"Superstitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... son were induced to accept her services; but still Katy was not wanting in some qualities which made her a very tolerable housekeeper. On the one hand, she was neat, industrious, honest, and a good manager. On the other, she was talkative, selfish, superstitious, and inquisitive. By dint of using the latter quality with consummate industry, she had not lived in the family five years when she triumphantly declared that she had heard, or rather overheard, sufficient to enable her to say what had been the former fate of her associates. Could Katy have ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... convinced by the evil spirit; and they live on in this superstition, as in many others, as we have said in other places. This done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate, and throws the tobacco into the midst of the caldron, whereupon they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this place, since their enemies await them at this portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... matters might have terminated between him and the baronet it is out of our power to detail. The man was at all times desperate and dreadful, where either revenge or anger was excited, especially as he labored under the superstitious impression that he was never to be hanged or perish by a violent death, a sentiment then by no means uncommon among persons of his outrageous and desperate life. It has been observed, and with truth, that the Irish Rapparees seldom indulged in the habit of intoxication or intemperance, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... sahibs!" continued the shikaree, speaking in a low voice and with an air of superstitious terror; "dat animal too wise for dis world; he know too much. I fear him be no elephan' after all, but only de devil, who hab takee elephan' shape. Why he go ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... little to amuse or interest them in Boston, and grew very weary of its monotonous life and Puritanic tone. They missed the public amusements to which they were accustomed in their own country, and complained of the superstitious observance of Sunday, when "singing, fiddling, card-playing and bowling were forbidden." Foreigners were not welcome guests in this town of prejudice. The sailors of the French fleet had already been the cause of one riot. Gallatin's ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... Guinness did not reply. She was not a superstitious woman: she felt no remorse about her treatment of her stepson. There had been evil tongues, even in the church, to lay his ruined life at her door, and to say that bigotry and sternness had driven him to debauchery and a drunkard's death. She knew she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... neither he nor I could set this down as utter nonsense, for within the past week there had been many wild stories of ghosts among the colored people of Bermuda. The Negroes of Bermuda are not unduly superstitious, and certainly they are more intelligent, better educated than most of their race. But the little islands, this past week, were echoing with whispered tales of strange things seen at night. It had been mostly down at the lower end of the comparatively ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... prepared it for the reception of those feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A political wrangle is a poor substitute for the old moral tales of the winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superstitious fear carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject was changed for the duties of life, still retained its strength, and wrought for good. These things are all gone; and, dissatisfied as we are with the bold substitutes of modern wisdom, let us use that which ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... I knew from the first it was all nonsense. My father had told me so a score of times. But having been reared in the superstitious Galloway of the ancient days—well, there are certain chills and creeps for which a man is not responsible, inexplicable twitchings of the hairy scalp of his head, maybe even to the breaking of a cold sweat over his body, which do not depend upon belief. I kept saying to myself, "There ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... over fluid and solid ounces, etc. etc. To a friend, the late Mr. E. Cresy, who came to his help in the matter of weights and measures, he wrote giving an account of the experiments. The extract (November 2, 1860) which follows illustrates the almost superstitious precautions he ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to seek. An imaginative and superstitious people attached fanciful powers to these and hundreds of other plants which the intervening centuries have been unable wholly to eradicate, for among the more ignorant classes, especially of Europe, many of these relics of ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... here have a superstitious notion that this mountain, notwithstanding its daily loss, never decreases, but always keeps its own, and remains ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... his Majesty's simplicity of habitudes. But one loves especially in him his scrupulous attention to cleanliness of person and of environment. He washed like a very Mussulman, five times a day; loved cleanliness in all things, to a superstitious extent; which trait is pleasant in the rugged man, and indeed of a piece with the rest of his character. He is gradually changing all his silk and other cloth room-furniture; in his hatred of dust, he will not suffer a floor-carpet, even a stuffed chair; but ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... murmured, "And see what I have done with it!" Superstitious observers state that at this point the bass closed its eyes wearily, but this may only ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... soul, so strong, so rich in enthusiasm, is a humble moral quality that she disdains, and when she has occasion to speak of it, even slanders,—namely resignation. This is not, as she seems to think, the sluggish virtue of base souls, who, in their superstitious servitude to force, hasten to crouch beneath every yoke. That is a false and degrading resignation; genuine resignation grows out of the conception of the universal order, weighed against which individual sufferings, without ceasing to be a ground of merit, cease to constitute a right of revolt. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... then asked me if I were willing to go on and assist him in this way until the train reached Santa Fe, and he said, "I am quite sure your plan in using the scalps and bonnet for protection with the Indians will prove a success, for I know how superstitious the Indians are about being scalped, and I am also sure that we have not sufficient men to save the train from the Indians without some ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... a hundred yards or so, the camp-fire which they had left behind them took on a strange and unnatural appearance. It seemed far away and burned with a pale yellow glare that would have seemed supernatural, had it been contemplated by any one of a superstitious turn. ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... influence of the terror and despair produced by being told that the kahuna was "praying them to death." I cannot learn whether these over-efficacious prayers are supposed to be addressed to the true God, or to the ancient Hawaiian divinities. The natives are very superstitious, and the late king, who was both educated and intelligent, was much under the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... early and rude period of civilisation. Even the Australian barbarians "have a law that no plant bearing seeds is to be dug up after it has flowered;" and Sir G. Grey[530] never saw this law, evidently framed for the preservation of the plant, violated. We see the same spirit in the superstitious belief of the Fuegians, that killing water-fowl whilst very young will be followed by "much rain, snow, blow much."[531] I may add, as showing forethought in the lowest barbarians, that the Fuegians when they find a stranded whale bury large portions ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... case the house should be attacked by the negroes. "If they come," he would say to himself, "and break down the door, and fill my bedroom, what shall I do? It will be useless to fire at them; my only hope is to frighten the superstitious fellows by covering myself with a white sheet, and rushing into the midst of them, crying, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a regular woman, in spite of all your cleverness, and I was a fool to imagine that you would prove more intelligent in the long run than the rest of your conventional and superstitious sex." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... "You superstitious old thing, Maria!" laughed Robin. "As if it could make twopenny-worth of difference whether a blonde or brunette ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... "You are that superstitious," said Journeyman. "If there was anything the matter with the 'ouse you'd've know'd it ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Isidore says (Etym. x): "Cicero [*De Natura Deorum ii, 28] states that the superstitious were so called because they spent the day in praying and offering sacrifices that their children might survive (superstites) them." But this may be done even in accordance with true religious worship. Therefore superstition is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of the "traveling star" arose from the superstitious and ignorant ideas of many of the Christians of the first, second, and third centuries after Christ's death. These tales were injected into the manuscripts left by the disciples, and soon began to be regarded as a part and portion of the authentic Gospels and Epistles, although the skilled Biblical ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... which Hamilton was engaged—his dealings with the Indians and the work of reconstructing the fort—he found time to worry his temper about the purloined flag. Like every other man in the world, he was superstitious, and it had come into his head that to insure himself and his plans against disaster, he must have the banner of his captives as a badge of his victory. It was a small matter; but it magnified itself as he dwelt upon it. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... is nothing to succeed to, except what cannot be transmitted, personal knowledge of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To establish that fact as indubitable history is to lay the foundation of the Christian Church, and the eleven plain men, who did that, need no superstitious mist around ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... bite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and expiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of human life and happiness in the task of chaining and feeding and tormenting him, seems to me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that is what we do to men who bark and bite and steal. It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices, as we put up with their illnesses, until they give more trouble than they are worth, at which point ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... suppose, rather than the fact that dark nights were chosen that gave the gangs the name of black-fishers. Other disguises were resorted to; one of the commonest being to change clothes or to turn your corduroys outside in. The country-folk of those days were more superstitious than they are now, and it did not take much to turn the black-fishers back. There was not a barn or byre in the district that had not its horseshoe over the door. Another popular device for frightening away witches and fairies was to hang bunches ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... these thoughts, although she knew and almost gloried in the fact that she was superstitious to her ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... gained from Mr. Gronovius during this visit, was an account of the natives of Timor called Timorees. They are very superstitious, and when a person of consequence dies, a number of karabows (buffaloes) pigs, and ponies are killed and placed over his grave, as an offering to the evil spirit. Some, in case of sickness, imagine, that by eating a whole buffalo, even the horns and hoofs, by degrees, they ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... same surname, their children do not do well and multiply." The prohibited degrees were more distant than among us. It was a horror of incest that had led to the general custom all over Polynesia of exchanging children for adoption. Only this explanation could reconcile it with the almost superstitious love the Polynesian father and mother have for children. Their feeling surpasses the parental affection prevailing in the remainder of the world, yet adoption is a stronger bond than blood. No child was raised by its own genitors. The Tetuanuis had brought ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... uneasiness. Sometimes a ship would not start when the blocks were sawed through. There would be a long delay while hydraulic jacks were sought and put to work to force her forward. Such a delay had a superstitious meaning. Nobody liked a ship that was afraid of her element. They wanted an eagerness in her get-away. Or suppose she shot out too impetuously and listed on the ways, ripping the scaffolding to pieces ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... this nonsense about the land question—about the impossibility of settling it in England so long as the superstitious regard for land existed in the English mind? They were quite ready to believe him. They deprecated that superstition most sincerely. They could not understand why a moneyed Englishman's first impulse was to go and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... fewness of their foes, they began to rally and make head against their assailants. No sooner was this the case than the note of a horn was heard, and as if by magic their assailants instantly darted away into the night, leaving the superstitious Danes in some doubt whether the whole attack upon them had not been of a ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... This boy's got the church and the army both in him. I knew his mother," he went on, talking to the Colonel, garrulous with interest. "Irish and fascinating she was—believed in fairies and ghosts and all that, as her father did before her. A clever woman, but with the superstitious, wild Irish blood strong in her. Good Lord! I wish I'd known that ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... to be a heavy one," answered Adrian, "if it was worse than that of which I know." But there was hesitation in his voice, for Ramiro, the skilful player upon human hearts, had struck the right string, and Adrian's superstitious ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... smile. "I told my messenger to see that the gate of the reservoir was opened at four o'clock. So, you see, you had to marry or swim. Now I've made a clean breast of it. I felt sure something would happen before you got back from Milwaukee. I was plum superstitious about it." ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... glimpses, by the birches and locusts that threw up their foliage from the hill-side. But many a year thereafter he continued to tread that path, till it was worn deep with his footsteps and trodden down hard; and it was believed by some of his superstitious neighbors that the grass and little shrubs shrank away from his path, and made it wider on that account; because there was something in the broodings that urged him to and fro along the path alien to nature and its productions. There was another opinion, too, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... contrary, it was burning the more fiercely because it was necessarily suppressed, and what had perhaps begun in bigotry was ending in downright direct hatred born of jealousy. Hitherto, the priests had been the wise men of the land, and were on this account, as well as from superstitious causes, looked on with peculiar veneration. But our arrival, with our outlandish wisdom and our strange inventions and hints of unimagined things, dealt a serious blow to this state of affairs, and, among the educated Zu-Vendi, went far towards destroying the priestly prestige. A ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... a moment horrified. Her excited imagination suggested some deed of superstitious cruelty in the garden of the house adjoining. Nor were the sobs and cries altogether against such supposition. She recovered herself instantly, and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... has been decided that they shall go to war, the natives of the South-Sea islands commence their preparations with human sacrifices to the god of war. After many strange, bloody, and superstitious rites, the warriors arm themselves and ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... and this made me recognise her hand, and appeased she returned to me, and she delivered me from suffering, for she is my life, The Summit of the West, when she is appeased, and she ought to be invoked!'" There were many sinners, we may believe, among that ignorant and superstitious population, but the governors of Thebes did not put their confidence in the local deities alone to keep them within bounds, and to prevent their evil deeds; commissioners, with the help of a detachment of Mazaiu, were an additional means ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to adventures of this kind, or he would probably have weighed the possibilities and consequences. He was ordinarily a thoughtful, reflective man, but like most men of intellect, he was also imaginative and superstitious, and this crowning accident of the providential situation in which he found himself was superior to his logic. There would also be a grim irony in his taking this horse for such a purpose. He again looked and listened. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... some time, and extending our circle to the distance of a hundred yards or so, we failed to recover the sign. Certainly the barrow had not gone farther—at all events, not upon its trundle. Instinctively, we turned our eyes upward—not with any superstitious belief that the fugitives had made a sudden ascent into the air. But the idea had occurred to us, that they might have hidden themselves in a tree, and drawn the barrow up into it. A single glance was sufficient to satisfy us that this conjecture ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... least sound from the motion of any other object, and overtakes his prey by coming upon it in silence and darkness. The stillness of his flight is one of the circumstances that add mystery to his character, and which have assisted in rendering him an object of superstitious dread. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... assault on the privileges of the House of Commons were "the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and dicing-houses." The people take their religion from their minister "by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole"; and "the superstitious man by his good will is an atheist, but being scared from thence by the pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... physical ills. I despised the pencils that moved automatically, and the one teaspoon which dealt out, from a large bottle, healing to a row of variously ailing Indian children. I blamed the hard-working, well-meaning, ignorant woman who was inculcating in our hearts her superstitious ideas. Though I was sullen in all my little troubles, as soon as I felt better I was ready again to smile upon the cruel woman. Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... preserving the heads of their fallen enemies as ghastly tokens of victory, has invested the name of Dyak with a reputation of cruelty which is not deserved. This singular practice, originating, it is said, in a superstitious desire to propitiate the Evil Spirit by bloody offerings, has in process of time become connected with all their ideas of manly prowess. The young girl receives with proud satisfaction from her lover the gift of a gory head, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... she is simply wicked. False, superstitious, inveterately cruel—but not mad. I believe her main motive in coming here was to enjoy the luxury of ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... attentively, and with increasing concern, for he well knew that his cockswain possessed a quick and almost unerring judgment of the weather, notwithstanding the confused medley of superstitious omens and signs with which it was blended; but again throwing himself back in ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Artois are said to be highly superstitious, and we have already passed a number of small chapels and crosses, erected by the road side, and surrounded by tufts of trees. These are the inventions of a mistaken piety; yet they are not entirely without their ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... he held it, indeed, that he was conscious of a singular reluctance to question the phenomenon. That superstitious dread of the unknown which lies dormant in us all, in Amber stirred and awoke and held him back like a strong hand. Or, if there be such a thing as a premonition of misfortune, he may be said to have experienced it in that ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... indeed," agreed his father. "It was, you must recall, a superstitious age. Everything that could not be fathomed was attributed to witchcraft. Hence witchcraft was the only explanation of the present miracle. John Faust, of whom the two royal persons had bought the books, must have sold himself to the devil. They would have the ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... simple Cahuillas it seemed like a miracle; and they looked on Aunt Ri's weather-beaten face with something akin to a superstitious reverence. They themselves were not ignorant of the value of the herb by means of which she had wrought the marvellous cure; but they had made repeated experiments with it upon Ramona, without success. It must be that there had been some potent spell in Aunt Ri's handling. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... been born and reared among people who were believers in premonitions and supernatural appearances all his life, and he once declared to his friends that he was "from boyhood superstitious." ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... theoretical student of relations and the practitioner. There are, as well, certain special psychological conditions that may color and quite transform the interpretation of a situation or a bit of testimony. To distinguish between hysterical deception and lying, between a superstitious believer in the reality of an experience and the victim of an actual hallucination, to detect whether a condition of emotional excitement or despair is a cause or an effect, is no less a psychological problem than the more popularly discussed question ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of superstitious fear, clung silently to the arm of Fatia Negra whom all these speechless marvels served and obeyed. Finally, descending six stone steps they ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... observed before that the acorn sometimes will fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil. And though poverty, sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of human existence, they no longer awake in us the superstitious fears of bygone days We regard them to-day as essentially indifferent, unconscious, blind. We know that they recognise none of the ideal laws which we once believed that they sanctioned; and it only too often has happened that ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... believe in luck? It seems to be our lot invariably to differ, doesn't it? Now, my dear Colonel, I'm not ashamed to confess that I am deeply superstitious, and that I believe implicitly in signs and prodigies. You see, I was born under a happy star; 'at my nativity the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,' as it were. Comfortable feeling, I assure you. Take that incident ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... has rendered you superstitious, Cornelius. I have no faith in the religious cant of the present day, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... of course. You are not insinuating anyone here might be superstitious? I am awfully sorry you broke the mirror. How did ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... Beneath them kneeling on his knee, A superstitious man you see: He fasts, prays, on his Idol fixt, Tormented hope and fear betwixt: For Hell perhaps he takes more pain, Than thou dost Heaven itself to gain. Alas poor soul, I pity thee, What stars incline ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... I must admit that the title attracted me. You have hit on a very pretty title, Mr. Knight, a very pretty title indeed. I took your book home and read it myself, Mr. Knight. I didn't send it to any of my readers. Not a soul in this office has read it except me. I'm a bit superstitious, you know. We all are—everyone is, when it comes to the point. And that Onions—onions! And then the pretty title! I like your book, Mr. Knight. I tell you candidly, I like it. It's graceful and touching, and original. It's ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the year when he met her. Chopin, Franchomme informed me, made George Sand's acquaintance in 1837, their connection was broken in 1847, and he died, as everyone knows, on October 17, 1849. In each of these dates appears the number which Chopin regarded with a superstitious dread, which he avoided whenever he could-for instance, he would not at any price take lodgings in a house the number of which contained a seven—and which may be thought by some to have really exercised ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... passed he grew gloomy and morose and lived in seclusion, thinking only how he could solve the mystery of the murder, and loving more and more the little Emma as she grew into a beautiful girl. He neglected The Warren so that the property looked quite desolate and ruined, and at length superstitious people in the neighborhood came to mutter that it was haunted by the ghost of Rudge, the steward, whose body had been found in ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... from Mr. Dryden, reproving her for her womanish credulity, and assuring her, that her child was well, which recovered her spirits, and in six weeks after she received an ecclaircissement-of the whole affair. Mr. Dryden, either thro' fear of being reckoned superstitious, or thinking it a science beneath his study, was extremely cautious of letting any one know that he was a dealer in Astrology; therefore could not excuse his absence, on his son's anniversary, from a general ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... which every grown man has a direct interest in the stability of the national government. So abstinent are they by habit and principle from any abnormal intervention with the machine of administration, so almost superstitious in adherence to constitutional forms, as to be for a moment staggered by the claim to a right of secession set up by all the Cotton States, admitted by the Border Slave States, which had the effrontery to deliberate between their plain allegiance ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... limited their field of action. However, as has frequently been pointed out, even in ancient Greece the philosophic critics had very little hold on {34} popular religion obstinately faithful to its inherited superstitious forms. But how many second century minds shared Lucian's skepticism in regard to the dogmatic systems! The various sects were fighting each other for ever so long without convincing one another of their alleged error. The satirist of Samosata enjoyed opposing their exclusive ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... to The Crossways. Tony is one of the women who burn to give last kisses to things they love. And she has her little treasures hoarded there. She was born there. Her father died there. She is three parts Irish—superstitious in affection. I know her so well. At this moment I see her there. If not, she has grown ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The difficulty of writing a book which should have "no humbug in it," proved, as may well be supposed, immense, and would in any case be quite sufficient to account for the long period of gestation. His perplexities may have often been very near akin to those ascribed to the superstitious author in the sixty-fifth chapter of Lavengro; his desire to be original sadly cramping the powers of his mind, his fastidiousness being so great that he invariably rejected whatever ideas he did not consider to be legitimately his own. As a substitute for the usual padding of humbug, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... to regard it in a superstitious way only. It was a warning of death, she said, and the man an irresponsible clairvoyant. When I tried to urge my own idea upon her and describe how I thought he might have obtained access to the bungalow and carried her off, while still asleep, to some vehicle awaiting them in ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... effects, and had all the families contentedly housed, either about headquarters or at the outlying ranchitas, before the first contingent of beeves was gathered. But the attempt to induce any of the new families to occupy the stone cottage proved futile, as they were superstitious. There was a belief among the natives, which no persuasion could remove, regarding houses that were built for others and never occupied. The new building was tendered to Tio Tiburcio and his wife, instead of their own palisaded jacal, but ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... persisted in. Now that they were dead, every partisan of the Church declared, without a shadow of reticence, that the mourning in which the House of Savoy was plunged was a clear manifestation of Divine wrath. Victor Emmanuel had been brought up in superstitious surroundings; it was hardly possible that he should listen to these things altogether unmoved. But on this as on the other occasions in his life when he was to be threatened with ghostly terrors, he did not belie the name of 'Re Galantuomo,' which he had written down as his profession ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the heavy gusts and sharp sleet which froze on the face as it fell, La Salle felt for a moment a thrill of the superstitious fear which had overcome the usually stout nerves of his companion; but his cooler nature reasserted itself, although he knew that no house stood in the direction of the mysterious light, which seemed at times almost to disappear, and then to shine ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind — the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk — the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg — the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... to the farm was out with him. Weston, I heard, went purple when he saw what was going on, and, from his point of view, his indignation was perhaps comprehensible. His son was openly, before one of the tenants and a parcel of farm-hands, making use of a superstitious device in which no sane person could believe. Weston, as I remember it, compared him to a gipsy fortune-teller, and went on through the gamut of impostor, mountebank and charlatan, before he commanded him to desist on the moment. I ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... black mountains. The Dragon's dwelling. Changes occasioned by rise and fall of the tides, and dangers attending them. Uttakiyok's superstitious customs. Singular effect of the tide in the bay of Ittimnekoktok. Arrive at Kangertlualuksoak bay and river. Its situation. Transactions ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... of tender age talked to as if they were capable of understanding Calvin's "Institutes," and nobody has honesty or sense enough to tell the plain truth about the little wretches: that they are as superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable spiritual cowards—that is, if they have any imagination—that they will believe anything which is taught them, and a great deal more which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... would stifle her. Even the ribbon round her neck was more than she could endure and breathe freely. Her overburdened heart found no relief in tears. In the solitude of her room she thought of the future. The dreary foreboding of what it might be, filled her with a superstitious dread from which she recoiled. One of the windows was open already; she threw up the other to get more air. In the cooler atmosphere her memory recovered itself; she recollected the newspaper, that Herbert had taken from her. Instantly she rang for the maid. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... fear I should see something!" Now I did not actually believe in either ghosts or witches, but yet, when alone in the dead of the night, I have been seized with a dread of, I know not what. Few people will now understand me if I say I was eerie, a Scotch expression for superstitious awe. I have been struck, on reading the life of the late Sir David Brewster, with the influence the superstitions of the age and country had on both learned and unlearned. Sir David was one of the greatest philosophers of the day. He was only a year younger than I; ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... only escape. A strategem planned by Hermocrates and Nicias' superstitious terrors delayed the departure long enough to enable the Syracusans to secure the passes in the interior. When the army moved away the scene was one of shame and agony; the sick vainly pleaded with their comrades to save them; the whole force contrasted the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... worship, or to the functions, rights and privileges of the pope, the different ranks of priests, bishops, arch-bishops and the inferior officers; and in the progress of time, men were allowed to adopt almost any error, provided they paid their dues to the priests, and performed the superstitious ceremonies of ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... them any government or subordination: None was more respected than another; yet they seemed to live together in the utmost harmony and good fellowship. Neither did we discover any appearance of religion among them, except the noises which have been mentioned, and which we supposed to be a superstitious ceremony, merely because we could refer them to nothing else: They were used only by one of those who came on board the ship, and the two who conducted Mr Banks and Dr Solander to the town, whom we therefore conjectured to be priests. Upon the whole, these people appeared ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... forerunners have said could they have stood in the valley and seen a human form moving from point to point along yonder sharp, serrated ridge? I should certainly have passed for a god! Let us be thankful that all such superstitious fancies have had their day. The Indian, poor ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... continually about the Indian villages. The most proverbially suspicious of all birds is here familiar and confiding. The Indian exercises superstitious care over them, but whether from love or fear we could never discover. It is very difficult to find out what an Indian believes. We have sometimes heard that they consider the crows their ancestors. It is a curious fact, that the Indians, in talking, make so ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... declared acceptance of it as a warning, and the fact that all efforts had failed to locate the sound, or even to determine its source, no other course seemed open but to let this distinguished man depart with the suddenness his superstitious fears demanded. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Here is a good man expressly characterised, as distinct from a dishonest and a superstitious man. No words can more strongly exclude dishonesty and falseness of heart than doing justice and loving mercy; and both these, as well as walking humbly with God, are put in opposition to those ceremonial methods of recommendation, which Balak hoped might have served the turn. From hence ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... closely set with diamonds and rubies. It is the sword of Savaji, the founder of the Mahratta dominion in India. It has been sacredly guarded at Kolhapur by two men with drawn swords for a period of two hundred years, being a family and national heirloom, and an object of superstitious reverence as the emblem of sovereignty. The delivery of it to the prince of Wales was regarded as a transfer of political dominion, an admission that the latent hopes of the Bhonsla family were now merged in loyalty to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... wakeful guards; and it was evident that the fire which burned the camp of an army had been kindled merely to gratify the revenge, or favour the escape of an individual. Shaking, therefore, from his kingly spirit the thrill of superstitious awe that the greatness of the disaster, when associated with the name of a sorcerer, at first occasioned, he resolved to make advantage out of misfortune itself. The excitement, the wrath of the troops, produced the temper most fit ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for the hunter. Here was no wolf. He felt sure that the bullets had reached their mark, yet the beast was unharmed. Dave was a mighty hunter but, like most ignorant people, he was superstitious. He had often heard tales of the loup-garou, or witch wolf, whom no bullet could kill. With a hand that trembled slightly he laid his gun across his knees, deciding not to waste ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... Cap'n that I've got kind o' superstitious 'bout them boats as make a near call an' then sidle off. Twict durin' my time a real thing has happened soon after. Seems like they come t' see if yer watchin'; kinder gettin' yer attention, so t' speak, an' warnin' ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... of Anger than of Tears, Having before thy Eyes thy worst of Enemies, One that has long depriv'd thee of a Crown, Through what she thought her Duty to the Gods; But now repents her superstitious Error, And humbly begs ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... 'How d'ye do, sir! I wish you good day. Ha! He bows too. Very gentlemanly. Mrs Gamp has the cards in her pocket, I have no doubt. This is very singular, my dear—and very pleasant. I am not superstitious, but it really seems as if one was destined to pay him those little melancholy civilities which belong to our peculiar line of business. There can be no kind of objection to your kissing your ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... become the subject of enthusiasm with all advanced thinkers. And what is to happen when the world is divided into two camps—the whole forces of intellectuality and culture on the one side, those of ignorance and superstitious fanaticism on the other? With such a war as that impending, the adepts, who will be conscious that they prepared the lists and armed the combatants, will require some better justification for their policy before their own consciences than the reflection that, in the beginning, people accused ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... were shown to be perfectly reliable; but he pointed out a number of considerations which might profoundly modify the results of the isolated causes adduced; and uttered a warning against the possible degradation of "a proper reverence for mathematical certainty" into "a superstitious respect for all arguments arrived at by process of mathematics." (See "Collected ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... of her husband, is certain; but it may be doubted whether his mighty genius ever leaned for support upon the political skill and counsel of a woman—even though that woman were Josephine. She, like her wonderful husband, seems to have cherished a superstitious reliance upon destiny—a weakness singularly inconsistent with their general character. The story of the early prediction that she would become a queen is given with an amusing simplicity and earnestness. The ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... effects usually incident to courage and cowardice. The vastness of the receptacle stupefied him. The silence was a curtain he could feel; the water, deep and dark, looked so suggestive of death that the superstitious soul required a little time to be itself again. But relief came, and he watched intently to see if there was a current in the black pool; he could discover none; then, having gained all the information ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... good deal in what the young senor says," Dias said gravely. "All the Indians are very superstitious, and think anything they don't understand is magic. It is worth thinking over: but before we do anything else we might find out how many of them there are at the other end of the ravine. Only a few may be left, or possibly the whole tribe may be gathered there at nightfall. To-night nothing ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... untied." It was an opinion of the early philosophers that not only kingdoms[1] had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius or good spirit, to protect and admonish him through the medium of dreams and visions. Such were the objects of superstitious reverence derived from the Pantheons of Greece and Rome, the whole synod of which was supposed to consist of demons, who were still actively bestirring themselves to delude mankind. But in the west of Europe, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... I believed it would, for I had grown almost as superstitious about Zikali and his Great Medicine as was Hans himself. Certainly the effect of it upon those captains was very odd, or would have been had not the explanation come to me in a flash. On the first night of our meeting, as I have described, I ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... knowed I hadn't fired, so they kept a respectable distance. I would a fired, but the quail saved my life by interfering with my sight—and that's the reason I don't eat no quail. I hain't superstitious, but I don't believe they ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... had broken from the battens, rats had eaten holes in the green baize table-cloth, and the whole place smelt of dry-rot. From the wall behind the magistrates' table, in the place where nations more superstitious than ours suspend a crucifix, an atrocious portrait of the late Squire Nicholas surveyed the desolated scene of his former carousals. An inscription at the base of the frame commemorated him as one who had consistently ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Treveri. Nevertheless the country had its corn-lands and was rich in minerals and cattle, from which the hides came regularly down the Rhone to be carried to the Mediterranean markets. "Long-haired" Gaul was at this date rude and superstitious, with that weird druidical religion which the Emperor Claudius had done his best to suppress. Its chief vice was that of drunkenness. As with the French, who have largely descended from them, the proverbial passions ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... been with them before a day was appointed for the celebration of one of their religious, or rather superstitious, rites. This was the consecration of the holy pickaxe, the implement always used by these men for burying those whom they have slain. A fakir, versed in all the learning of the Thugs, was seated, when the auspicious day arrived, ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... neighbour may enlighten you as to another love to which you have yourself been a stranger. I daresay it seems odd to you that a man of my age should be anxious about so little, as though he were a love-sick youth; but for some time past I have had presentiments of evil, and I am really becoming superstitious!" ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Juan was stupid and superstitious, like most of his fellows. He had obeyed orders, digging out the red ore, and that was all he knew. But prompted by the two tramps, he was ready for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... a conversation between herself and some strong, brown, wild Neapolitan, she questioning and he replying. How he would misunderstand her! He would probably think her mad. And yet sometimes the men of the sea in their roughness are imaginative. They are superstitious. But a man—no, she could not question a man. Her mind went to the boy diver, Ruffo. She had often thought about Ruffo during the last three days. She had expected to see him again. He had said nothing about returning ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... "Are you superstitious?" she asks, continuing to twist tin caps on the pickle jars. "I am. If anything's going to happen I can't help having presentiments, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... "You're right. I'm not beaten yet. I've had to fight for everything worth while in my life. I'm superstitious about it now. When things come easy I'm afraid of them." Then, to the stock-girl, "Annie, tell Myrtle I ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember (continued he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... whirl of society, and none for the jostle of politics. Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow. Yet I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancy—the superstitious would call it a presentiment—that my part in life is not yet altogether played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies', ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... (see Orig. in Joann. Tom. VI. 17, Opp. IV. p. 133).[288] Complete obscurity prevails as to the Church's adoption of the practice of child baptism, which, though it owes its origin to the idea of this ceremony being indispensable to salvation, is nevertheless a proof that the superstitious view of baptism had increased.[289] In the time of Irenaeus (II. 22. 4) and Tertullian (de bapt. 18) child baptism had already become very general and was founded on Matt. XIX. 14. We have no testimony regarding it from earlier times; Clement of Alexandria ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... again it has proved to be false. You know one particular case especially, when a man, who was condemned to die on circumstantial evidence, was three times brought to the scaffold, and three times the rope broke, and then, because of what may be called the superstitious feelings of the community at large, that sentence was reduced to penal servitude for life. I say you know, my lord, that although that circumstantial evidence seemed complete, when a renowned thief and murderer was brought to his trial and condemned to die, he confessed to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... in many respects, a remarkable character. Most natives are extremely superstitious, and it is particularly true of those who have a belief in some form of God. While he would marvel at new things they did not occur to him as being the result ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... imagine how it had come there, and the tyrant was especially anxious to clear up the mystery that puzzled them all. Isabelle, who was a little inclined to be superstitious, and attach importance to omens, signs of evil, and such-like, felt troubled about it. She spoke Spanish perfectly, and understood the full force and significance of the strange inscription upon the wicked-looking blade of the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... question impersonally," said the doctor. "First of all, what you regard as religion is especially calculated to attract women. They remain as superstitious today, down in the marrow of their bones, as they were ten thousand years ago. Even the cleverest of them are secretly afraid of omens, and respect auguries. Think of the broadest women you know. One of them will throw salt over her shoulder if she ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... that had previously existed with Spain were loosened. The prospect of a crown for her favorite son was an alluring one—doubly so, because of Nostradamus's prophecy that she would see all her sons upon the throne, to which she gave a superstitious credence, trembling lest it should involve in its fulfilment their untimely death. It is true that, in view of Elizabeth's age, she would have preferred to marry the Duke of Anjou to some princess of the royal house of England, whom ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and other terrors of antiquity. But they cannot get into this enclosure of buttered willow wands, poor dears, on account of your magickings. How foolish they look—do they not?—leering and capering and gnashing their teeth, with no superstitious persons anywhere to pay attention ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... "but couldn't you do it just for once? 'Ave a dream that me and Emily are killed a few days arter the wedding. Don't say in wot way, 'cos she might think we could avoid it; just dream we are killed. Bill's always been a superstitious man, and since you dreamt about his leg he'd believe anything; and he's that fond of Emily I believe he'd 'ave the wedding put off, at any rate—if I put him ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs |
