"Superstition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasure and early philosophies were the chief concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to be aristocratic in manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from recrudescences of savage poetry and superstition, though the Ionians "did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which had clung to them; these rose to the surface with the rest of the marvellous Ionic genius, and many an ancient survival was enshrined in the literature ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... the discovery of their loss; but later and more careful investigation, such as his woodcraft made possible, revealed indisputable evidence of a more material explanation than his excited fancy and superstition had at first ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Norwich, A.D. 1728, by Mr. Thomas Kirkpatrick, merchant there, and was bound at the expence of Isaac Preston, Esq., 1742, that it might the better be preserv'd being an Authentick & antient Evidence of the extravagant Foppery and Superstition of the Church of Rome, & of the necessity of the Reformation. Vide the Commandments page ye 20th in the ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... France are in most material points not more civilised than they were in the second century of our era. The reign of law and justice has no doubt extended into the reign of hyperborean ice and over Sarmatian plains: but then Spain, has relapsed into a double barbarism by engrafting Catholic superstition upon Iberian ferocity. If we look Eastward, we see a horde of barbarians in occupation of the garden of the Old World, not as settlers, but as destroyers (Age of Reason, in Fortnightly Review, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... had cracked the creed of popes and princes, there was a general demand for a new version and translation of the Bible, cutting out the Catholicism of the old book and expurgating the vulgarity and superstition engrafted on the "Word of God" by the apostles and bishops of the first, second and third centuries, after Christ had been crucified for the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... recommendation of the nuncio, neither that of the King and his minister, nor any official character, would have much served me. It will be seen that, after all, I did not fail to suffer from the churlishness and the superstition of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the Apache and Navajo had been able to defend their villages against the onslaught of these fierce tribes, their hereditary enemies. Don Juan Mestal enlightened me on that topic. He said the explanation therefor was to be found in a certain religious superstition of the Navajos and Apaches, which circumstance the Pueblo Indians took advantage of and exploited to the saving of their lives. When they had reason to expect an attack on their villages, the Pueblo laid numerous mines and torpedoes on all the approaches ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... is not one of worship, but one of fear and superstition. They are constanly in dread of imaginary spirits that haunt the wilderness and drive away the game or bring sickness or other disaster upon them. The conjurer is employed to work his charms to keep off the evil ones. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... gloomy kind of grandeur throughout, for the silence of spacious apartments always makes itself to be felt; I at least feel it, and I listen for the sound of my footsteps as I have done at midnight to the ticking of the death- watch, encouraging a kind of fanciful superstition. Every object carried me back to past times, and impressed the manners of the age forcibly on my mind. In this point of view the preservation of old palaces and their tarnished furniture is useful, for they may be considered ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and she looked at it with growing amazement. This wonderful nation! so full of superstition and yet of common sense. It seemed astonishing that grown-up people should seriously assist at this ceremony ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Druidical view of its production, how it is the solidified poison of a number of serpents who put their heads together to eject it, and how, even when set in gold, it will float, and that against a stream. This "egg," it will be seen, was from Gaul. The British variant of the superstition was that the snakes thus formed a ring of poison matter, larger or smaller according to the number engaged, which solidified into a gem known as Glain naidr, "Adder's glass."[65] The small rings of green or ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... placards became a daily occurrence, which the repeated reprobation of the Imperial power failed to check or punish. These inflammatory appeals to the ignorance and superstition of the masses, mendacious and absurd in their accusations and deeply hostile in their spirit, could not but work cumulative harm. They aimed at no particular class of foreigners; they were impartial ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... shoes and stockings cast away on the Bar and thereby open the door—for some people—on to the kingdom of heaven, if you like. But don't, don't, if you've the smallest mercy for my peace of mind ever wander about there again alone. I've a superstition against it. Something unhappy will come of it. It isn't right. It isn't safe. When—when I called you and you answered me through the mist, I had a horrible fear I was too late. You see I care—and the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... been handed down from mother to daughter through the ages, while the poor, misguided souls of expectant women have suffered untold remorse, heaped blame upon themselves, lived lives literally cursed with fear and dread—veritable slaves to superstition and bondage—all because of the simple fact that a certain percentage of all children born in this world have sustained some sort of an injury or "embryological accident" during the first days of fetal existence. For instance, take the common ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... you, I protest!—I protest she has!" exclaimed the doctor, with a slight laugh, as they walked along. Now, he knew the disposition and character of Aubrey intimately; and was well aware of a certain tendency which he had to superstition. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... compliments which superstition pays to the Creator, is a scorn and contempt for the fleshy investiture which he has bestowed on us, at least among Christians; for the Pagans were far more pious in this respect; and Mohammed agreed with them in doing justice to the beauty ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... by Real, who concluded, from the accent and perfection with which he spoke the French language, that he was some French adventurer who had imposed on the credulity and superstition of Madame Letitia; and, therefore, threatened him with the rack if he did not confess the truth. He continued, however, in his story, and was going to be released upon an order from the Emperor, when a gendarme recognized him as a person who, eight years before, had, under ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... mvule tree. As far as Bemba the Wabembe occupy the mountain summits, while the Wavira cultivate the alluvial plains along the base and lower slopes of the mountain. At Bemba we halted to take in pieces of pipe-clay, in accordance with the superstition of the Wajiji, who thought us certain of safe passage and good fortune if we complied ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... faces," he whispered. "There is not one of them that is not a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the centuries of serfdom and superstition through which their blood has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... assassin's dagger, the pure ermine of justice was stained and soiled with the basest contamination. It was clear to demonstration that the Begums were not concerned in the insurrection of Benares. No: their treasures were their treason. If the mind of Mr. Hastings were susceptible of superstition, he might image the proud spirit of Sujah-ul-Dowla looking down on the ruin and devastation of his family; beholding the palace which he had adorned with the spoils of the devoted Rohillas, plundered by his base and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which has not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry. Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious. True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded with superstition; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it drops out of the class of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... his duty to destroy superstition, so he went up to the brass idol in the market-place and gave it a ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... which this anecdote is introduced we learn that Talleyrand had some strong leaning to the Celtic superstition known as the second sight, which, in the adust imagination of a Frenchman, is closely allied to fatalism, and which, we fear, loses its interest, as it certainly does its virtue, when transported into sunnier regions from "the land of the mountain and the flood." In ancient times ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... good regulations with respect to burials. In the first place, to take away all superstition, he ordered the dead to be buried in the city, and even permitted their monuments to be erected near the temples; accustoming the youth to such sights from their infancy, that they might have no uneasiness from them, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... retractile, is, in its anatomy and all osteological features, a true cat. As I have before remarked it is to this animal alone that the name leopard should be applied, the peculiar ruff or shagginess of hair on the neck having given rise to the ancient superstition that this animal was a cross between the lion and the pard, whence its name Leo-Pardus. There are three varieties found in Africa and India—one, the maneless leopard, is confined to Africa, where also is found in the south a woolly variety with light brown spots. The ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the Parliament House of Edinburgh, is a mere idol,—a Diana of Ephesus,—whom her votaries worship, either because her shrine brings great gain to the craftsmen, or out of an ignorant and dotard superstition, which induces them to prefer the old Scottish Mumpsimus to the modern English Sumpsimus. Now, this is not fair construction in our friends, whose intentions in our behalf, we allow, are excellent, but who certainly are scarcely entitled to beg the question at issue without inquiry or discussion, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... explanation to this, I tell you. And peasant superstition has no part in it. You should have found it. But no! You came, dragging a whole detachment of guards in for me to question. Me, the Baron! I have to do all the work—all the thinking. I tell you, I want men about me who can ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... seek natural knowledge must admit that faith, hope, and love are the everlasting foundations of human life, and that a philosophic creed is as sterile as Platonic love; and they who uphold religion must confess that faith which ignorance alone can keep alive is little better than superstition. To strive to attain truth under whatever form is to seek to know God; and yet no ideal can be true for man, unless it can be made to minister to faith, hope, and love; for by them we live. Let us then teach ourselves to see things as they are, without preoccupation ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... little oak fern. It flourishes in thickets and open pastures, often with poor soil and scant shade. It is found in all parts of the world, and is said to be the most common of all our North American ferns. In a cross section of the mature stipe superstition sees "the devil's hoof" and "King Charles in the oak," and any one may see or think he sees the outlines of an oak tree. It was the bracken, or eagle fern, as some call it, which was supposed to bear ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... in the present volume have been classified roughly so as to fall under the heads (i) Ballads of Superstition and of the Supernatural, including Dirges (pp. 1-122); (ii) Ballads of Sacred Origin (pp. 123-154); (iii) Ballads of Riddle and Repartee (pp. 155-181); and (iv) a few ballads, otherwise almost unclassifiable, collected under the title of 'Fyttes ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... statutes and reforming her schools, but the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found useful in their respective callings. It was ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... No mumbo-jumbo of superstition, no awe of strangers who had suddenly descended upon them from the sky. Lord answered, "We landed in order to repair our ship, but I hope we can make a trade treaty with ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... but hints at their priestly functions, and connects them with magico-medical rites.[1028] These divergent opinions are difficult to account for. But as the Romans gained closer acquaintance with the Druids, they found less philosophy and more superstition among them. For their cruel rites and hostility to Rome, they sought to suppress them, but this they never would have done had the Druids been esoteric philosophers. It has been thought that Pliny's ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... of Europe, had not hitherto been very effectual in banishing their ignorance or softening their barbarous manners. As they received that doctrine through the corrupted channels of Rome, it carried along with it a great mixture of credulity and superstition, equally destructive to the understanding and to morals. The reverence toward saints and relics seems to have almost supplanted the adoration of the Supreme Being; monastic observances were esteemed more meritorious than the active virtues; the knowledge of natural causes was neglected, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... form they pleased.[14] The negro priests of fetish worship believe that they can pronounce on the disease without seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments or of anything which belongs to him.[15] The superstition of the evil eye recurs in Vedic India, as well as among many other peoples. In the Rig-Veda the wife is exhorted not to look upon her husband with an evil eye. There was the same belief among the ancient Greeks, and it is also found in the oculus fascinus of the Romans, and the German ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... of procession is common at Zanzibar: when any demoniacal possessions take place among the blacks, it is by this means they cast out devils. While on the subject of superstition, it may be worth mentioning what long ago struck me as a singular instance of the effect of supernatural impression on the uncultivated mind. During boyhood my old nurse used to tell me with great earnestness of a wonderful abortion ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... World superstition held him captive as he gazed. Death is the grand revealer, he thought; death alone stamps upon the crumbling canvas of mortality the truth. Rhoda was dead. Yet her face was alive for the first time. He saw its truth; and he shuddered, for he also discerned the hate ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... most profound darkness; but the flashes of light which at intervals streamed out, as the glare of the torches fell upon pieces of spar as clear as crystal, and the deep echo of our own voices as we spoke, inspired us with a feeling of awe bordering upon superstition. It is in such a situation as this, that the poverty of the mightiest monument of human art becomes conspicuous. The most magnificent churches and abbeys, with their sculptured pillars and vaulted ceilings, were thought of as mean in comparison of what was now before us; indeed, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... from the glaring flats below the Gila northward beyond the Superstition Mountains, a savage land where the sun was killing hot in summer-time, where forests of giant cacti stretched for miles like the pine woods that cloaked the higher plateaus. Phy and Gabriel rode together through the country ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... being determined by the point of the compass in which it lights to offer its rare evening song. Direction is gauged from where the Tribal Agong hangs—I will show you that after supper. It is a queer superstition, Major: they think that a song in the west means greatest harm—death by famine or disease or intra-tribal wars, from the north the omen is ill but to a lesser degree, south is good, but a song from the east augurs greatest ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... never could sleep in the neighbourhood of a room in which there had been a corpse. Petrea, who had not the least resemblance in the world to Hobbes, was not inclined to gainsay anything within the range of probability. Her temperament naturally inclined her to superstition; and like most people who sit still a great deal, she felt always at the commencement of a journey a degree of disquiet as to how it would go on. But on this day, under the leaden heaven, and the influence of discomforting forebodings, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... are strangers and pilgrims in the country where they pitch their tent for a night. How dare they spend time on cherishing the painted veil called Life, when their desires are fixed on what it conceals? When Tacitus called the Christian religion "a deadly superstition," he spoke as a true Roman, a member of the race of Empire- builders. His subtle political instinct scented danger from those who looked with coldness on the business and desire of this world. The Christian faith, ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... part," said my wife, "I believe in best china, to be kept carefully on an upper shelf, and taken down for high-days and holidays; it may be a superstition, but I believe in it. It must never be taken out except when the mistress herself can see that it is safely cared for. My mother always washed her china herself; and it was a very pretty social ceremony, after tea was over, while she sat among ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that many of these small phalli were worn for personal decoration; and here we come to a still lower decadence in sex worship,—the period of superstition. A phallus was worn as a charm, somewhat as a fetish to ward off disease. Such charms were supposed to bring good luck and prosperity to the owner and they were used particularly as a charm against barrenness ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... minutes, and already was the Church of the Capuchins thronged with Auditors. Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information. But very few were influenced by those reasons; and in a city where superstition reigns with such despotic sway as in Madrid, to seek for true devotion would be a fruitless attempt. The Audience now assembled in the Capuchin Church was collected by various causes, but all of them were foreign to the ostensible motive. The Women came to show themselves, the Men to see the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... full of shrines and gods, gigantic candlesticks, colossal lotuses of gilded silver, offerings, lamps, lacquer, litany books, gongs, drums, bells, and all the mysterious symbols of a faith which is a system of morals and metaphysics to the educated and initiated, and an idolatrous superstition to the masses. In this interior the light was dim, the lamps burned low, the atmosphere was heavy with incense, and amidst its fumes shaven priests in chasubles and stoles moved noiselessly over the soft matting round the high altar on which Kwan-non is enshrined, lighting candles, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... compared with that of the Cossack circle. The law of the forest afforded an education in itself. The intimate relationship of Russian family life, from the highest to the lowest, was constantly laid bare before me with all its romance and mediaeval trappings and its sordid substratum of violence and superstition. In fact, I became so interested in this work that it was with the greatest regret that I relinquished it for a ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... been, must have affirmed God even in the act of denying Him. Professor Haeckel declares his belief in God on every page of his "Riddle of the Universe," the famous book in which he says that God, Freedom, and Immortality are the three great buttresses of superstition, which science must make it her business to destroy. So far science has only succeeded in giving us a vaster, grander conception of God by giving us a vaster, grander conception of the universe in which we live. When I say God, I mean the mysterious Power which is ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... annoyed by the multiplicity of Scrap's appearances at times and places where he was officially a nuisance. He was more than annoyed by the local paper's recent reference to "our crack yellow-dog regiment." But he knew the strength of regimental sentiment concerning Scrap and the military superstition of the mascot, and he did not want to harrow the feelings of the "summer camp" by detailing a firing squad. Therefore he left a loop-hole for Scrap's escape alive. The announcement read: "All dogs found in camp not wearing collars will be shot, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... see that the good knight was shocked at the light way in which I spoke of magicians; and, indeed, the power of superstition over men, otherwise sensible, is wonderful. However, he took his leave without saying more than that he and the men-at-arms would be ready if I sent ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... attempted to be poisoned; nor would it be long, it was concluded, ere all ecclesiastical, as well as civil preferments, would be bestowed on such as, negligent of honor, virtue, and sincerity, basely sacrificed their faith to the reigning superstition. Such were the general sentiments; and as the universities have an intimate connection with the ecclesiastical establishments, and mightily interest all those who have there received their education, this arbitrary proceeding begat a universal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... often among the Auracanian Indians, who are kindred with the tribes of the Chaco. He but makes the reflection, how silly it is in these savages thus to expose such fine commodities to the weather, and let them go to loss and decay—all to satisfy a heathen instinct of superstition! And thus reflecting, he would in all probability have lowered himself back to the ground, but for that presentiment still upon him. It influences him to remain a moment longer balancing himself upon the notched upright, and gazing over the platform. Just then the moon ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... for the man who is tired of his wife; by the doctrine, namely, of "spiritual fornication." Adultery is, of course, recognised as the cause that admits a separation. But the canon law remarks that idolatry and all harmful superstition—by which is meant any doctrine that does not agree with that of the Church—is fornication; that avarice is also idolatry and hence fornication; that in fact no vice can be separated from idolatry ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... think I have a perfect right on the present occasion to consider what has been the influence of that political system in different countries. I do not desire to look at this point as it is to be found illustrated in ancient councils, or in times when bigotry and superstition were prevalent throughout the world; but, viewing the effect of the Catholic religion as it exists in the present day in various co un tries, in some where it luxuriates in undisputed growth, in those ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... them were shot with the little muzzle-loading cane gun or with a little muzzle-loading fowling piece: those were the days of the ramrod and wasps' or hornets' nests gathered and used for wadding, and the superstition, which Father often expressed, that if you spilled or dropped a shot in loading, it was your game shot, the one that would have killed and without which the shot would miss. I can see the fascinating-looking black powder ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... judicial vengeance. The more famous oracles of Greece were at Dodo'na, at Delphi, at Lebade'a in Boeotia, and at Epidaurus in Ar'golis. They were consulted by those who wished to penetrate the future. To this superstition the Greeks were greatly addicted, and they allowed the gravest business to wait for the omens of the diviner. A people thus disposed demanded and secured unmolested access to the oracle. The city in whose custody it was must be inviolable, and the roads ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... capable of resorting to methods that are both reactionary and revolutionary, of men who offer prayers and sacrifices to ferocious divinities and denounce the Government by seditious journalism, preaching primitive superstition in the very modern form of leading articles. The mixture of religion with politics has always produced a highly explosive ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... addressed you. But indeed, I seem to have no choice. It is idle crying "peace, peace," when there is no peace. If the Inspiration of Holy Scripture be a deceit, and the Divine meaning of Holy Scripture a superstition,—then, farewell to all our hopes in Life and in Death; farewell to peace in days of despondency and gloom. Our faith is gone, and our teaching becomes a hollow heartless thing. Since, under the name of freedom of discussion, unbounded licentiousness of speculation is openly the fashion ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... read quietly till he came. But the moment she sat down her fears returned with redoubled force-the cold sickly horrible feeling of uncertainty, of the knowledge that she could do nothing but wait till she was relieved by something over which she had no control. And in the superstition that to stay there in the window where she could see him come, was keeping him from her, she went into her bedroom. From there she could watch the sunset clouds wine-dark over the river. A little talking wind shivered along the houses; the dusk ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... amongst the peasantry of Scotland, and which ascribes a miraculous power to the bonnet of the Wizard. It is curious to find the tale of the invulnerable cervilerium of the Italians, travelling on the breath of credulity and superstition into the "far north countrie" of which the Magician was a native, and only changed by tradition from the blue steel worked and welded by magic art, into the blue bonnet which was waited on by Scottish demons, who were heard wailing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... likely to be free from similar beliefs. I hazard the guess that the Vehinehae are the hungry spirits of the dead, continuing their life's business of the cannibal ambuscade, and lying everywhere unseen, and eager to devour the living. Another superstition I picked up through the troubled medium of Tari Coffin's English. The dead, he told me, came and danced by night around the paepae of their former family; the family were thereupon overcome by some emotion (but whether of pious sorrow or of fear I could not gather), and must 'make a feast,' of which ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... superstitious to believe that strong and courageous truth-telling calls down from Heaven, new, unexpected, and vivid examples to support it. But, really, the events of the last few years would almost incline one to that superstition. The Free Press has hardly to point out some political truth which the Official Press has refused to publish, when the stars in their courses seem to fight for that truth. It is thrust into the public gaze by some abnormal accident immediately after! ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... general idea of the line of this higher evolution may be obtained by studying the list of what are called in Buddhist books "the fetters" which must be cast off—the qualities of which a man must rid himself as he treads this Path. These are: the delusion of separateness; doubt or uncertainty; superstition; attachment to enjoyment; the possibility of hatred; desire for life, either in this or the higher worlds; pride; agitation or irritability; and ignorance. The man who reaches the Adept level has exhausted all the possibilities of moral development, and so the future ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... designed) inquired into the cause; and he, after some fencing, admitted that his spirits had been dashed by an unusual dream. This was calculated to draw on the baron—a superstitious man, who affected the scorn of superstition. Some rallying followed, and then the count, as if suddenly carried away, called on his friend to beware, for it was of him that he had dreamed. You know enough of human nature, my excellent Mackellar, to be certain of one thing: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... monarchies and kings and popes, instead of anarchies and demagogues. Bonaparte was exalted, and poor Louis XVI., sent to heaven with so much ceremony in the Bassvilliana, was abased in a later ode on Superstition. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... be the Prince of Orange—which comes to quite the same thing." At the same time, however, it was hoped that something might be made of this liberty of conscience. All were not equally sunk in the horrible superstition, and those who were yet faithful to Church and King might be set against their besotted brethren. Liberty of conscience might thus be turned to account. While two great parties were "by the ears, and pulling out each other's hair, all might perhaps be reduced together." His Majesty was warned, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... works done by men in the flesh, arose among nations in accordance with the degree of civilisation which they had attained. Among the least civilised these doctrines exist in a state of confusion, remain vague, uncouth, surcharged with superstition and peculiarities. Nevertheless, everywhere the mystery of ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Since then everything has been all right, and now we discuss the education of the children and the emancipation of women from superstition and old-maidishness, from sentimentality and the devil and his ablative, but we talk when we are alone together and that is the best way of avoiding misunderstandings. Don't you think ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... increased the wonder, until the cry of "sorcerer" was raised: complaints before the magistrates were made against him, his lodgings were searched and a great number of copies were found and confiscated. The populace in their ignorance and superstition declared that he was in league with the devil, and that the red ink with which the books were embellished was his blood. It is a satisfaction to know that the Parliament of Paris passed an act to discharge the sorcerer from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of Nature and the universe) and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the cause of its mildness, is its merit. Well would it have been had the Act been extended to the whole United Kingdom. Local laws are open to some of the same objections as temporary laws. The enactment contains some improvements in our criminal procedure. There is no more idle superstition than the belief that criminal procedure does not, like other human arrangements, require change. If incendiarism should become an element in the conduct of trade disputes, if dynamite is to be recognised as a legitimate arm in political conflicts, the criminal law of the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... superstition of the Middle Ages Vesuvius assumed the character which had before been given to Avernus, and was regarded as the mouth of hell. Cardinal Damiano, in a letter to Pope Nicholas II., written about the year 1060 tells the story of how a priest, who had left his mother ill ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... of that. What a peculiar formation it is. Almost blood red in spots. What is it—isn't there some superstition ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... I shall have a colleague who has been there five or six years already, and who understands their language. They are the most mild and inoffensive people in all the world, but are enveloped in the greatest superstition, and in the grossest ignorance...I hope, dear father, you may be enabled to surrender me up to the Lord for the most arduous, honourable, and important work that ever any of the sons of men were called to engage in. I have many sacrifices ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... experience. Its enemies call it "an indelible superstition," and its friends assert that man is born believing. That a few persons, here and there, appear to lack the sense for the Invisible no more argues against its naturalness than that occasionally a man is found to be colorblind or without an ear for music. Mr. Lecky has written, ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... encouragement to piety, as well as the salvation of many lives, if the place of worship was well floored, wainscotted, warmed, and ventilated, and its area kept sacred from the pollution of the dead. The practice of burying in churches was the effect of ignorant superstition, influenced by knavish priests, who pretended that the devil could have no power over the defunct if he was interred in holy ground; and this indeed, is the only reason that can be given for consecrating all cemeteries, even ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the military superstition which believes that the axiom "non bis in idem" is as applicable to the battlefield as to the courts of justice, I replaced ...
— How The Redoubt Was Taken - 1896 • Prosper Merimee
... they are more impressionable than tractable causes them, it seems, to take naturally to religion, and seems a flat contradiction of Junius's assertion that "there are proselytes from atheism, but none from superstition." With some South African tribes it is unlucky to include goats amongst the animals paid by a young man's parents as the dowry for his bride; it was equally bad to pay dowry in odd numbers of cattle. The payment must ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Superstition had played a small part in his life, but he possessed both curiosity and a love for adventure, and his years of lonely wandering had developed in him a wonderfully clear mental vision of things, which in ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... singular superstition was attached to the hand of a criminal who had suffered execution. It was thought that by merely rubbing the dead hand on the body, the patient afflicted with the king's evil would be instantly cured. The executioner at ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... praying for direction by omens of the rosary, opening the Koran and reading the first verse sighted, etc., etc. At Al-Medinah it is called Khirah and I have suggested (Pilgrimage, ii. 287) that it is a relic of the Azlam or Kidah (divining arrows) of paganism. But the superstition is not local: we have the Sortes Virgilianae (Virgil being a magician) as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... any attempt to bring them under civilised rules, the reply always was, "telle etoit la coutume de la cote"; and that definitely closed the matter. They based their rights thus to live upon the fact, they said, of having passed the Tropic, where, borrowing from the sailor's well-known superstition, they pretended to have drowned all their former obligations.[104] Even their family names they discarded, and the saying was in those days that one knew a man in the Isles only when he was married. From a life ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... consequence, a foreshortening of the divine sphere. Tell them—and this, experience attests—that every man born under the sign of Saturn is melancholy and pituitous, taciturn and solitary, poor and vain; that that sluggish star predisposes to superstition and fraud, directs epilepsies and varices, hemorrhoids and leprosies; that it is, alas! the great purveyor to hospital and prison—and the scientists will shrug their shoulders and laugh at you. The glorified pedants and ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... ice-birds, blue petrels, and whale-birds, with a large admixture of albatrosses and Mother Carey's chickens. One of the passengers caught and killed one of the last-named birds, at which the captain was rather displeased, the sailors having a superstition about these birds, that it is unlucky to kill them. An ice-bird was caught, and a very pretty bird it is, almost pure white, with delicate blue feet and beak. Another caught a Cape pigeon, and I caught a stink-pot, a large bird measuring about eight feet from ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... she had in what the old Colonel had said on his death-bed. Her report of his evident earnestness and the self-possession of his voice carried no weight; failing powers, delirium, effects of opiates, and ten degrees above normal had it all their own way. Besides, her superstition was weak-kneed. It only went the length of suggesting that it really was very curious when you came to think of it, and she couldn't make ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... of the new teachers and masters, the cynical lords of materialism and misrule, who tell us that they are going to banish this outworn superstition and all others like it from the mind of man? They are going to make a new world in which men shall walk by sight, and not by faith; a world in which universal happiness shall be produced by the forcible division ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... flew out and looked aghast at Eliza, her ruddy face growing mottled, while the housemaid's cheeks were waxen as the maids gave themselves up to the silly superstition that, like many more, does not die hard but absolutely refuses ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... who was one of the best type of Romans, tried to investigate the purity of the lives of the Christians, and did not hesitate to put to torture two women, deaconesses, who belonged to the new religion, but he "could discover only an obstinate kind of superstition carried to great excess." His conduct and his opinion speak eloquently of the nature of a Roman gentleman of the Empire. As for the state of the poor under Augustus, 200,000 persons in Rome received outdoor relief. Although the rich had every luxury that desire could suggest ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... seemed suited to that day; and I thought, too, that nobody grows tired of Christmas stories, especially if he chance to have been born in one of those families where the day is kept in the old fashion: it roots itself so deep, that memory, in whatever quaint superstition, or homely affection for mother or brother, or unreasoning trust in God, may outlive our childhood, and underlie our older years. And surely that is as just, as wise a thing,—to strip off for a child the smirched ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... accused of trying to counterfeit coin, originated the Hudson's Bay Settlement, visits Prince Rupert, difficulty with Hudson's Bay Company, goes to Port Nelson, to France and England, with Hudson's Bay Company (1685), narrative of, described, owners of, first voyage, goes fowling, superstition of, captured by Indians, treatment of, taught to sing, dressed by Indians, wrestles with an Indian, adopted, taken on a journey, meets an Algonquin and escapes, recaptured, tortured, parents protect him, foster-father, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... replied the poet. "It is a superstition. My wife is, according to what an old thief, who is called among us the Duke of Egypt, has told me, a foundling or a lost child, which is the same thing. She wears on her neck an amulet which, it is affirmed, will cause her to meet ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the mate been so active in his vigilance. His seaman's superstition filled him with a certain terror. Just because it was the last voyage something horrible might occur to them. He paced the bridge for entire days, examining the sea, fearing the apparition of a periscope, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Young Men's Christian Association, or the grain elevators, or the new park just tricked out with rockwork and sprigs of evergreen,—not to any of the charming resorts of our own cities, but as in Europe to the churches, the churches of a pitiless superstition, the churches with their atrocious pictures and statues, their lingering smell of the morning's incense, their confessionals, their fee-taking sacristans, their worshippers dropped here and there upon their knees about the aisles and saying their prayers with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... deeme this a meere fable, and saie it sauoureth of grosse superstition and idolatrie, wherevpon they will conclude that no such fragments poudered with papistrie should be inserted into a chronicle. But (to auoid all suspicion of iustifieng the fansies of men) note you this, that in the ecclesiasticall historie, no small number of things no lesse strange ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... apprehension. The Anglo-African element of our population is classed off by popular sentiment, and kept so. It is for the thoughtful, the honest, the calm but resolute men of the race to mould the sentiment of the masses, lift them up into the broad sunlight of freedom. Ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and intolerance are elements in our nature born of the malign institution of servitude. No fiat of government can eradicate these. As they were the slow growth, the gradual development of long years of inhuman conditions, so they must be eliminated ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Arabic ghul. English ghoul. The creatures who, according to Eastern superstition, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... upon it? D'you think they'd believe you?" He shook his head. "Never. They'd simply laugh at the whole thing, and say you were either drunk or dreaming. People in the twentieth century don't indulge in superstition to that extent, Sir Nigel; or, at least, if they do, they let their reason govern their actions as far as possible. It's a tall story at best, if you'll forgive ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... from all sides, must necessarily suppose a most exalted merit as well as a very distinguished reputation, and indeed he possessed both. Reason at that time darted a ray upon the world through the gloom of the schools, and the prejudices of popular superstition. At last his name spread so universally, that the French were desirous of bringing him back into his native country by rewards, and accordingly offered him an annual pension of a thousand crowns. Upon these hopes Descartes returned to France; paid the fees ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Rebecca and Rachel, of Miriam and Ruth, of Esther and Judith of the Old Testament, and of Elizabeth and Anna, of Magdalen and Martha of the New, the name of Mary the Mother of Jesus is uttered with bated breath, lest the sound of her name should make the preacher liable to the charge of superstition. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... the drama is extremely simple. Samson is found enjoying a brief respite from his punishment. The day is a feast of Dagon, and the Philistine "superstition" allows no work to be done on it. Accordingly an attendant who is a mute person is leading {232} him to a bank where he is accustomed to take what rest he is ...
— Milton • John Bailey |
