"Curse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long been building up. (She had loved, best of all, harmonic combinations of the clock bells.) Every day he would halt in front of the place and wait to hear it strike, and its owner would peer out from behind it and shake a wasted fist and curse him with strange, hoarse foreign oaths, while Willy Woolly tugged at his trouser leg and urged him to pass on from that unchancy spot. All that he could learn about the basement dweller was that his name was Lukisch and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which speaks to us of the infinite, while yet there is no infinite; in presence of that lying nature which adorns itself with a thousand symbols of immortality, while yet there is no immortality; in presence of all these deceptions, man may be allowed to curse the day of his birth, or to abandon himself to the intoxication of thoughtless pleasure. But, a secret instinct tells us that wretchedness is a disorder, and thoughtless pleasure a degradation. Let us have confidence in this ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... their own Danelagh and Northumbria, but great part of Wessex. Vast sums of Danegelt were yearly sent out of the country to buy off the fresh invasions which were perpetually threatened. Then Ethelred the Unready, Ethelred Evil-counsel, advised himself to fulfil his name, and the curse which Dunstan had pronounced against him at the baptismal font. By his counsel the men of Wessex rose against the unsuspecting Danes, and on St. Brice's eve, A. D. 1002, murdered them all with tortures, man, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... relieved when they were in their separate beds and the gas was turned off—Rose that she need act a difficult part no more that night, but could lie down, and, under the cover of the darkness, gather her features in a cloud of wrath, and silently curse Corona Rothsay; Cora, that she was freed from the sight of the deceitful face and the sound of the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... brown Principe, and less that the intended insult was accomplished. For an expression of a vindictive nature was precipitated in that quarter so simultaneously that the bang of the piano-lid and the curse were even as the report of a musket and the immediate cry of ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... hooted him down. Three months later, however, when Cappy Ricks had changed his mind, and Mr. Skinner was too heartbroken to curse himself for a purblind idiot, it was too late to place the contracts. Every shipyard in the United States and abroad was loaded up with building orders for three years in advance, and the Blue Star Navigation Company was left to twiddle its ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... wizard, boy, Of dark and subtle skill, To agonise but not destroy, To curse, but not to kill. When swords are out, and shriek and shout, Leave little room for prayer, No fetter on man's arm or heart ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... preparations for an invasion of Attica, and in a series of demands sent by Sparta to try the temper of the Athenians, and put them in the wrong, if they refused to comply. The first of these messages was conveyed in mysterious terms, bidding the Athenians "to drive out the curse of the goddess." The meaning of this was as follows: nearly two hundred years before a certain Cylon tried to make himself tyrant of Athens: the attempt was frustrated, and some of his adherents, who had taken refuge in the sacred precinct of Athene, were put to death by the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... 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 ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... curse! I have been always noted for the jaunty manner in which I wear my castor—Hard when a ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... whiten'd Cain the curse of heaven defies,[18] And leaden slumber seals his brother's eyes, Where o'er the porch in brazen splendour glows The vast projection of the mystic nose, Triumph erewhile of Bacon's fabled arts,[19] Now well-hung symbol of the student's parts; 'Midst those unhallow'd walls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... forth, with fear commixed, as when a beast Strains in the toils. "Can I alone stand firm?" He mused; and next, "Shall I, in mine old age, Byword become—the vassal of my slave? Shall I not rather drive him from my door With wolf hounds and a curse?" As thus he stood He marked the gifts, and bade men bare them in, And homeward signed ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... words, sums up the greater part of labor's progress. We blame capitalism and its wasteful, brutal industrial system for all our social problems, but our numbers were vast and our bondage grievous before modern industry came into existence. We may curse the trusts, but our subjection was accomplished before the trusts had emerged from the brain of evolution. We may blame public officials and individual employers, but our burdens were crushing before these were born. We look now here, now there, for the cause of our condition—everywhere ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... 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 of heresy." ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his nephew's passion, and the bitter maledictions and opprobrious epithets he heaped upon me. 'Well, you ARE a good 'un!' exclaimed he, at length, taking up his weapon and proceeding towards the house. 'Damme, but the lad has some spunk in him, too. Curse me, if ever I saw a nobler little scoundrel than that. He's beyond petticoat government already: by God! he defies mother, granny, governess, and all! Ha, ha, ha! Never mind, Tom, I'll ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... your Christmas gift, Issachar. It is a cross. Curse not! It cannot harm you nor me. Dip again, and bring me a few oysters, or my ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... any further than as some way the cause or occasion of man's mortality, seems almost entirely groundless; and that both man, and the other subordinate creatures, are hereafter to be delivered from the curse then brought upon them, and at last to be delivered from that bondage ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 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
... kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had been the curse of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... obliterated his neighbor's brand or misapplied his own, is held as, in the age of tribal government and ownership, was held the remover of his neighbor's landmarks. A word goes forth against him potent as the levitical curse, and all ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the idea of an independent journal of his own in which he might find untrammeled expression, added uneasiness and restlessness to a constantly discontented nature. To some extent, at least, Poe realized the curse of such a temperament, but he ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... vitality in man, which is the effect of our vice; and hence are begotten fear, superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds. We are mere figureheads upon a hulk, with livers in the place of hearts. The curse is the worship of idols, which at length changes the worshipper into a stone image himself; and the New-Englander is just as much an idolater as the Hindoo. This man was an exception, for he did not set up even a political graven image between him ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... dispersed; following up his first success, he proceeded to attack city after city, forcing all to submit, and determined that he would nowhere tolerate even the shadow of a rival. Disintegration had been the curse of Egypt for the space of above a century; Psamatik put an end to it. No more princes of Bubastis, or of Tanis, or of Sais, or of Mendes, or of Heracleopolis, or of Thebes! No more eikosiarchies, dodecarchies, or heptarchies even! Monarchy pure, the absolute rule of one ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... had been realised as it has never been realised before or since. As the wisdom of the Church had been a direct gift of God, so her power, too, had divine origin and reached beyond this earthly life. The Church alone held the key to eternal bliss, her curse meant everlasting damnation. To be excommunicated was to be bereaved of temporal and eternal happiness. A man who had been excommunicated was worse off than a wild beast; he was surrendered to the devils in hell, and he knew it. There was but one road to salvation: to do penance and humbly submit ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... and carrying it off through the pipes to the sewer are very important parts of house plumbing. Great care must be bestowed upon the construction, material, fitting, etc., of the plumbing fixtures, that they be a source of comfort in the house instead of becoming a curse to the occupants. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... kindled us all up into lamps of light to-day. But I am wholly dissatisfied with your boarding-house, so full of deaf women, and violin din, and schoolgirls! Pray change your residence and have peace. You will curse your stars if you have to "bellow" for three weeks, when you so hate to speak even in your natural inward tone.—Mary has just sent me a note, saying that there is a paragraph in the paper about your being at Washington, and that the President [Lincoln] ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... bore down with an oath and a curse, Bore down on the chief with the slain man's sword He saw at a glance the state of the case; He knew without need of a single word That the Turk had flown and the Russ was near, And the Tchircasse held his midday revel; ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... were; of whom we first catch sight in the reign of the Yellow Emperor, nearly 3000 B.C.; and who do not disappear from history until after the death of Attila. During all those three millenniums odd they were predatory nomads, never civilized: a curse to their betters, and nothing more. And their betters were, you may say, every race ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of age, and our young men stormed across the seas, not to save America—for we had nothing to fear—but to rid the world of an intolerable curse. Look fearlessly at the truth, but do not forget that when we went it was for an ideal—just as years before, when North and South fought the issue of preserving the Union, the impulse that drove our fathers on to their deaths was their souls' demand of freedom for the negro. By ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... combination, for it was the work of no burglar, and yet there were only two persons in the world who knew that combination, my partner and myself. I tried to be brave when these things happened, but as my life went on it seemed more and more as if some curse ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... "I curse and blaspheme," he said, "all the gods in heaven, but the Babe that lay in Mary's lap, the Babe that ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... each, the Queen, Who marked Sir Lancelot where he moved apart, Drew near, and sighed in passing, 'Lancelot, Forgive me; mine was jealousy in love.' He answered with his eyes upon the ground, 'That is love's curse; pass on, my Queen, forgiven.' But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows, Approached him, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... it chances that 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
... Davie, better known in the version transmitted, under the name of Edward, by Lord Hailes to Bishop Percy's Reliques. Here it is the murderer, and not the victim, who answers; and it is the questioning mother, and not the absent false love, with whom the curse is left as a legacy. Despair had never a more ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... compare the withering effects of a father's curse with the blasting influence of a father's sin. If the wrath of Providence should fail in its stern and awful retribution, the world in its mercy would not forget that the sins of the fathers must be ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... of it. But for that, he would certainly have come to the house, as he has done every evening for a month. Besides, he said so himself in the letter which he sent Dionysia by one of his tenants, and which she mentioned to you. He wrote, 'I curse from the bottom of my heart the business which prevents me from spending the evening with you; but I cannot possibly defer ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... "You're cop, eh?" Her eyes left the wallet and examined Malone from head to foot. It was perfectly plain that they didn't like what they saw. "Cop," she said again, as if to herself. It sounded like a curse. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... good over evil; or to admit, with Swedenborg, the existence of pleasure there, even though it be only a diabolical and sinful pleasure. The doctrine of Orthodoxy certainly is, that evil predominates over good, and pain over pleasure, in the condition of the damned; so that there existence is a curse, and not a blessing. Especially is hope shut out: there is no hope of return, no possibility of escape, no chance of repentance, even at the end of myriads of years. The man who is condemned to imprisonment for life, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... yowlin', like a sick hound; I had to carry or drag him over half the mountains; for, from the blessed hour of twelve o'clock this day, he wasn't able to put a foot undher him, an' he did nothing but blasphayme' an' curse every one he knew; your fathers and brothers, your sisther, and mother, and yourself; he cursed and blasphaymed you all, helther skelther; I could bear all, Miss. Julia till he came to run you down, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... use and mastery of it. But what would it all come to? Would we not still be left in the way on it, we and our children, lumbering it up, soiling and disgracing it, making a machine of it? There would be no one to appreciate it. Our children would inherit the curse from us, would be more like us than we are. If any one is to appreciate this world, we must appreciate it and ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... shouting: "Please make way; this man's been injured. Please don't crowd; we have an injured man here." The crowd began shoving back, and in the rear I could hear them taking it up: "Joe Kivelson; he's been hurt. They're carrying Joe Kivelson off." That made Joe curse a blue streak, and somebody said, "Oh, he's been hurt real ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... that modern Science is Europe's great gift to humanity for all time to come. We, in India, must claim it from her hands, and gratefully accept it in order to be saved from the curse of futility by lagging behind. We shall fail to reap the harvest of the present age if ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... (but weigh it, and you'll find 'Tis light as feathers blown before the wind) That Poverty, the Curse of Providence, Attones for a dull Writer's want of Sense: Alas! his Dulness 'twas that made him poor; Not vice versa: We infer no more. Of Vice and Folly Poverty's the curse, Heav'n may be rigid, but the Man was worse, By good made bad, by favours more disgrac'd, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... blind as they seem to be? And I had fears. Do you know a man ought to build his own monument. If he goes into a monument built for him, that is the end of him. Now you can work, and you will. I am so glad she isn't an heiress any more. I guess there was a curse on that fortune. But she has eluded it. I believe all you tell me about her. Perhaps there are more such women in the world than you think. Some day I shall know her, and soon. I do long to see her. Love her I feel ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... heart—the vanity which he feared for Grant Adams, he would have been glad. But her vanity was the vanity of motherhood; for herself she had spent it all. So he left her without answering her question. Money was all he could give her and money seemed to him a kind of curse. Yet he gave it and gave all ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... maiden!" she screamed. "Rather will I kill her than that you shall have her. It was in my mind to make you Chief and to lead you from this trap that Uglik had brought you into, but you have sealed your doom and hers. I go to prepare a curse." ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... an infant society. I knew her not as the daughter of enlightenment and the civilisation of centuries; as the liberty whose reality the representative republic has proved—God grant it may be durable! We are no longer obliged to work in our own little fields, to curse arts and sciences, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... new voice thoughtfully, "I think he recognized the worthlessness of his profligate son, and planned to sink his whole fortune in this institution? Money has been the curse of Robson Danbury's life, and his father knew that the only hope of making anything like a man out of him was the cutting him off without a cent, but the Death Angel claimed him before ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ever lower and lower. Sienkiewicz, in one of his novels, compares the spiritual life to swimming; for the man who does not strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually against sinking, will mentally and morally go under. In this strait a man's talent (again in the biblical sense) becomes a curse—and not only the talent of the artist, but also of those who eat this poisoned food. The artist uses his strength to flatter his lower needs; in an ostensibly artistic form he presents what is impure, draws the weaker elements to him, mixes them with evil, betrays men and ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... that the curse of heaven had fallen on the country, but for the large placards on the house-fronts, which prove that missionary fathers have passed through the place. "Viva Gesu! Viva Maria! Viva il sangue di Gesu! Viva il cor ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... his eyes very slowly (for they were heavy and dull like lead) and he looked at Gouvernail for some while as though not seeing him. Then by and by he said: "Gouvernail, what evil have I done that I should have so heavy a curse laid upon me?" Gouvernail said, still weeping: "Lord, thou hast done no ill, but art in all wise a very noble, honorable gentleman." "Alas!" quoth Sir Tristram, "I must unwittingly have done some great evil in God's sight, for certes ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... dress gave sudden, instant start, sprang round the corner, but, tripping on some obstacle, sprawled full length on the hard stone pavement. Despite the violence of the fall, which wrung from him a fierce curse, the man was up in a second, away, and out ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... not so intoxicated but the name of Philibert roused his anger. He set his cup down with a bang upon the table. "I will not taste a drop more till he is gone," said he; "curse Galissoniere's crooked neck—could he not have selected a more welcome messenger to send to Beaumanoir? But I have got his name in my list of debtors, and he shall pay up one day for ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a curse on his lips, but something, either the genial face of the minister, or the aroma of the coffee, silenced him. And indeed there was something about Graham Severn that was worth looking at. Tall and well built, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... in every good cause, philanthropic and religious, especially in the Bible Society, of which he was for many years the presiding officer in New Hampshire; in the Colonization Society, which he then thought the only possible agency for removing the curse of Slavery; in Foreign Missions and in Temperance, of which he was an earnest and able advocate. In this connection it should be mentioned that he was Trustee and Treasurer of Kimball Union Academy, at Meriden, almost from its first commencement until nearly the close of his life, and in ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... amusement, in this business. The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, in absolute command, whether for silence or attack. If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to please even slightly, you will be listened to with a particular laughing grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nervous strain affected me, as it has often done since, in such a way that there was a singing in my ears and dark spots swam before my eyes. Wherever I looked there appeared to my horror a dark blot, and, full of anxiety, I thought that perhaps this was already the beginning of the curse. I dared not look at Susanna any more for fear of throwing the black spot on her, and at last I could not forbear looking at the floor where I stood to see if there were possibly burnt marks under ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... trying at first. The Montenegrin loves money—it is his curse, or rather the curse of every country on the brink of civilisation—but he also loves to play the gentleman, who hates sordid money transactions. He will often make you a present and afterwards ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... bit of it, my boy," the other objected. "That's just what you didn't do. She liked you because she thought you didn't care a curse whether she ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... have found the lost remembrance. My misfortune—I ought to call it the punishment for my sins, is recalled to me now. The worst curse that can fall on a father is the curse that has come to me. I have a wicked daughter. My own child, sir! my ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... were tumbling over the wall of the farm-yard, wet, muddy, and breathless, but unobserved. But as they ran towards the barns the king gave vent to something between a groan and a curse, and all about them shone the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... insight, is altogether uncritical. Readers of this mind must have forgotten or be indifferent to those lines, for example, where the wretched Charles stammeringly excuses himself to his loyal minister for his death-warrant, crying out that it was wrung from him, and begging Strafford not to curse him: or, again, that wonderfully significant line, so full of a too tardy knowledge and of concentrated scorn, where Strafford first begs the king to "be good to his children," and then, with a contempt that is almost sublime, implores, "Stay, sir, do not promise, do not ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... children are the greatest blessing for parents and for the State, whilst children without religion are the greatest misfortune, the greatest curse that can come upon ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Then, calling down the curse of Zomara, the dreaded, upon them all, he turned on his heel and walked down the narrow path we had traversed on the previous night, while, with a final glance of triumph at the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... sir, because I understand you have married a woman of sense. To marry a fool—to form or to have any connexion with a fool," continued his lordship, his countenance changing remarkably as he spoke, "I conceive to be the greatest evil, the greatest curse, that can be inflicted on ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... bless or curse the past, we are inevitably its offspring, and it makes us its own long before we realize it. It is, indeed, almost all that ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... thoughts which now occupied him in his solitude—thoughts darkened and distorted by the terrible superstitions of his country and his race. Ever since the period of his mother's death he had been oppressed by the conviction that some curse hung over the family. At first they had been prosperous, they had got money, a little legacy had been left them. But this good fortune had availed only for a time; disaster on disaster strangely and suddenly succeeded. Losses, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... place, it would probably have failed in accomplishing it; and Captain Crawford, thinking money the best way to the heart of the poor, would never have tasted the joy of soothing sad hearts by kindness. Alas! little Sixpence, that you who have been such a blessing to-day, should become a curse to-morrow; that you who have gone forth on errands of mercy to-day, should dwell in scenes of drunkenness ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... weeks I have faced the primeval. God stripped me naked—naked as Adam, and like him, left me alone. In my hunger I cried out; in my weakness I prayed. No answer—nothing but silence—horrible, overpowering silence. Then in my despair I began to curse—to strike the trees with my clenched fists, only to sink down exhausted. I could not—I would not die! Soon all my life passed in review. All the mean things I had done to others; all the mean things they had done to me. Then love, honor, hatred, revenge, official promotion, money, the ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "Curse you, there you are," said the admiral. "Put out the light, put out the light; here we're illuminating ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... of Ferne, father and son, could wear a dark face when occasion warranted, certainly in this moment that of the latest of his race was dark indeed. "And at the first pinch be betrayed. Awake, or here, or there, in the torments of Spain or in another world! Awake and curse me by all your gods! Speak not to me—I am not hungry for a friend! I have no faith to pledge against your trust! The rabble which await me upon my ship, I have bought them with my gold, and they know me, who I am. For Robin—God help the boy! He had a fever, and he would ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... suffered to a serious extent, and they can be supplied from elsewhere, whereas in the great famine of 1901 the drought parched the whole land, and no help could be given by one State to another, all lying equally under the sun's curse. Not a great famine, perhaps; yet, to one accustomed to the genial juiciness of the West, the miles and miles of waterless hot plains, stretching away to where the horizon flickered in the glare, the brown and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Portuguese imprecations of the Rabbinic tribunal seemed to him to be bearing fruit. "According to the decision of the angels and the judgment of the saints, with the sanction of the Holy God and the whole congregation, we excommunicate, expel, curse, and execrate Baruch de Espinoza before the holy books.... Cursed be he by day, and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lieth down, and cursed be he when he riseth up; cursed be he when he goeth out, and cursed be he when he cometh in. May God never forgive him! His anger and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... I reach through your insolent pride now, do I? Curse you!" with sudden heat, throwing off even the mask of politeness he had hardly worn. "I swore I would have revenge for that insult at Williamsburg, and now it's my hour. You are to go with me, and go peaceably and quietly, or, by God, I 'll have you ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... meaning of you which the writer knew not of. You are in all my forethoughts and my memories and my imaginations. The future has your face, and the past. My whole world is made up of you and my vain hunger. Oh, love, and not toil, is the curse of man!" ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... father's house, to the land that I will show thee, that I may make of thee a great nation; and I will surely bless thee, and make thy name great, so that thou shalt be a blessing, I will also bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse, so that all the families of the earth shall ask for themselves a blessing like thine own. So Abraham went forth, as Jehovah had commanded him.—Gen. ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... beautiful. And she had a heart and a soul—which were a curse. For without such a heart and soul, she might have found the tough life-battle less bitterly hard ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... same time the court ladies adopted the fashion of wearing horns as huge in proportion as the noblemen's shoes. The government tried legislating them down, and the clergy fulminated a solemn curse against them; but fashion was more powerful than Church and Parliament combined, and horns and hoofs ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... our two horses quick—and get another if you have to steal it," he screamed. Then he turned into the room to curse Zmai, while Durand with a towel and water sought to ease the ache in the big fellow's head and ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... No wrong it may be with the serfs of hell To cast upon a woman for a curse Shame: to defile the spirit and shrine of love, Put out the sunlike eyes of maidenhood And leave the soul dismantled. Has not he So sinned?—Hast thou wrought no such work as this? The ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ear-flaps. His manner is sullen and angry. He stops stacking up the plates and casts a quick glance upward at the skylight; then tiptoes over to the closed door in rear and listens with his ear pressed to the crack. What he hears makes his face darken and he mutters a furious curse. There is a noise from the doorway on the right, and he ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... feel so, and others confirmed me in my assurance, but I believe I was wofully mistaken; and curse me if I don't think they were all in the concern ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... faced the man deliberately, with an amused smile. "I can," he said, slowly, "but—I won't!" How would you have felt in such a case? Could you ever forget it? and would you not be ready, for that official's sake, to hate mankind, and to curse God and die? But you perhaps believe that convicts have no human feelings, and that they ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Teen "Lord Bellew's Bride; or the Curse of Mountford Abbey." Splendid, isn't it, Teen?' said Liz quite brightly. 'We buy'd atween us every week. I'll len' ye'd, if ye like. It comes oot on Wednesday. Wat could bring'd on ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... business had time for domestic enjoyments. There is another side to the picture. There were homes over which Carsons' fire threw a deep, terrible gloom; the homes of those who would fain work, and no man gave unto them—the homes of those to whom leisure was a curse. There, the family music was hungry wails, when week after week passed by, and there was no work to be had, and consequently no wages to pay for the bread the children cried aloud for in their young impatience of suffering. There was no breakfast ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... seeing these four heads on the ground, said in his heart, "For my sake has the family of Birbal been destroyed. Kingly power, for the purpose of upholding which the destruction of a whole household is necessary, is a mere curse, and to carry on government in this manner is not just." He then took up the sword and was about to slay himself, when the Destroying Goddess, probably satisfied with bloodshed, stayed his hand, bidding him at the same time ask any boon ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... anathemas throughout the plays are invoked, as the deadliest of curses, broken rest and its usual accompaniment of troublous dreams. Thus note the climax in Queen Margaret's curse upon ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... but as I approach your city, that sepulcher of honor and happiness to my poor family, my heart beats with frantic emotions. Never do I see that venerable dome of your minster from the forest, but I curse its form, which reminds me of what we then surveyed for many a mile as we traversed the forest. For leagues before we approached the city, this object lay before us in relief upon the frosty blue sky; and still it seemed never to increase. Such was the complaint of my little sister ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... care of both the brig and the cutter in anything but the very finest of weather; and it's better to burn the craft, beauty as she is, than that them villains should misuse her to rob and murder honest seamen, and do worse to their wives and darters. Curse 'em! I shan't forget in a hurry that poor young thing as we see lying dead in the cabin of that American ship; and I'd burn the finest craft as ever was launched, afore they should have the chance to commit another sich ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... some measure which would meet the demand of the people. "Let us tolerate no further procrastination," said he; "and while we justly hold the President responsible for the trouble and mal-administration which now curse the South and disturb the peace of the country, let us remember that the national odium already perpetually linked with the name of Andrew Johnson will be shared by us if we fail in the great duty which is now brought ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Harry, simply; "but, oh, madam, I think of him, indeed I do! He was my first love, and my last; and though he should kill me for the crime, of which I have shown myself guiltless, I should pray God bless him with my latest breath. Yet he must curse me forever! He must never know but that I was the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... decreed that not only the city, but even the villas of the nobles in the suburb of Megara, should be leveled with the ground, and the plowshare driven over the soil devoted to perpetual desolation, and a curse to the man who should dare to cultivate it or build upon it. For fourteen days, the fires raged in this once populous and wealthy city, and the destruction was complete, B.C. 146. So deep-seated was the Roman hatred of rivals, or States that had been ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... them the teacher pitied. She was a bit discontented; but surely she was cheerful and well fed. God gave her beauty, and the widow saw it, and put her own strength between the curse and the child. Folly had her task every day, but Polly had her way, also, in too many things, and became a bit selfish, as might have been expected. But there was something very sweet and fine about Polly. They were plain clothes ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... an increase of vice and crime. The purblind philosophers, miscalled wise men, who teach the children by the light of poor human reason only, and do away with faith in spiritual things, are bringing down upon the generations to come an unlooked-for and most terrific curse. Childhood, the happy, innocent, sweet, unthinking, almost angelic age, at which Nature would have us believe in fairies and all the delicate aerial fancies of poets, who are, after all, the only true sages—childhood, I say, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... all concerned." And she comprehended also how the meaning of the fragmentary conversation she had overheard between her lover and his companion, as they approached her from the house: "You have brought the curse of Cain upon me." "It could not be helped." "If the old man had not squealed out," and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... out of his professional dignity and usual indifference to human suffering, by the personal application of feeling, gave vent to a most horrible and blighting CURSE and ran with great swiftness to his carriage and drove off toward ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... fate might suddenly strike him blue But he'd get some grass for his starving sheep in the teeth of that Jackaroo. So he turned and he cursed the Jackaroo, he cursed him alive or dead, From the soles of his great unwieldy feet to the crown of his ugly head, With an extra curse on the moke he rode and the cur at his heels that ran, Till the Jackaroo from his horse got down and he went for the drover-man; With the station-hand for his picker-up, though the sheep ran loose the while, They battled it ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... a course adopted which is likely to turn the Constitution of the land into a deformed monster, into a curse rather than a blessing; in fact, a frame of an unequal government, not founded on popular representation, not founded on equality, but on the grossest inequality; and I think that this process will go on, or that ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... never been stricken with this curse, and with the exception of a few contests, caused by the instinct of reproduction, harm would be absolutely unknown to the lower animals of creation. Man, though he cannot appreciate pleasure except by a small number of organs, may yet be liable to ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... husband from whom he had torn Michal had followed her to this very place, and there had turned back weeping to his lonely home? The remembrance, at any rate, of later and more evil deeds prompted his meek answer, "Let him curse, for the Lord hath ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... wearily to his forehead. The arts were a curse. So were gifted girls. So were over-appreciative women. He wished he were back home, smoking a ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... no heat; the curse had grown a formula. Having come to the end, the old man's eyes tumbled down painlessly out of the void and discovered ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for example) ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... now, my lord, I must speak as a judge. And now, Philarchus, mark what I set down. Because thou hast been disobedient, And wronged thy aged father wilfully, And given a blow to him that nourished thee, And thereby hast incurr'd thy mother's curse, And in that curse to feel the wrath of God, And so be hated on the earth 'mongst men; And for I will be found no partial judge, Because I sit as God's vicegerent now, Here I do banish thee from England's bounds, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... intolerance of restraint, the individual's sense of superiority to moral, social, and political law. It is the freemasonry that results from this common resistance to authority. It is an idea, not an institution; it is Sicily's curse and that which makes her impossible of government. I do not mean to deny that we have outlawry and brigandage; they are merely the most violent demonstrations of La Mafia. It afflicts the cities; it is a tyranny in the country ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... was to curse the War Department—in Spanish, so she would not understand. His second was to laugh, and his third to burst into tears. How his father had suffered! Then he remembered that to-night, he, the said Don Mike, was to have the proud privilege ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... of all that is noble; 'Catholic' though they follow anything rather than Christ. Of all birds the Eagle alone has seemed to wise men the type of royalty, a bird neither beautiful nor musical nor good for food, but murderous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing harm only surpassed by its desire to do it." It was the first time in modern history that religion had formally dissociated itself from the ambition of princes and the horrors of war, or that the new spirit ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... imprisoned country. The Capitulations would apply to the Upper Nile regions, as to the Delta. Mixed Tribunals, Ottoman Suzerainty, and other vexatious burdens would be added to the difficulties of Soudan administration. To free the new country from the curse of internationalism was a paramount object. The Soudan Agreement by Great Britain and Egypt, published on the 7th of March, 1899, achieves this. Like most of the best work done in Egypt by the British Agency, the Agreement was slipped through without ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... And aw met ha' known it beout axin'! O'reet! Aw're a greight foo'! But aw're beawn to coom in: aw lung'd to goo through th' same dur wi' mo Mattie. Good day, sir. It be like maister, like mon! God's curse upon o' sich! (Turns his back. After a moment turns again.) Noa. Aw winnot say that; for mo Mattie's sake aw winnot say that. God forgie you! ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... world and consoled mankind," and so "we may hold aloof from the churches and yet bow ourselves before Jesus. We may be suspicious of the clergy and refuse to have anything to do with catechisms, and yet love the Holy and the Just who came to save and not to curse." And in fact Amiel's whole life and thought are steeped in Christianity. He is the spiritual descendant of one of the intensest and most individual forms of Christian belief, and traces of his religious ancestry are visible ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... States? No! no! There all is weakness gloom, and despair; while, in the free States, all is light, business, and activity. What has created the astonishing difference between the gentleman's State and mine—between Kentucky and Ohio? Slavery, the withering curse of slavery, is upon Kentucky, while Ohio is free. Kentucky, the garden of the West, almost the land of promise, possessing all the natural advantages, and more than is possessed by Ohio, is vastly behind in population and wealth. Sir, I can see from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... something else. There are some families, I think, too wicked for Heaven to protect, and they are given over to the arts of those who hated them in life and pursue them after death; and this is the meaning of the curse that has always followed us. No good will ever happen us, and I ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a curse about any of you. It is my house as long as I choose to remain in it, and you may put up with it the best way you can," and, humming a Yankee tune, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... gloves, foils, guns, rifles, books, everything, except ready money, that heart could desire. Unluckily one Fairy, who was old, deaf, plain, and who had not been invited, observed, "It is all very well, my child, but not one of these articles shall you be able to use satisfactorily." This awful curse has hung heavy on my doom. With a restless desire to shine and excel, at Lord's, on the river, on the Moors, in the forests, in Society, on the Links, bitter personal experience and the remarks of candid friends, tell me that the doom has come ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... fortune. I was mindful, lastly, that in England we are taught to ride straight, and 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
... hours on a stretch. I knew I had got a hard bargain when your uncle shoved you upon me, you sneaking, sanctimonious-looking imp of Satan! But mind how you carry your helm, or you will have cause to curse the day when you shipped on ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... his enemies, and prays For those that curse him to his face; And doth to all men still the same That he would hope ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... answered, an answer which irritated Owen; but he had to conceal his irritation, for to show it would only delay his departure, and he was tired of hawking, tired of the lake and anxious to see the great desert and its oases. And he felt it to be shameful to curse the camels. Poor animals! they had come a long way and required a few days' rest before ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore |
