"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tumbling over the wall of the farm-yard, wet, muddy, and breathless, but unobserved. But as they ran towards the barns the king gave vent to something between a groan and a curse, and all about them shone ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse, While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part — You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... it is that I've never been able to save. It's some sort of curse. There's always a bill or two ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... as institutions there should be no rules, no regulations which are not in full operation in the Waldorf-Astoria or the Hotel St. Regis. The curse of all such attempts in the past has been the insistence upon coercive morality. Make them not only non-sectarian, but non-religious. There is no more need of conducting a working girls' hotel or lodging-house in the name of God or under the auspices of religious sentiment ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... be happier when civilized, and had learned to curse the Great Spirit, and drink the white man's fire water? Is the red man happier than he was before the white man came?" ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... greater scale than ever before, he naturally found her something a vast deal higher in the husband market than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer. Mark Spayley, the brainmouse who had helped the financial lion with such untoward effect, was left to curse the day he ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... no one breathed, I had almost said no heart beat for listening. Not long; in an instant there rose the sharp simultaneous cry of many people in rage and despair. Inarticulate at that distance, it was yet an intelligible curse, and the roll, and the roar, and the irregular ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... witness that my heart will not suffer me for very shame to declare such vile reports as I have heard them speak against the queen, and yet her Grace taketh them for her faithful friends. The Spaniards say, that if they obtain not the crown, they may curse the time that ever the king was married to a wife so unmeet for him by natural course of years; but and if that may be brought to pass that was meant in marriage-making, they shall keep old rich ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... waiting. The flutter of birds, among the orange trees, gradually ceased; the sun came slanting over the eastern wall; the gray floor of the compound turned white and blurred through the dancing heat. A torrid westerly breeze came fitfully, rose, died away, rose again, and made Captain Kneebone curse. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... he had started they heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... could but have the greater tribute of questions to pay. "Then what did you mean—the other night at Summersoft—by saying that children are a curse?" ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... of gold reached the river, there was a stampede. But MacNair owned the land and his Indians were armed. There was a short, sharp battle, and the stampeders returned to the rivers to nurse their grievance and curse ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... necessitated condition of man in relation to the universe. In one portion there is a succession of beautiful similes, portraying the blissful state we are in, instead of being gifted with finer sensibilities, or a prescience, which would be a curse. ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... ever the slave Snaps the shackles that bind him, and leaps Into life in the heart of the brave The sense of the might that now sleeps— To which people, which side shall I cleave? Which fate shall I curse with my own? To which banner pray Heaven to give The ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... season. We'll soon get it up to the century mark; but it isn't like it used to be, when four and five hundred made the yearly score." His tone was positively regretful, though he referred to the cobra, deadliest of serpents, and the curse of every bright bit of glade and forest in India. It crawls out from its holes in the caverns of this island of Elephanta, and, with the miasma just as deadly that rises from the swamps, makes any residence upon its lovely-seeming hillsides a constant ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... and righteous fashion; and I will now give you my blessing, and dismiss you to your homes. I trust this may be the last time that I have to assemble you together to drive from amongst us those who are tainted by the curse ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to death a soldier for a cruel murder by taking the life of his sergeant. It was at Winchester, and after I had uttered the fatal words the culprit turned savagely towards me, and in a loud, gruff voice cried, "Curse you!" ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... rid of the chair! But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, And every ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... succession of experiences in the quest of immortality. Immortality would be a curse instead of a blessing ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... No man is condemned by the Divine judgment save for a mortal sin. Yet a man is condemned for theft, according to Zech. 5:3, "This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the earth; for every thief shall be judged as is there written." Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... what hath never been done by anybody,—therefore from 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
... and bringing out his horse, asked for the bridle; but, his wife not knowing where it was, and, when it could not be found, telling him she had lent it to a friend, first they began to chide, then to curse one another, and his wife wished the journey might prove ill to him, and those that sent him; insomuch that Chlidon's passion made him waste a great part of the day in this quarreling, and then, looking on ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the town of Cartago, from which we were to strike upwards over the Quindio mountains. The town was of considerable size, and at one time, I have no doubt, was as flourishing as others in the province. The curse of war had fallen upon it. Many of the houses were empty,—their owners having been killed on their own thresholds, or carried off to be shot, or sent to work at the fortifications of Cartagena ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... Could she? I seemed to behold her figure pausing petrified in the darkness, drawing deep breaths, and scarcely knowing whether to curse or pray. I listened and listened, but it was long before the answer came. Then it was short and hurried, like the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... before another morning," declared Mr. Grigsby. "That's the curse of easy money—especially out here, where the natives can get along on a little. Wait a minute. I'll go in and find the alcalde—he's the mayor. Colton's his name. He was chaplain on the frigate Congress, and was appointed alcalde after Monterey was captured. I knew him ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... of America, another, but smaller, portion has been doing frontier work in the Old World, protecting the rear by beating back the "unspeakable Turk" and reclaiming gradually the fair lands that endure the curse of Mohammedan rule. For a long time the Slav people—who, after the battle of Kosovopjolje, in which the Turks defeated the Servians, retired to the confines of the present Montenegro, Dalmatia, Herzegovina and Bosnia, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... walls, and a green mould crept along the floor. The air was heavy and dank, and it began to be hard for Nick to breathe. The men in the dungeons were singing a horrible song, and in the corner was a half-naked fellow shackled to the floor. "Give me a penny," he said, "or I will curse thee." Nick shuddered. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... old faiths," she continued rapidly, "and gone to preaching Christian Socialism. You have driven the best members of the church away, and made the press your enemy. That mob which hails you a god will turn and curse you. You will never build your marble dream out of such stuff. Both your sermons to-day will make your trustees more hostile. There was no Bible in them—only personalities and rank Socialism. I saw that woman in front of me drinking it all ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... too, Hist," she added. "'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... eloquent than all others, is to the deep heart of man, out of which are the issues of life and destiny. When all is said, it is as a man thinketh in his heart whether life be worth while or not, and whether he is a help or a curse ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... at last he cried,— "What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin, To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,—I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... it—curse it!" The man spoke aloud, but there was no one near to hear. He shook his skinny yellow fist out over the broad river that crept greasily down to ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the coming day lay before her as a desert and treeless solitude. By night, as by day, she constantly tried to call up the image of the dead, but whenever her small imaginative power had succeeded in doing so—not unfrequently at first—she had seen him as in the last moments of his life, a curse on his only son on his trembling lips. This horrible impression deprived her of the last consolation of the mourner: a beautiful memory, while it destroyed her proud and glad satisfaction in her only child. The ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... foul language have come out of my lips instead. I want to have time to pray, and to recollect what I was taught as a boy." I tried to cheer him up, as I called it, but alas, I too had forgotten to say my prayers, and had been living without God in the world, and though I did not curse and swear, my heart was capable of doing that and many other things that were bad, and so I could offer the poor fellow no real consolation. I persuaded him to drink the contents of the cup; but I saw as I put it to his lips that he could with ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... most adds to our confusion and distress; since our best wishes are inconsistent with themselves, nor can we at the same time petition the gods for Rome's victory and your preservation, but what the worst of our enemies would imprecate as a curse, is the very object of our vows. Your wife and children are under the sad necessity, that they must either be deprived of you, or of their native soil. As for myself, I am resolved not to wait till war shall determine this alternative for me; but if I cannot prevail ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... sacerdotal robes of High Mass; for it was a Tracy who was one of the four knights who spurred from London to rid Henry "of this turbulent priest," and the Tracys owned Lynton, Countisbury, and Morthoe. It is to Morthoe that Tracy is supposed to have come after the murder, with the curse upon him which descended to his ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... fiercely all around. But what matters it? They can not touch You, my Young Friends, if sheltered in the Rock! Upon that ROCK, eighteen hundred years ago, they exhausted all their fury. Jesus shelters and delivers you from that fearful storm of Law-curses, by himself being "made a curse for you!" The tempest may smite Jesus the Rock, but it can not touch those who have "won Him, ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... rot here. What! Would you trust him, knowing his false heart as you do? The moment you married him would be my death warrant. No, no! If you weaken now I shall curse you, curse you, my Kit! There has been horror enough. I ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... once, was an antagonism with the pagan religion, which was of the children of Ham, under his father's patriarchal curse. ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have disturbed divine service on Christmas Eve by dancing and brawling in the church-yard, whereupon the priest, Ruprecht, inflicted a curse upon them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without ceasing. This curse is stated to have been completely fulfilled, so that the unfortunate sufferers at length sank knee deep into the earth, and remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were finally released ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cried the man, with a ringing laugh. "Let 'em try. But don't you worry, Jess. No one saw me. Anyway, I don't care a curse if they did." ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... before the Lord. Nothing but the blood of sprinkling can wash away my defilement.—I went to the vestry after the evening service, and selected a place, where I thought I should not be observed; but the thought of the curse of Meroz, constrained me to leave my retired position. I resolved, if any opportunity presented itself, to engage in prayer; and truly God poured upon me the spirit of grace and supplication.—This week I have paid a social ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... was the idol of his nation; but no sooner did he become a Christian, than their love was turned to hatred. No other was so abhorred as he. Against no other did they unite with such determined rancor. Numbers soon leagued together, and even "bound themselves under a curse not to eat or drink till they had slain him." But all their machinations were vain. "Obtaining help from God, of whom he was a chosen vessel, to bear his name to the Gentiles, and kings, and the people of Israel," ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... the three big stoves, and the tobacco-reeking air was laden with the rumble of throaty conversation, broken here and there by the sharp scratch of a match, a loud laugh, or a deep-growled, good-natured curse. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... grandchildren will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of the country. Similarly we should take the greatest care about naturalization. Fraudulent naturalization, the naturalization of improper persons, is a curse to our Government; and it is the affair of every honest voter, wherever born, to see that no fraudulent voting is allowed, that no fraud in connection with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... too. Kill me! You who can butcher an innocent bird without a tremble. Oh, how I shrink from you. I curse the moment I first saw you. I curse the moment I was conceived ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... mean. She does not care a curse for Alberto. What is born of hen will scrape—remember that. Her father had a temper like a fiend and a cousin of her mother was hanged for murder. These are facts she will not deny. I had them from her uncle. I am frightened of her and I have disappointed her, because I am not ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... heard approaching through the darkness, now splashing deep into some treacherous moss hole with a loud curse, now blundering among loose-lying blocks of stone. Lee waited till he was quite close, and then seizing a bunch of gorse lighted it at his fire and held it aloft; the bright blaze fell full upon the face ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... hatred upon the old man, and surrounded him on every side and menaced him with threatening fists. "Beast!" shouted one. "I saw the Cross in life, when I was young. The unbelief your work taught denies me the sight of it in death. I curse you!" ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... Pope, when he had got up over the churches, give forth both oath and curse, with bell, {472} book, and candle? And was not the ceremony of his oath, to lay three fingers a-top of the book, to signify the Trinity; and two fingers under the book, to signify damnation of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... however, a swaying lantern was seen approaching. Orde, leaping to his feet with a curse at the boy on watch, heard the sound of wheels. A moment later, Daly's bulky form stepped into the illumination ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... after a few weeks of fatigue, such as they never before have known, of inconceivable suffering, of ruinous and almost useless labor, our colonists begin to complain of their trade; their condition seems hard to them; they curse their sad existence. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... April 1616, England's greatest dramatist died in the prime of life—he was just fifty-two years of age. Two days later he was buried in Stratford Church, near the north wall of the chancel. Fearful lest his bones should be added to the grisly burden of the charnel-house close by, he penned a curse upon those who should ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... camp chores as usual. Several times he was aware of Joe's close scrutiny, and finally, without looking at him, Shefford told of the visit of the Mormons. A violent expulsion of breath was Joe's answer and it might have been a curse. Straightway Joe ceased his cheery whistling and became as somber as the Indian. The camp was silent; the men did not look at one another. While they sat at breakfast Shefford's back was turned toward the village—he had not looked in that ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... there shall be no remission'—'but where are now your prophets which prophesied unto you, saying the King of Babylon shall not come against you nor against this land'—'But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.' That is where the stain was,—the bloody stain that held the leaves together—but I tore them ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... away. "I can't help it," she said. "I can't—possibly—see him again. I feel as if—as if there were a curse upon us both, and that is why the baby died. Oh yes, morbid, I know; perhaps wrong. But—I have been steeped in sin. I must be free for a time. I can't face him yet. I ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... which seemed like hours. The attorney composedly admired the unusual sight. The Indian and Furguson swore softly but most viciously until the moose moved away. The Indian hurled the hatchet at the retreating figure, with a final curse, and the ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... "I hope ye're wrong," he said. "I'd like to spend me last days here with me sons and daughters around me, sich as are left to me," here his voice became sterner. "It's the curse of our country,—this constant moving, moving. I'd have been better off had I stayed in Ohio, though this valley seemed very beautiful to me the first time I ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy—a peasant moralist with certain delusions ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Orleans dock where brutal hands had hurled her from the deck into the dangerous floods of the Mississippi. This was her third voyage, a brief run from Fort Leavenworth to Independence. She was apart from her fellow-passengers as in the other two, but now nobody gave her a curse, nor a blow. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... different. She wept because they had been caught in the steerage. She wept because she was ashamed, and because people were too kind. She was at once delighted and desolated. She wanted to outpour psalms of gratitude, and also she wanted to curse. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... answer for a moment, but sat with his head fallen, watching her thoughtfully. Women had been the special curse in Lee Haines' life; they had driven him to the crime that sent him West into outlawry long years before; through women, as he himself foreboded, he would come at last to some sordid, petty end; but here sat the only one he had loved without question, without regret, purely and deeply, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... disgrace himself. You, you, you are the cause of my abject cowardice! I would kill you if I remained alive! I do not want your benefits; I will accept none from anyone; do you hear? Not from any one! I want nothing! I was delirious, do not dare to triumph! I curse every one of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... church, and the artist had taken the pains to show the footman running before the coach. The picture was dedicated to "Rip Van Dam, Esq.," president of the council of the colony of New York. As a Christian name "Rip" did not tend to take the curse off the Van Dam. But this picture made Charley aware that at least one of the Van Dams had been a great man in his day. He reflected that this must be the old Rip's own carriage delineated in the foreground of the picture of which he ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... some workmen employed in repairing the woodwork of some of the upper rooms. Within a month of the calamity the last of the Montagues, a young man of 22, was drowned while shooting the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen. These tragic happenings were supposed to fulfil a curse of the last monk of Battle pronounced against Sir Anthony Browne when he took possession of the Abbey. "Thy line shall end by fire and ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... royal academy, left the language of Billingsgate quite out of my education: hence I am perfectly illiterate in the polite style of the street, and am not fit to converse with the porters and carmen of quality, who grace their diction with the beauties of calling names, and curse their neighbour with a bonne ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Mountains, they command To lift the hatchet for thy native land; Whilst in dread circle, round the sere-wood smoke, The mighty gods of vengeance they invoke; And call the spirits of their fathers slain, To nerve their lifted arm, and curse devoted Spain. So spoke the scout of war;—and o'er the dew, Onward along the craggy valley, flew. 230 Then the stern warrior sang his song of death— And blew his conch, that all the glens beneath Echoed, and rushing from the hollow wood, Soon at his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... population of Kem is fed by me in my fields on one side of the city; while all the poor and unfortunate are fed by you here on the other side. What man of Kem thinks of the grand palace of the Pharaoh in the midst of the city, but to curse it? What subject who knows how the Pharaoh and his favourites gorge themselves in luxurious plenty, while he nurses his hunger, but would a thousand times rather pay allegiance to those who save him from absolute starvation? And Zaphnath, in his nightly ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... of the vicious, which generally prevails over the retiring bashfulness of the virtuous indigent. There was one circumstance about the charity of his Lordship, which was still more impressed upon his mind: all those upon whom it was bestowed, inevitably found that there was a curse upon it, for they were all either led to the scaffold, or sunk to the lowest and the most abject misery. At Brussels and other towns through which they passed, Aubrey was surprized at the apparent eagerness with which his companion sought for the centres ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... in the name of the pontiff, visits their retreat and pronounces the papal anathema upon the guilty pair. The same curse is threatened to all the attendants unless Leonora is driven from the King, and the act closes ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... all I mean is that here people are brought up to believe that work is a curse and a punishment for sin, and that life is a state of wretchedness and that the sooner we can get ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... BRODIE. Curse you! (Throttling and kicking him.) You shake, and you shake, and you can't even hold a light ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some are more gently dealt with, and many belong to Castes where the yoke of Custom lies lighter; for these the point of the curse is blunted, there is only a dull sense of wrong. But in all the upper Castes the pressure is heavy, and there are those who feel intensely, feel to the centre of their soul, the sting of the shame ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... his very name appeals to me. May I, Charlie?" she went on, turning to the smiling man. "Would you like me for—a—a sister? I'm not a bad sort, am I, Kate?" she appealed mischievously. "I can sew, and cook, and—and darn. No, I don't mean curse words. I leave that to Kate's hired men. They're just dreadful. Really, I wasn't thinking of anything worse than Big Brother Bill's socks. When'll he be getting around? Oh, dear, I hope it won't be long. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... talismanic virtue to the beads. Now, however, in the height of her rage and disappointment, she tore them from her wrist, and, dashing them to the ground, exclaimed, 'Oh, fatal gift! 'tis thou hast entailed this curse upon me!' With these words, she sprang out of the room, leaving every one in mute astonishment at her frantic action." On the 23d of June, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... retire to a monastery, I revolted in horror at the career before me, and refused to take the vows. But my family were completely under the influence of a cunning and arrogant priest, who threatened God's curse upon me if I disobeyed; and ultimately, with a despairing heart, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... showed himself vastly civil? I dare say you're to preach before the Governor next Sunday? Or maybe they've chosen Bailey? He boasts that he can drink you under the table! One of these fine days you'll drink and curse and game yourself out of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... primitive Christianity soon degenerate into such odious idolatry, that even the delusions of the "false prophet" have been considered (like the doom to "labor") as a sort of beneficent curse in comparison! What, again, for ages, was the history of those "Shemitic races," in which, of all "races," was found, according to Mr. Parker, the happiest "religious organization," by which they discovered, earlier than other "races," the great truths of Monotheism? One incessant bulimia ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... meekest, most ingenuous, purest, and loveliest, of her meek, ingenuous, pure, and lovely sex, crushed to the earth by the curse of a brutal, drunken father; and, I am resolute to see that this world, for once, afford some compensation for ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... are the two curses of Nova Scotia,' he said. But he saw that it would be absurd to tell the people to let well enough alone, when, rightly or wrongly, {44} they were discontented with their government. The way to put an end to hectic agitation was not to curse or to satirize poor human nature, but to remove the cause ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... mind what I had almost forgotten—the woman whom my imprudent curiosity had brought into pursuit; of her. I felt ready to curse my folly aloud, as I did in my heart, for having gone ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... of the critical essay in the Quarterly on the critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea "has smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself cannot escape the common lot of being bitten. Whether all this is a blessing or a curse, like that one which made Pharaoh and all his household run to their toilet-tables, is a question about which opinions might differ. The physiologists of the time of Moses—if there were vivisectors other than priests in those days—would probably have considered that other plague, of the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... want half a crown. I pull out my book. I show him the distance is exactly three miles and fifteen hundred and ninety yards. I offer him my card—my winning card. As he retires with the two shillings, blaspheming inwardly, every curse is a compliment to my skill. I have played him and beat him; and a sixpence is my spoil and just reward. This is a game, by the way, which women play far more cleverly than we do. But what an interest it imparts to life! During the whole drive home I know I shall have my game ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one considers the moment. But alas! what would my most grave speculations avail? From the hour that fatal egg, the Stamp Act, was laid, I disliked it and all the vipers hatched from it. I now hear many curse it, who fed the vermin with poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty and the innocent rue it equally hitherto! I would not answer for what is to come! Seven years of miscarriages may sour the sweetest tempers, and the most sweetened. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... curse of Costecalde is Tartarin. So much fame for a single man! He everywhere! always he! And slowly, subterraneously, like a worm within the gilded wood of an idol, he saps from below for the last twenty years that triumphant renown, and ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... without some well-chosen volumes showing the evils of intemperance, the great curse which good men and women are everywhere endeavoring ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... me! You are the curse of the world! You have brought this flood upon us with your damnable incantations. Your infernal nebula is the seal of Satan! Here, beast and devil, here at my feet, lies my only son, slain by your hellish device. By the Eternal I swear you shall go ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... purple herb as shown by still possessing on its petals the same brown markings. Nevertheless, having disobeyed the laws of its growth, it has lost its original colour, and, like the Lady of Shalott, it is fain to complain "the curse has come upon me." Count Mattaei's nostrum Pettorale is thought to be got from the Galeopsis (hemp Nettle), another of the labiate herbs, with Nettle-like leaves, but no stinging hairs, named from galee, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... 27. 'God's curse on his hart,' saide William, 'Thys day thy cote dyd on! If it had ben no better then myne, It had ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... thing to be dependant on these low persons; the wise among the ancients were never so wrong as when they panegyrized poverty: it is the wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a public person, all his descendants by ordinary generation, are born under the guilt of that first sin, destitute of original righteousness, and having their nature wholly depraved and corrupted; so that they are by nature children of wrath, subjected unto all the penal evils contained in the curse of a broken law, both in this life, and in that which is to come; Gen. iii, 6, 13; Eccl. vii. 20; Rom. v, from 12 to 20; Rom. iii, 10-19; Eph. ii, 3; Confess, chap. 6: larger Cat. quest. 21, 22, short. Cat. question 13 ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... Stancy had been an easy, melancholy, unaspiring officer, enervated and depressed by a parental affection quite beyond his control for the graceless lad Dare—the obtrusive memento of a shadowy period in De Stancy's youth, who threatened to be the curse of his old age. Throughout a long space he had persevered in his system of rigidly incarcerating within himself all instincts towards the opposite sex, with a resolution that would not have disgraced ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... thousand and one dangers that beset the stranger who does not observe the strictest rules of health and diet. From the moment of arrival the body undergoes an entirely new experience. Men succumb because they foolishly think they can continue the habits of civilization. Alcohol is the curse of all the hot countries. The wise man never takes a drink until the sun sets and then, if he continues to be wise, he imbibes only in moderation. The morning "peg" and the lunch-time cocktail have undermined more health in the tropics than all ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... fulfilling the primal curse because it brings forth thistles? So thinks the farmer, no doubt, but not the goldfinches which daintily feed among the fluffy seeds, nor the bees, nor the "painted lady," which may be seen in all parts of the world where thistles grow, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... promptly at the sound of his three honks; and the rendezvous was effected in a black darkness which they seemed to have entirely to themselves. Not a hand was raised to them, not a threatening figure sprang up to dispute their going, not a fierce curse cursed them. The would-be assassins, if such there were, presumably still lurked in some Main Street cranny, patiently and stupidly waiting, entirely unaware that they had been neatly outwitted by the clever strategies of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with Gambetta on October 19th he said to me that it was his intention, "whether I liked Duclerc or not," to keep him in power, whether he does what he ought, does nothing, or does what is ridiculous. The curse of France is instability. Duclerc is an honest man.' Gambetta was 'aged and in ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the name given to some northern dwarfs whose king had once possessed a great treasure of gold and precious stones but had lost it. Whoever got possession of this treasure was followed by a curse. The Nibelungenlied tells the adventures of those ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... the Jester headlong fell From the dizzy, dreadful height, He muttered a curse with his latest breath On the head of ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a Fate-appointed hearse, Bearing away to some mysterious tomb Or Limbo of the scornful universe The joy, the peace, the life-hope, the abortions Of all things good which should have been our portions, 20 But have been strangled by that City's curse. ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... it. But in the actual condition of things it must be so. There is no remedy. This discipline belongs to the state of slavery. They cannot be disunited without abrogating at once the rights of the master, and absolving the slave from his subjection. It constitutes the curse of slavery to both the bond and the free portion of our population. But it is inherent in the relation of master and slave. That there may be particular instances of cruelty and deliberate barbarity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... signal—for she was weak, and she was a woman. How could she deliberately order Armand to be shot before her eyes, to have his dear blood upon her head, he dying perhaps with a curse on her, upon his lips. And little Suzanne's father, too! he, and old man; and the others!—oh! it ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Galloway got up also and sought the drawing-room. He lost his way in long passages for some six or eight minutes: till he heard the high-pitched, didactic voice of the doctor, and then the dull voice of the priest, followed by general laughter. They also, he thought with a curse, were probably arguing about "science and religion." But the instant he opened the salon door he saw only one thing—he saw what was not there. He saw that Commandant O'Brien was absent, and that Lady Margaret was ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... read these lines she cursed her own stupidity with a bitter curse. If she had used a little more tact and shown less jealous rage, she could have learnt from Millicent all which now so baffled them. She could easily have discovered if she had ever ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... is the curse of the French patentee. A man may spend ten years of his life in working out some obscure industrial problem; and when he has invented some piece of machinery, or made a discovery of some kind, he takes out a patent and imagines that he has a right to his own invention; then there ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... themselves, they tacitly agreed not to regard themselves as a "secret" organization in future, and we have the best of reasons to believe the entire order is so completely uprooted that it can never again spring up to curse the land. Home traitors have been taught, and it is well if they profit by the lesson, they cannot form any society or order based upon treason, that can for any considerable time continue "secret." Its purposes will transpire, for the all-seeing eye of Him ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Mahona; and the present Rajah—Jode Sing—is her son. Gunga Buksh is a Pausee, but the family call themselves Rawats, and are considered to be Rajpoots, since they have acquired landed possessions by the murder and ruin of the old proprietors. They all delight in murder and rapine—the curse of God is upon them, sir, for the murder ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... creep over him as he asked himself how closely Jean Jacques Croisset himself was associated with the girl he loved. It was a thought that almost made him curse himself for giving it birth. And yet it clung to him like a grim and haunting spectre that he would have crushed if he could. Josephine's confession of motherhood had not made him love her less. In those terrible moments when she had bared her soul to him, his own soul had suffered none ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... (may that returning day be night, The stain, the curse, of each succeeding year!) For something, or for nothing, in his pride He struck me. (While I tell it do I live?) He smote me on ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... spoke I had known it—the curse of my life was to be that George would always remember—and the intuitive dread I had felt changed, while I stood there, to the dull ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... you much advice, my boy. You have already been out in the world on your own account, and have shown that you can make your way. You are going into a life, Ralph, that has many temptations. Do not give way to them, my boy. Above all, set your face against what is the curse of our times: over-indulgence in wine. It is the ruin of thousands. Do not think it is manly to be vicious because you see others are. Always live, if you can, so that if you kept a true diary you could hand it to me to read without ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... and peaceful region of the ocean's bed, the bodies were straightway raised from the deck and, with a "One, two, three, heave!" were flung over the side, to be instantly fought over and torn to pieces by some half a dozen sharks which had put in an unsuspected appearance on the scene. Many a curse, "not loud but deep," was called down upon the skipper's head that night by the shipmates of the murdered men—for murdered they undoubtedly were—and many a vow of complete and speedy vengeance was solemnly registered. Insulted, scoffed at, derided, their last spark of self-respect—if ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... characteristic trust in the British sense of honor—Dr. Fu-Manchu came in person with Nayland Smith, in response to the wailing signal of the dacoit who had accompanied me. No word was spoken, save that the cabman suppressed a curse of amazement; and the Chinaman, his sinister servant at his elbow, bowed low—and left us, surely to the mocking laughter ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... bread and meat of his hungry children squandered and sacrificed with a fiendish recklessness. Within the dingy walls of the Ace of Spades was bartered the domestic happiness of many a home that had been cheerless enough, God knows, without this extra curse. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... . . There, shut the world out! How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse The world ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... to me, for fear of poison, and she returns me the same compliment. It is not, that our hatred amounts to poison yet, but such precautions are constantly in use in all harems. We have as yet only once come to blows: she excited me to violent anger by spitting and saying, "lahnet be Sheitan," curse be on the devil, which you know to the Yezeedies is a gross insult; when I fell upon her, calling her by every wicked name that I had learnt in Persian, and fastening upon her hair, of which I ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... in my opinion, practised upon him, and asked him what had become of the gold plates. He informed me that they were in a trunk with the large pair of spectacles. I advised him to go to a magistrate, and have the trunk examined. He said 'the curse of God' would come upon him should he do this. On my pressing him, however, to pursue the course which I had recommended, he told me he would open the trunk if I would take 'the curse of God' upon myself. I replied I would do so with the greatest willingness, and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "I will not enter into a detail of the past. I robbed you of your share of my father's property to gratify my love of money; and I married your mistress out of revenge. Both of these deeds have proved a curse to me—I cannot enjoy the one, and I loathe the other. I am dying; I cannot close my eyes in peace with these crimes upon my conscience. Give me your hand, brother, and say that you forgive me; and I will make a just restitution ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... delusion possesses you? Why do you curse the happy day, the blessed day, which saw me safe in ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... upon a lonely sea, Dream of green fields and pleasant water-courses, And then wake up with red thirst in their throats, And die more miserably because sleep Has cheated them: so they die cursing sleep For having sent them dreams: I will not curse you Though I am cast away upon the sea Which men ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... have remained my idol, my affection, my religion.... If I lied to you it was because I knew that the day on which you would find out my fault I should see you before me, despairing and implacable as you now are, as I can not bear to have you be. Ah, judge me, condemn me, curse me; but know, but feel, that in spite of all I have loved ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... and told her: 'Look here, Maria, this isn't right at all, and what you ought to do is get out.' She understood me, and went away, and went to her uncle the monk, and the two of them formed a 'cohabit.'... Curse her! I went after them; and if I ever find them, I'll kill them. All very well for the poor child to make a false step... or two false steps; but this thing of getting into a 'cohabit' with a monk, and he her uncle, that is a 'hulimination' ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Boon-keng, that when this ceremony was over, Sun Yat-sen turned to address the assembly. "He was speechless with emotion for a minute; then he briefly declared how, after two hundred and sixty years, the nation had again recovered her freedom; and now that the curse of Manchu domination was removed, the free peoples of a united republic could pursue their rightful aspirations. Three cheers for the president were now called for, and the appeal was responded to vigorously. The cheering ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... ended on the old terms: the rich 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
... that 'the King's heart is in the hand of the Lord, he turneth it whithersoever he will.' But my honour is my own, and to stain it would be a sin for which I alone must answer to Heaven and to Marcus, dead or living—Marcus, who would curse and spit upon me did I attempt to buy his ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... to whom this monument is shown, Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone; Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays, And daubs his tombstone, as he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... salvation and recommend us to the Divine Power. We hear that it has been brought to the knowledge of your Glory that a monastery of God's servants is too heavily oppressed with tribute, and we point out that this is owing to an inundation which has smitten their land with the curse of barrenness. However, we have given orders to the most eminent Senator[678] to appoint a careful inspector to visit the farm in question, weigh the matter carefully, and make such reasonable reduction as may leave a sufficient profit to the owners of the soil. We consider that ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... guilty it may be, I ask you to push matters no further. To do so will be to bring its object to utter ruin. If you care for him, sever all connection with him utterly and for ever. Otherwise he will live to curse and hate you. Should you neglect this advice, and should the facts that I have heard become public property, I warn you, as I have already warned him, that in self-preservation and for the sake of self-respect, I shall be forced to ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... endured a long night of the American spirit. But as our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn, let us not curse the remaining dark. Let ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... do mine eyes behold? My spear before me laid, and vanish'd he At whom I hurl'd it with intent to slay! Then is AEneas of th' immortal Gods In truth belov'd, though vain I deem'd his boast. A curse go with him! yet methinks not soon Will he again presume to prove my might, Who gladly now in flight escapes from death. Then, to the valiant Greeks my orders giv'n. Let me some other Trojan's mettle prove." Then tow'rd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Harlequin with his wand lures her forward. And she goes, she goes. Then the wand is waved again, and the cloak is off. It is her husband; and she shrinks, this time in terror. He stands like a stone. She waits for a blow—for a curse. But suddenly he kneels among the petals of the forgotten rose. Is it he begging forgiveness of her? She has no thought for that; only that she always loved him. She bends to him, he takes her hands. He rises and she lifts ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... that they are right who swear there is a curse upon all property taken from the Church, and that the ban fell black and bitter upon Chilton Abbey," answered his lordship's grave deep voice from the end of the table, where he sat somewhat apart from the rest, gloomy and silent, save when ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon |
