible for labourers to provide for their families at such prices. It is to corn merchants and dealers in grain whose very existence they have been taught to curse and deprecate that the good people of this country must now look for near five months to come for subsistence." "If we have not an early harvest, God knows what will be the consequences," is another remark of ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... woman decreed for him, to raise a family, to engage in work, to build cities and to gather resources. All this is looked upon in the same optimistic spirit as marking progress, whereas the Biblical writer, consistent with his point of view, looks upon work as a curse, and makes Cain, the murderer, also the founder of cities. The step to the higher forms of life is not an advance according to the J document. It is interesting to note that even the phrase the "cursed ground" occurs in both the Babylonian and Biblical tales; but whereas in the latter ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... "Clear out—we've got no work to spare; Go beg," was all reply they made. You rich, who bade me work, I've fed With relish on the bones you threw; Made of your straw an easy bed: Old tramp,—I have no curse to vent on you. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... rascal swore he Existence would not make a curse, Knew not an iamb from a choree, Although we read him heaps of verse. Homer, Theocritus, he jeered, But Adam Smith to read appeared, And at economy was great; That is, he could elucidate How empires store of wealth unfold, How flourish, why and wherefore less If the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... said the old woman; "I have heard a good man say that a curse was like a stone flung up to the heavens, and maist like to return on the head that sent it. But if ye ken Lord Evandale, bid him look to himsell, for I hear strange words pass atween the sodgers that are lying here, and his name is often mentioned; and the tane o' them has ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... publicly offered by him on the 26th. After the trial he adds: "One of the first Things which the Pyrates, who are now so much the Terror of them that haunt the Sea, impose on their poor Captives, is, to curse Dr. M——r. The Pyrates now strangely fallen into the Hands of Justice here, make me the first Man, whose Visits and Counsils and Prayers they beg for. Some of them under Sentence of Death, chuse to hear from me the Last Sermon they hear in the world. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... it cannot but be a great injury against God, and procure a curse, when people employ not their best things in His service. This is clear from the words, 'Cursed be the deceiver which hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing.' So men that ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... Edna decidedly. "That flag talk didn't take the curse off the statement that the war ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... you luck," cried Mike, his young voice quivering, his face working with emotion, his usually merry eyes ablaze with passion. "I tell you it'll bring a curse on you. You'll live to rue the day you turned on us that way—an' maybe it won't be long ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... is none can undo it, nor save our souls from the curse; But many a million cometh, and shall they ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... lapse of her lord into morality would not only take the very ground of her invention from under her feet, but would rob her and him of an income that sustains them both in blissful independence of the curse of Adam. But do not let us be disheartened. Nature is strong; she is persistent; she completes her syllogism after we have long been feeding the roots of her grasses, and has her own way in spite of us. Some ancestral ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... this day, thou shalt remain a woman and she shall remain a man!' At these words of his, all the Yakshas began to soften Vaisravana for the sake of Sthunakarna repeatedly saying, 'Set a limit to thy curse!' The high-souled lord of the Yakshas then said unto all these Yakshas that followed him, from desire of setting a limit to his curse, these words, viz.,—After Sikhandin's death, ye Yakshas, this one will regain his own form! Therefore, let this high-souled Yaksha ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... once who drew a horse on a bit of paper to amuse the company and covered it all over with many parallel streaks as he drew. When he had done this, an aged priest (present upon that occasion) said, "You are pleased to draw a zebra." When the priest said this the man began to curse and to swear, and to protest that he had never seen or heard of a zebra. He said it was all done out of his own head, and he called heaven to witness, and his patron saint (for he was of the Old English Territorial ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... abandon the hopes to which it had given birth, at the very moment they were plotting to obtain the scalp of the "medicine-man." The beloved "fire-water," that seduces so many to their destruction, who have enjoyed the advantages of moral teaching, and which has been a withering curse on the red man of this continent, still had its influence; and the craving appetites of several of the drunkards of the party brought them to the spot, as soon as their eyes opened on the new day. The bee-hunter ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... also discerned in the opening of Genesis things which could not be literally received. The geography of the rivers in Paradise is inexplicable, though it assumes the tone of explanation. The curse on the serpent, who is to go on his belly—(how else did he go before?)—and eat dust, is a capricious punishment on a race of brutes, one of whom the Devil chose to use as his instrument. That the painfulness of childbirth is caused, not ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... bitter curse on the head, an' heart, an' hand, That plotted, wished, an' worked the fall of this Irish hero bold; God's curse upon the Irishman that sould his native land, An' hell consume to dust the hand ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the perpetual prison; he, whose spirit rose elastic to every storm of life, and exulted in the air of action, stood appalled at the fear of blindness;—blindness in the midst of a career so grand;—blindness in the midst of his pathway to a throne;—blindness, that curse which palsies the strong and enslaves the free, and leaves the whole man defenceless;—defenceless ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... devotion, whose faithful love hath watched over me, guarded, blessed from the first hour of my life, instilled within me the principles of life on earth and immortality in heaven—mother! mother! will not thy gentle virtues cling around thy boy, and save him even from a father's curse? Can I do else than devote the life thou gavest, to thee, and render back with my stronger arm, but not less firm soul, the care, protection, love thou hast bestowed on me? Mother, Virgin saint," he continued ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... of confining trade by the invisible, but potent chains of law, has been a curse wherever it has prevailed. In England, more dependent than other nations on the extent of its commercial intercourse, it may be said to have operated as a scourge. The most terrible inflictions of natural evil, storms, famine, and ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... will buy out the leaders. Better times will come, and we shall all settle down to the same old game of grab on the same old basis. But you," Sommers turned on the sauntering blue-eyed fellow, "people like you are the real curse." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Jinny, as if genius were the biggest curse a woman can be saddled with? It's giving you another sex inside you, and a stronger one, to plague you. When we want a thing we can't sit still like a woman and wait till it comes to us, or doesn't come. We go after it like a man; and if we can't get it peaceably we fight for it, as a man fights ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... praise, that it wanteth not grammar; for grammar it might have, but it needs it not; being so easy of itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his mother-tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the mind, which is the end of speech, that hath it equally with any other tongue in the world: and is particularly happy, in compositions of two or three words together, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... passing vessel, and then swiftly disappear. In nearly all the Pacific Islands the natives hold them in detestation and horror, and when one is seen lying coiled up on a rock sunning itself or crawling over the surface of the reef in search of food, a stone, accompanied by a curse, is always hurled at it. In the Ellice Oroup, when catching flying-fish at night, one (or more) of these horrid serpents is sometimes swept up in the scoop-net before it can be avoided. They range from six inches to nearly four feet in length, ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... in his hand, but with a curse he dropped it, tore loose from the boy and rushed through the door, disappearing in ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... chase flared up. The news spread from barrack to barrack, and the men doubled out intent on the capture of Simmons, the wild beast, who was heading for the Cavalry parade-ground, stopping now and again to send back a shot and a curse in ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... De Guiche, "the present is a moment for me, in which no other consideration and no other respect exist, than the consideration and respect of a man of honor towards the woman he worships. Drive me away, curse me, denounce me, you will be perfectly right. I have uttered complaints against you, but their bitterness has been owing to my passion for you; I have said I wish to die, and die I will. If I lived, you would ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the profoundest error, that I know nothing in the world about what my wife had to do, that I am entirely a stranger to what she has done; and that if she has committed any follies, I renounce her, I abjure her, I curse her!" ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cold and very reasonable spirit disturbed suddenly, thrown off its balance, as by a violent beam, a blaze of new light, revealing, as it glanced here and there, a hundred truths unguessed at before, yet a curse, as it turned out, to its receiver, in dividing hopelessly against itself the well-ordered kingdom of his thought. Twelfth volume of a dry enough treatise on mathematics, applied, still with no relaxation of strict method, to astronomy and music, it should have ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... to the college and there I fell in with a lady, one of the mistresses, who was the cleverest woman that I ever knew, and in her way a good woman, but one who believed that religion was the curse of the world, and who spent all her spare time in attacking it in some form or other. Poor thing, she is dead now. And so, you see, what between these causes and the continual spectacle of human misery which ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, reputation, birth,—and their opposites,—death, disease, pain, deformity, weakness, poverty, contempt, humility of station,—these are in themselves neither a benefit nor a curse. They may do us good, they may do us harm. We may use them for good, we may ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... tears from her cheeks. "When he ran out of Johnny Gagnon's," she went on, "I run after. I hold on him. He curse me. He throw me down. Since then I hate him. I lak make him hurt lak me. I ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Saragossa after reading the funeral service over them. I saw Tesse and told him of the scene I had witnessed, and demanded vengeance. He laughed in my face. Senor, I persisted, and he got angry and told me that, were it not for my cloth, he would hang me from the steeple. I called down Heaven's curse upon him, and left him and came home. Do you wonder, senor, that I found it hard to spare those Frenchmen for whom you pleaded? Do you wonder that I, a man of peace, lead out my villagers ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the great curse of it; that's what I deplore," Sewell broke out, "in our young people coming from the country to the city. They must all have some genteel occupation! I don't blame them; but I would gladly have saved you this experience—this knowledge—if I could. I ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... thee to the very core, and then devour thee. I hate her! She has robbed me of my peace, and now, with deep conceit and hellish pride, she deigns not to turn her head this way. Oh that I had the power to curse her!' ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the history slipped from my hand. Then I saw a dead man, dreadful in the moon-dawn, The ghost of the master, bowed upon that book. He muttered as he searched it,—what vast convulsion Mocks my sexton's curse now, shakes our English clay? Whereupon I told him, and asked him in turn Whether he espied any light in those pages Which painted an epoch later than his own. I am a shadow, he said, and ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... breed filth and crime, With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats; And men are withered before their prime By the curse paved in with the lanes ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... or that his children and grandchildren will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of the country. Similarly we should take the greatest care about naturalization. Fraudulent naturalization, the naturalization of improper persons, is a curse to our Government; and it is the affair of every honest voter, wherever born, to see that no fraudulent voting is allowed, that no fraud in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Lilith thereto: "Meseems not long ago One stood at Eden's gate like thee. But thy face Is darker, red thy lips. Of kingly race I know thee. Say, whence comest thou, O prince?" "Nay, then," he sighed, "an outcast I, long since From Heaven thrust out; yet now, the curse is past, Nor mourn I Heaven lost, if at the last Thy love I win. Yea, where thou art, I know Is Heaven. And bliss, in sooth" (oh, soft and low, He said), "lives ever in thy smile." His speech Thus ended. And toward the sandy beach He passed. Though long her eyes the stranger sought ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... before she is told about it. I will tell lies—I shall be forgiven—but I must save my child; and when she is stronger perhaps I may be able to comfort her. Oh! I wish she would not speak to him so tenderly and trustfully, when she is delirious. I could curse him when she does." And then Nest would call for her mother, and Eleanor would go, and invent some strange story about the summonses Edward had had to Caernarvon assizes, or to Harlech cattle market. But at last she was driven to her wits' end; it was three weeks since he had even stopped ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... complaint is quite of an opposite nature, and I have so many arrangements to make, so many difficulties to combat, so many enemies to deal with, that I am much of a General as will make me a historian of misfortunes, and nail my curse upon the ruins of what good soldiers are pleased to call the army in Virginia. There is an age past since I heard from you. I acknowledge that on my part, I have not written so often as I ought to have done, but you will excuse this silence ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... tutor told him of a great dragon that guarded a hoard of ill-gotten gold in the mountains, he resolved to kill it. So the fragments of Odin's sword were forged into a new blade, and Sigurd slew the dragon and took the gold, but with it he brought on himself a curse which had been put upon the treasure by the dwarf from whom ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... reverend David was indeed betrothed to Barbara Bamberg, Sidonia presented herself once in the choir, kneeled down, and was heard to murmur, "Wed if thou wilt, that I cannot hinder; but a child thou shalt never hold at the font!" And truly was the evil curse fulfilled. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Maximilian, see the power you have over me, you almost make me believe you; and yet, what you tell me is madness, for my father will curse me—he is inflexible—he will never pardon me. Now listen to me, Maximilian; if by artifice, by entreaty, by accident—in short, if by any means I can delay this marriage, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of relaxation is more important to the chief executive than to the day laborer is quite apparent. Even in the case of the day laborer the crack of the lash and the curse of the driver may have been capable of securing a display of activity among the laborers, but such means are not comparable in efficiency to the more modern methods. Laborers are now given more hours of rest, are not kept fearful and anxious, but are given short hours of labor and long ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... the game generously, Letitia; but it is all I can do not to despise you... because he loves you, and it has meant so little to you, you have done so little in return. That is the curse of this thing you call marriage. You say to yourself that you've got him... the law and the conventions will keep him for you... and so you can treat him as you please. You'll take him off with you now, and ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... once McGuire paused to curse silently at the complaisance of this people. What could he not do if they would help. Ten companies of trained men, armed with their deadly electronic projectors that disintegrated any living thing they reached—and he would clutch at his tousled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... go, it's better for you to go, and God be with you."—(The old woman thought for the best when she said that.)— "But stop a bit before you go. Which would you like best for me to make you, a little cake and bless you, or a big cake and curse you?" "Dear, dear!" said he, "make me a big cake. Maybe I shall be hungry on the road." The old woman made the big cake, and she went on top of the house, and she cursed him as far as she ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of the Entente, including the United States, are now united in an effort to stamp out the curse of feudalism in Austria and in Germany—a curse which has disappeared from all other parts of the civilized world. They are united to crush the military spirit of conquest which exists among the war leaders of the Prussians. They are pledged ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... Dark Dame on Levenside as we ferried over to Lochaber, and the last we saw of her, she stood knee-deep in the water, calling, calling, calling, through the grey dun morning, a curse on Clan Donald and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... not in either lies the curse: The hell of it's because I don't know which loss hurt the worse — My God ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... good wench and a brave one," he said, "and I am proud that my roof is the one to shelter thee from those lawless men, who are the curse of our ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... art poor; For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age, But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... fact," says Rev. John W. Chadwick, "that the immeasurable torrent of abuse that greeted his expressed opinion did not in any least degree avail to make him one of the pro-slavery faction. He differed from the most earnest of the anti-slavery men only as to the best method of getting rid of the curse of human bondage."[26] ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... large gouty shoes: his servant, not finding them, began to curse the thief. "Never mind," said his lordship, "all the harm I wish the rogue is, that the shoes may ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... must know and believe that He has done it all for your sake, if your faith is to help you. Therefore that is a vain, senseless doctrine that has been hitherto preached and taught in the great schools, which have had no experience of this knowledge, and have only attained to imagine how the curse afflicted Christ our Lord, and how He sits above in heaven unemployed, and possesses a joy with Himself; and thus their hearts remain barren, so that faith cannot live in them. But Christ does not stand there for Himself, but He is to be preached that He is ours. For what necessity could there ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... curse of Eden, and brings them a blessing instead: Blessed are they that labour, for Jesus partakes of their bread. He puts His hand to their burdens, He enters their homes at night: Who does his best shall have as a guest the Master of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... 'tis a curse which angry fates impose, To mortify man's arrogance, that those Who're fashioned of some better sort of clay, Must sooner than the common herd decay. What bitter pangs must humble genius feel, In their last hour to view ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... plague poison their breath, And sleep never visit the place of their bed! On their children and wives, on their life and their death, Abide still the curse of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... little victim of nursery malpractice through the imitative age, and you will discover in him the cigarette smoker, the tippler, the self-abased youth, and later, the man whose life is shadowed with the curse of baneful appetite. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... suffered moreover for the grief and misery of His mother and disciples, who were in great sadness. And He suffered because His death would be wasted for many men, and for the ingratitude of many, and for the blasphemies of those who would curse Him who died for love of us. And His nature and interior reason suffered because God withdrew from them the inflow of His gifts and consolations, and abandoned them to themselves in such distress. Therefore Christ complained and said, My ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... it out with a king of finance? That's the man we're in with—I can't tell you his name, now—he's the one that owns the forty-nine per cent. They're crazy about copper or he'd never have looked at me—there's some big market fight coming on. And didn't he curse and squirm and holler, trying to make me give up my control? He told me in years he had never gone into anything unless he got more than half for a gift! But I told him 'no,' I'd been euchered out of one mine; and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... heard that affliction is the surest way to heaven. Dora will lead him that road, and it will be more sure than pleasant. Poor fellow! He'll soon be as ready to curse his wedding-day as Job was to curse his birthday. A costly wife she will be to keep, and misery in the keeping of her. But if you came to talk to me about Dora STANHOPE, I'll cease talking, for I don't ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Why there, there, there, there, a diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Franckford, the curse neuer fell vpon our Nation till now, I neuer felt it till now, two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious iewels: I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the iewels in her eare: would she were hearst at my foote, and the duckets ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... have mercy upon whom he will, but on whom man's righteousness will give him leave; but his will, not ours, must rule here, therefore his righteousness and his only. So then, men are justified from the curse in the sight of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... Louisa has a chance of a presentation to Queen's College. I hope she will succeed. Do not, my dear sir, be indifferent—be earnest about it. Come what may afterwards, an education secured is an advantage gained—a priceless advantage. Come what may, it is a step towards independency, and one great curse of a single female life is its dependency. It does credit both to Louisa's heart and head that she herself wishes to get this presentation. Encourage her in the wish. Your daughters—no more than your sons—should be a burden on your hands. Your daughters—as much as your sons—should ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... always going to be rich next year—no occasion to work. It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich—these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... I sat down and wrote to Madame that her husband was in good health, and that I quite hoped to see him depart in a few days for La Pauline. I will not deny that the letter went into the post-box followed by a curse. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... winds stretch the sails; we scud over the foam-flecked waters, whither wind and pilot called our course. Now wooded Zacynthos appears amid the waves, and Dulichium and Same and Neritos' sheer rocks. We fly past the cliffs of Ithaca, Laertes' realm, and curse the land, fostress of cruel Ulysses. Soon too Mount Leucata's cloudy peaks are sighted, and Apollo dreaded of sailors. Hither we steer wearily, and stand in to the little town. The anchor is cast from the prow; the sterns are ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... their departure he thought of the emancipated house in which he could, if he desired, go mad and curse the gods without having to keep up a husbandly front. He considered, "I could have a reg'lar party to-night; stay out till two and not do any explaining afterwards. Cheers!" He telephoned to Vergil Gunch, to Eddie Swanson. Both of them were engaged for the evening, and suddenly he ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... they are very indifferent. If their Gods answer not their Desires, they curse them. They undervalue and revile their Gods. A Fellow gives out himself for a Prophet. His Success. The King fends for one of his Priests. Flyes to Columbo. Pretends himself to be a former Kings Son. Flyes from the Dutch. The King catches and quarters him. The Peoples high opinion still of this ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... invoke the great curse? Ha, what dost thou mean? Art thou a fool? Have not many died upon the word of Sipsu, Sipsu whose spirits never desert him! Harken! Did not Sipsu go unto the mountains in his youth? Did he not hear the hill spirits speaking? Did he not carry food ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... it,' he replied, burying his face in his hands. 'The curse of GOD was on it; it has been on me for years.' After a few moments, he added: 'But hear the rest, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of desolation, it gave back to desolation a quality more melancholy than utter barrenness. Glittering in the sunlight, the beds of alkali gleamed leper white; above them the agitated air was like the hot waves that dance and quiver about iron at white heat. From horizon to horizon the curse of God seemed to have fallen on the land; it was as if, cursing it, He had forgotten it, and left it as the abomination of desolation. Judith scarce heeded, her thoughts straying after first one then another of the group that made up her little world—Peter Hamilton, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... have for centuries been the objects of admiration, of imitation, of veneration, on the part of the debased people who gave us the earlier books of the Bible. The memory of Jacob became the dominant influence among the Hebrew nation; hence the continuous curse that rested upon them, the curse that rests upon the cheat, the defrauder of his own household, his brother, his father, his uncle. It is necessary to say that the world should know that our religion is founded ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... plunged on, not knowing where, and not caring, was when the roan reeled suddenly and flung forward to the ground. Even that violent stop did not unseat Red Pierre. He jerked up on the reins with a curse and drove in the spurs. Valiantly the horse reared his shoulders up, but when he strove to rise the right foreleg dangled helplessly. He had stepped in some hole and the bone ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... he answered, turning his head aside, and added with sudden petulance, "God's curse upon Pasquale Paoli, and all ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... saved who are congregated above the saints is the pleasantest portion of the picture. Here Damion and Pythias embrace each other; a young husband springs to greet the wife whom he lost too early; a poor unfortunate to whom life was a curse is timidly raising his eyes, scarcely believing that he is in paradise; men with fine philosophic heads converse together; and a number of honest serving- women express their astonishment with such gestures as are customary among that class ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... determined to abolish it; Maryland and Delaware have put declared emancipationists in places of their highest trusts by unprecedented majorities; and Kentucky is visibly casting about to see how she can best rid herself of the curse. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... traditional idea that they were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in refusing the gospel. Like other children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan exclusiveness. The great historical church of Christendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it: one of the two giants sitting at the door of their ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... India by the ferocious Pindarree, who asked for it with the insolence of a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta chout, the other the black ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... you were stalkin' us, eh? Why, we led you bung into it, of course. Colonel Dabney—don't you think he's a nice man, Foxy?—Colonel Dabney's our pet particular friend. We've been goin' there for weeks and weeks, he invited us. You and your duty! Curse your duty, sir! Your duty was ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... remark, "The young fool has courage. What a deep game he is playing. I tell you he has more talent than the whole of our side together except yourself—curse him." ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... root-and-branch democracy he opposed the view, that every old belief, or institution, such as the throne or the Church, had served some need, and had a rational idea at the bottom of it, to which it might be again recalled, and made once more a benefit to society, instead of a curse ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... wel-awey the stounde! 1695 Gan for to aproche, as they by signes knewe, For whiche hem thoughte felen dethes wounde; So wo was hem, that changen gan hir hewe, And day they goonnen to dispyse al newe, Calling it traytour, envyous, and worse, 1700 And bitterly the dayes light they curse. ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Slimak, when she had unfolded her carefully laid plans. 'Curse her, how she lords it over me! You can see that her father ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... become public characters. The "Dancing Girl" of India is thus shut up to her evil life by those who love her most; and her religious profession becomes to her the highway to perdition and a bitter curse to society. Recent effort has been made, in Bombay, to save such girls by making it a legal offence to "marry" them to the gods and thus devoting them to a life of shame. But this law only refers to the dedication of girls of tender age in Bombay. It is exceedingly sad that, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... do, myself," replied Miss Harson, "although, as in this poor woman's case and in many others, gold is not the best thing to find. It often brings with it so much sorrow and sin as to be a curse to its owner. The only safe treasure is that laid up in heaven, where 'neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... coopers, stevedores, and others, beside some thousands of unskilled labourers occupied in the handling of the fish. All these men are now without a day's work, or any means of obtaining it. The isolation of the colony, away out in the Atlantic with no neighbour, is its greatest curse. People unemployed cannot emigrate, but must swell an army of industrials depending on the Government for relief. The city is a veritable aggregation of unemployed; it is a city to let. Every business, factory, wharf, ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby's ear, "we all behaved disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of the South." It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... external things! How many of the passers knew that they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr. Wright, in Richardson's time an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire, who found him up one pair of stairs, in a room hung with rusty green "sitting ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Elizabeth in the long ago when we were children together. I have it yet. He came, and I tried hard to break him of his failing. But I had undertaken a job that was too big for me. Upon my return from a Western trip I found that he had taken to drinking again, and in his cups had enlisted. His curse followed him into the army. He rose to the rank of sergeant, only to fall again and suffer degradation. The other day he shot himself at the post where he was stationed, after nearly thirty years of service. Yet in all his ups and downs he never forgot ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis |
