"Superstition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the praises of God, when immediately the insect struck up one of the most exemplary of canticles! Pison, in his "Natural History of the East Indies," makes use of the word Vates (divine) to designate these insects, and speaks of that superstition, common to both Christians and heathens, that assigns to them the gifts of prophecy and divination. The habit that the mantis has of first stretching out one fore leg, and then the other, and of preserving such a position for some little time, has also led to the belief among the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... in the seventeenth century, men associated themselves in research, for free communication and discussion of their findings, a great invention came alive. Close on its heels was born the exact experimental method. Amazing triumphs were born of that marriage which swept away before it ignorance and superstition and prejudice. Its children and grandchildren have flourished and grown strong and mighty. They have transmuted the material conditions of life. Certainly all the laurels belong to the method of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... creature felt the influence of the cold, wet, cheerless morning quite as keenly as her mistress. Mrs. Madden was superstitious, as most ignorant and simple-minded people generally are, more or less. Superstition is, after all, only a dim, unconscious poetry, which is latent in most natures, except in such very hard practical minds as are incapable of believing in anything—not even ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the seventeenth century, women in England, as well as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male physicians to attend ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the most important strategic points of the insurgents, was entirely inundated, hopelessly dividing Prosser's farm from Richmond; the country negroes could not get in, nor those from the city get out. The thousand men dwindled to a few hundred,—and these half paralyzed by superstition; there was nothing to do but to dismiss them, and before they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... then. In spite of the work of many intelligent, sane men, who had shown that mental powers above and beyond the ordinary did exist, the average man simply laughed off such nonsense. It was mysticism; it was magic; it was foolish superstition. ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... 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 ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... rescuer some deadly injury. A similar belief, as regards the ill luck, prevails in China to this day; nothing will induce a Chinaman to help a drowning man from the water. In our own case, probably this superstition as to ill luck originated in the obvious fact that if there were no survivor from a wreck, there could be no one to interfere with the claim made by the finders to what they considered their lawful ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... glass eyes. I carried Dinky inside my tunic always and felt safer with him there. He hangs at the head of my bed now and I feel better with him there. I realize perfectly that all this sounds like tommyrot, and that superstition may be a relic of barbarism and ignorance. Never mind! Wellsie sized the situation up one day when we were ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... but one way of ending the matter, and that they might as well pile on the rocks. Calef says, that, as his body yielded to the pressure, his tongue protruded from his mouth, and an official forced it back with his cane. Some persons now living remember a popular superstition, lingering in the minds of some of the more ignorant class, that Corey's ghost haunted the grounds where this barbarous deed was done; and that boys, as they sported in the vicinity, were in the habit of singing a ditty ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... crown. But to believe that a prediction, giving all the leading events of the lives of several different persons, and those persons actors in scenes so wonderful, would be a folly equally weak and blasphemous. The same superstition is frequently betrayed in these volumes; and we have as many dreams and portents as ever disturbed the sleeping and waking hours of the wife of the first ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a very passable SKULL,—indeed, I may say that it is a very EXCELLENT skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will call the bug scarabaeus caput hominis, or something of that kind—there are many similar titles in the Natural Histories. But where are the antennae you ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Hundred confessed. "I do turn over now, but it was years before I could bring myself to do it. I wonder where we got that superstition that it brought bad luck? If we woke in the night, up in Crow's Nest, and wanted to shift our positions, we got up and walked around the foot of the mattress, so we could lie on the other side ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... the customs, creeds, and philosophy of men,—here showing how the broad Chaldean wastes led to the contemplation of the stars; and illustrations of the Zodiac, in elucidation of the mysteries of symbol-worship; fantastic vagaries of earth fresh from the Deluge, tending to impress on early superstition the awful sense of the rude powers of Nature; views of the rocky defiles of Laconia,—Sparta, neighbored by the "silent Amyclae," explaining, as it were, geographically the iron customs of the warrior ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allegation against John Bull that he had no tact in dealing with other races than his own. He did not mean to be unjust or unfair, but he trampled on the sensitiveness, which he could not understand. In Ireland he called the Roman Catholic faith "a lie and a heathenish superstition"; or, in a lighter mood, made imbecile jokes about pigs and potatoes. In Scotland, thriftiness and oatmeal were the themes of his pleasantry; in Wales, he found the language, the literature, and the local nomenclature equally comic, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... were capable of enormities which a poor, unpretending human creature [homuncio] would have disdained. Many times the ideal of the divine nature, as adopted by pagan races, fell under the contempt, not only of men superior to the national superstition, but of men partaking in that superstition. Yet, with all those drawbacks, an ideal was an ideal. The being set up for adoration as god, was such upon the whole to the worshipper; since, if there had been any higher mode ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the black void. In thought, she saw the picture again—the murderer hurling the Spud of the plow into the air, and setting the life or death of the woman who had deserted him on the hazard of the falling point. The infection of that terrible superstition seized on her mind as suddenly as the new day had burst on her view. The premise of release which she saw in it from the horror of her own hesitation roused the last energies of her despair. She resolved to end the struggle by setting her life or ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... departed spirits revisited the earth, probably took its rise from the opinion of the immortality of the soul, which was very general in both ancient and modern times.[2] This supposition is most consonant with probability. It is always to be remarked that this species of superstition is most prevalent in those countries where learning and reason have made but little progress. The demons [Greek: Daimones] and genii of former times were exactly the same as the ghosts of this; the same attributes, the same power, and the same malice were observed of one, as are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... the School-Board, had they lived a couple of hundred years ago, would have been punished as witches for teaching "spelling," it is pleasant to imagine)—and Mr. PARKINSON'S great charm is his apparent belief in the wonders he relates. Even when he occasionally alludes to "popular superstition," you feel it is only a phrase introduced evidently out of consideration for the unphilosophic prejudices of his "so-called" Nineteenth-Century readers, who pride themselves on being HUXLEYS in the full blaze of scientific light, and yet would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... superstition which believes that the axiom "non bis in idem" is as applicable to the battlefield as to the courts of justice, I replaced my shako ...
— How The Redoubt Was Taken - 1896 • Prosper Merimee
... intellect of the eighteenth century born out of date, a cosmopolitan spirit in the age of Saint Louis, the crusader who conversed with Moslem sages on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera[1] who persecuted Paterini while he respected the superstition of Saracens, the anointed successor of Charlemagne, who carried his harem with him to the battlefields of Lombardy, and turned Infidels loose upon the provinces of Christ's Vicar—would be inexplicable, were ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... weeping its tale of death through the barren trees. The tall monuments were as spectral giants, while here and there a guarding granite figure reared its ghostly proportions. But the weird scenery caused no stir of superstition in ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Toland in his Life of Milton, page 43, observes, that we have not this history as it came out of his hands, for the licensers, those sworn officers to destroy learning, liberty, and good sense, expunged several passages of it, wherein he exposed the superstition, pride, and cunning of the Popish monks in the Saxon times, but applied by the sagacious licensers to Charles IId's bishops. In 1681 a considerable passage which had been suppressed in the publication of this history, was printed at London in 4to under this title. Mr. John Milton's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... to be." A few moments later she asked if I was a Protestant, too, and receiving an affirmative, proceeded to express herself on the superior merits of that form of faith as compared with the Catholic, against which she had all the narrow-minded ignorance and superstition which, strange to say, only too often characterize the better element of the class to which she belonged. This girl's unreasonable prejudice against something of which she knew not the first thing presented a paradox universal ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... which of us two is the greater man. I am told that most of the professors there pass under the arch without tear; which indeed shows a wise contempt of the superstition." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... almost destitute of superstition, and a man of great courage, but this proved too much for him. His eyes opened with amazement; so did his mouth, and he grew ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... the school-house. In the great revolution that followed the war, the heels were put where the brains ought to have been. An ignorant majority, without competent leaders, could not rule an intelligent Caucasian minority. Ignorance, vice, poverty, and superstition could not rule intelligence, experience, wealth, and organization. It was here that the "one could chase a thousand, and the two could put ten thousand to flight." The Negro governments were built on the shifting sands of the opinions of the men who reconstructed the South, and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... have left the administration of justice not only uninjured, but purified. Dead and buried creeds have not carried with them the essential morality they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the sloughs of superstition. And all that there is of justice and kindness and beauty, embodied in our cumbrous forms of etiquette, will live perennially when the forms ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "There can be no retreat for me, gentlemen. Though many that we depended upon are not here to join us, yet let us remember that Heaven is on our side, and that we are come to fight in the sacred cause of religion and a nation's emancipation from the thraldom of popery, oppression, and superstition. Let this dispel such doubts as yet ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Germany, not to the Germany of sweet songs and inspiring, noble thoughts—not to the Germany of science consecrated to the service of man, not to the Germany of a virile philosophy that helped to break the shackles of superstition in Europe—not to that Germany, but to a Germany that talked through the raucous voice of Krupp's artillery, a Germany that has harnessed science to the chariot of destruction and of death, the Germany of a philosophy ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... account with the People at their expense. Elizabeth never found it necessary to square her account with the People, whose hearts vibrated in sympathy with her essential loyalty to them. Few of them probably shared her views on the sanctity of crowned heads as such, which amounted almost to a superstition; but the country was pervaded with a passionate loyalty to the person of its Queen. On the other side, the record of her Parliaments shows that freedom of speech was making way, though she would not formally admit the principle: while ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... English, scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Gray Superstition's whisper dread Debarr'd the spot to vulgar tread; For there, she said, did fays resort, And satyrs hold their sylvan court."— Lady of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... can use, Wilbur, is a sequence on Sirgamesk superstition. Emphasis on voodoo or witchcraft—naked girls dancing—stuff with roots in Earth, but now typically Sirgamesk. Lots of color. ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... cut in, "because you are not a knave. That is the only reason. This man who was here before you was an impious rogue. He was no priest. He was a follower of Simon Mage, trafficking in holy things, battening upon the superstition of poor humble folk. A black villain who is dead—dead and damned, for he was not allowed time when the end took him to confess his ghastly sin of sacrilege and the money that he had extorted by ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... further event on board the schooner, yet in all the anxiety that might be supposed incident to men so perilously situated. Habits of long-since acquired superstition, too powerful to be easily shaken off, moreover contributed to the dejection of the mariners, among whom there were not wanting those who believed the silent steersman was in reality what their comrade had represented,—an immaterial being, sent from the world of spirits ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... "Our fathers, upon certain frequent plagues, And following an ancient superstition, Were long accustomed to observe that day Which by the Israelites is called the Sabbath, And in a temple on Mount Gerizim Without a name, they offered sacrifice. Now we, who are Sidonians, beseech ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the child has nothing to thank his father for? When he has never known him? Do you really cling to that antiquated superstition—you, who are so ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... nobles of Provence; popes stamping out the seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal—these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were fragmentary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Lejoillie; "I thought, Carlos, you had too much good sense to be influenced by so foolish a superstition." ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... True religion is based upon a belief in the supernatural, upon faith and feeling. A people deeply superstitious are apt to be deeply religious, for both rest upon a belief in a spiritual world. Superstition differs from religion in being the untrained and unenlightened gropings of the human soul after the mysteries of the higher life; while the latter, more or less enlightened, "feels after God, if haply," it may find Him. The ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... however, that his piety was mingled with superstition, and darkened by the bigotry of the age. He evidently concurred in the opinion, that all nations which did not acknowledge the Christian faith were destitute of natural rights; that the sternest measures might ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... is in possession of this accession, it will go to work with these ideas as speculative reason (properly only to assure the certainty of its practical use) in a negative manner: that is, not extending but clearing up its knowledge so as on one side to keep off anthropomorphism, as the source of superstition, or seeming extension of these conceptions by supposed experience; and on the other side fanaticism, which promises the same by means of supersensible intuition or feelings of the like kind. All these are hindrances to the practical use of pure reason, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery, audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is why the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... not keep it," returned the girl, with a touch of her forest-life superstition. "It might bring the same fate to us. I could not bear it, Dic, now. I should die. Before you spoke to me—before that night of Scott's social—it would have been hard enough for me to—to—but now, Dic, I couldn't bear to lose you, nor to marry another. I could not; indeed, I could not. Let ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Copper hogs half of a State He builds an Art Palace on Fift' Avenoo. What people believed in the dark Middle Ages Don't go in this chapter o' history's pages, And the worship of mountains And rivers and fountains Is sinful, idolatrous, dark superstition— And likely to lose in a cash proposition. Ere the good time is past Let's get busy and cast Our bread on the waterfall—it'll come back. We'll first pass the Grabb Bill, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... forward a hundred— two hundred—a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that I would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know, let me write, the story with sure knowledge that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... untrodden desert, with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief. At such times he forgot that these same men were the children of Superstition and that one and all of them were held in the bondage of genii. He also forgot that their performance of five prayers a day, which is the number prescribed for the devout, did not necessarily make ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... black cat; and this rogue of a cousin was going to send puss off on a voyage, unknown to any one but the friend who took him, and when the trip was safely over, he was to be produced as a triumphant proof of the folly of the nautical superstition. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Solomon at Jerusalem; from the harsh and cruel tenets of the Oriental religions to the spiritual conception and ethical practice of the Christian religion, one observes a marked progress. We need only go to the crude unorganized superstition of the savage or to the church of the Middle Ages to learn that the power and influence of religion is great in ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... great sacrifice of men, they generally abandoned it, and waited for a more favorable opportunity. This was not the result of cowardice, for Harrison says that their bravery and valor were unquestioned. It may have been largely the result of a savage superstition not to force the decrees of Fate. Says Harrison: "It may be fairly considered as having its source in that particular temperament of mind, which they often manifested, of not pressing fortune under any sinister circumstances, but patiently waiting until the chances ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... they are pleased with slaughter, thirsty of human blood, and capable of requiring or accepting such offerings? Religion, says this judicious author,(526) is placed between two rocks, that are equally dangerous to man, and injurious to the deity, I mean impiety and superstition. The one, from an affectation of free-thinking, believes nothing; and the other, from a blind weakness, believes all things. Impiety, to rid itself of a terror which galls it, denies the very existence of the gods: whilst superstition, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... rapidly abounding and filled with members from every people. Those who, in consequence of the delusions that had descended to them from their ancestors, had been fettered by the ancient disease of idolatrous superstition, were now liberated by the power of Christ, through the teachings and miracles of His messengers."—(Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., Book ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in a certain part of the desert, sacrificed a lamb each night above the spot where he believed the treasure to lie, in order to propitiate the djin who guarded it. On the other hand, however, they have no superstition as regards the sanctity of the ancient dead, and they do not hesitate on that ground to rifle the tombs. Thousands of graves have been desecrated by these seekers after treasure, and it is very largely the result of this that scientific excavation is often so fruitless nowadays. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... know of no more dangerous company than solitary spirits like that fellow yonder, who fancy that they can draw the world after them. All of us begin by thinking that we are capable of great things; and when once a youthful imagination is heated by this superstition, the candidate for posthumous honors makes no attempt to move the world while such moving of the world is both possible and profitable; he lets the time go by. I am for Mahomet's system—if the mountain does not come to me, I am for going to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... wavered and seemed about to topple over, at the same time emitting a groan of pain which proved him to be thoroughly human. Helen was frightened, but there was a new kind of awe in this fright. All suggestion of superstition had left her and in its place was the dread that she might have ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... mention frequently the fair applause which their merits have wrung from some persons, and the attacks to which certain oblique motives have stimulated others. At the time when I was less free from superstition about my own power of charming, I occasionally, in the glow of sympathy which embraced me and my confiding friend on the subject of his satisfaction or resentment, was urged to hint at a corresponding experience in ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... of Europe by unknightly breach of fealty to his sovereign, despite the intensity of the provocation which had driven him to that step. For all the sanctions which held European society together, in the universal bondage which alone then constituted social order, were involved in maintaining the superstition that so branded him. And he was a desperate man in his fortunes; for though no name in all Europe was at that day as great a military power at the head of a host as that of Bourbon, and though the miserable bearer of it had so shortly before ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the usual Bengali superstition that if a man's real name be known he may be bewitched or subject to the influence of the evil eye, the real name given at birth is not made known at the time, but another name is given by which the individual is usually called. No ...
— Chaitanya and the Vaishnava Poets of Bengal • John Beames
... there strikes the imagination. It is certain that the idea of death produces little effect on the Russians; whether it is from courage, or from the inconstancy of their impressions, long regrets are hardly in their character; they are more susceptible of superstition than emotion: superstition attaches to this life, and religion to another; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... experience in the first period, very little is definitely known. What glimpses we have of it both fulfill and contradict the forest religion that was about him in his youth. The superstition, the faith in dreams, the dim sense of another world surrounding this, the belief in communion between the two, these are the parts of him that are based unchangeably in the forest shadows. But those other things, the spiritual passions, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... but—what sort of a credence do you think an average jury is going to place 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
... of fear,—to superstition. But whether that, or fondness of a wife, (The more unpardonable ill) has seized you, Know this, the Grecians think you fear Achilles, And that Polyxena ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... without stating that whenever the itinerant teacher takes occasion to speak of his own creed, and contrast it with others, he does so in a spirit of charity; and he never performs any of his sleight-of-hand tricks without a few introductory remarks on the evil of superstition, and the folly of supposing that in the present age any mortal is endowed ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... "Outside of the superstition, it would be well worth having. The names of the heads and heirs of the house are all engraved along the blade, from Sir Roderick on down. Seven hundred years of history scratched on steel." Rupert stretched and then glanced at his wrist-watch. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... religious camp, supported the superstition even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because of the devils, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... "Call it superstition, or what you will, no amount of coaxing, argument, or ridicule, no imaginable inducement could prevail on me to live there,—even if the house were floored with gold and roofed with silver. It ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Heaven, the other for those of the earth, terminated in a similar manner; and these two great examples admonish the world, that the vast and profound calculations of this age of intelligence may be followed by the same results as the irregular impulses of religious frenzy in ages of ignorance and superstition. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... ground. "A grave! dig me a grave!" it sounded again in her ears; and she would gladly have buried herself if in the grave there had been forgetfulness of every deed. It was the first hour of her awakening; full of anguish and horror. Superstition alternately made her shudder with cold and made her blood burn with the heat of fever. Many things of which she had never liked to speak came into her mind. Silent as the cloud shadows in the bright moonshine, a spectral apparition flitted by her: she had heard of it before. Close by ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... deed of the youth, and partly also because the faithful Heimbert, quickly perceiving his comrade's daring feat, had led both troops to a renewed attack, and now stood by his side on the height, fighting hand to hand with the defenders. This time the fury of the Mussulmans, weakened as they were by superstition and surprise, could avail nothing against the heroic advance of the Christian soldiers. The Spaniards and Germans speedily broke through the enemy, assisted by the watchful squadrons of their army. The Mohammedans ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... civil war in the United States had just been fought, and people still doubted whether the republic would hold together. It is hard to recall the common beliefs of those times. A great part of the political creed of twenty years ago seems now a mass of idiotic superstition, in no wise preferable, as Macaulay would have said, to the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. Nevertheless, then, as now, men met together secretly in cellars and dens, as well as in drawing-rooms and clubs, and whispered together, and said their theories were worth something, and ought ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... beauty and what is high and pure, our hearts harden by contact with the hard world. We examine love and find, or believe we find, that it is nought but a variety of passion; friendship, and think it self-interest; religion, and name it superstition. The facts of life alone remain clear and desirable. We know that money means power, and we turn our face to Mammon, and if he smiles upon us we are content to let our finer visions go where ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... believed I could do some good. Captain Hillyer spoke up and suggested that I make application to be transferred there to command the cavalry. I then told him that I would cut my right arm off first, and mentioned this superstition. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... mind the trend of the ground, for some time, sooner or later, we shall do well to have it in our mind's eye when we are considering the ancient traditions and superstitions, and are trying to find the rationale of them. Each legend, each superstition which we receive, will help in the understanding and possible elucidation of the others. And as all such have a local basis, we can come closer to the truth—or the probability—by knowing the local conditions as we go along. It will help us ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... cured the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is handicapped with a superstition like that. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... combined attentions of Donna, Mrs. Corblay and Soft Wind, the house, while primitive, had, nevertheless, been made comfortable and kept immaculate. But there is a superstition rampant in all provincial communities which dictates that the first line of action to be pursued when there is a death in the family is to scrub the house thoroughly from cellar to garret, and Mrs. Pennycook had been inoculated with the virus of this superstition ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... closely resembles those non-European countries where the influence of nature is more prominent than that of man, and whose civilisations are consequently influenced more by the imagination than by the understanding. In Spain, superstition is encouraged by the violent energies of nature. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Spain was first engaged in a long struggle on behalf of the Arianism of the Goths against the orthodoxy of the Franks. This was followed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... have the gist of the matter. Most of the gloomy prognostications which distress us arise from the habit of attributing to the thing a power for good or evil which belongs only to the person. It is one of the earliest forms of superstition. The anthropologist calls it "fetichism" when he finds it among primitive peoples. When the same notion is propounded by advanced thinkers, we call it "advanced thought." We attribute to the Thing a malignant purpose ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... procession from one of the other churches, all the nobility and an immense crowd attending. I had fancied that the French had exposed and put an end to this juggle, but not at all. They found the people so attached to the superstition that they patronised it; they adorned the Chapel of St. Januarius with a magnificent altarpiece and other presents. The first time (after they came to Naples) that the miracle was to be performed the blood would not liquefy, which produced a great ferment among the people. It was a trick of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... pleasure of art for art's sake there lurks an unworthy element, is a superstition that recurs in every generation of critics. A most accomplished and modern disciple of the gay science but yesterday made it a reproach to the greatest living English novelist, that he, too, was all for beauty, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... generally begins. After the hay making comes the harvest which is by far the busiest time of the year. From the middle of July—especially from St. Elijah's day about the middle of July, when the Saint according to the Russian superstition, may be heard rumbling along the heavens in his chariot of fire—until the end of August or early September the peasant may work day and night and yet find that he has barely time to get all his work done. During the summer months the sun in this region scarcely ever sets below the horizon and the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... possesses a special curative influence in a morbid state of the human system; but its general remedial effects do not entitle it to the rank of a hygienic agent. We believe that medicine is undergoing a gradual change from the darkness of the past, with its ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, to the light of a glorious future. At each successive step in the path of progress, medicine approaches one degree nearer the realm of an exact science. The common object of the practitioners of all ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... superstition was purely selfish. Once, when he had had two particularly close shaves during the day, he insisted upon sleeping outside the barn where we were billeted. 'I'm absolutely certain to have a third close shave,' he said, 'and if I'm in the billet someone will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... indignant they were at this new barbarian's success. But the native doctors were about the worst trouble that the people had to bear. Their medical knowledge, like their religion, was a mixture of ignorance and superstition, and some of their practises would have been inexcusable except for the fact that they themselves knew no better. There were two classes of medical men; those who treated internal diseases and those who professed to cure external maladies. It was hard to judge which class did the more mischief, ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... as well as the free walker in search of knowledge and wildness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable, assuring kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful overpowering sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort and cast people into inaction and superstition. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... but that I am bound by the laws of history to tell the truth: against his will, God knows, did he write it, and so do I repeat it. I speak not of our times all this while, we have good, honest, virtuous men and women, whom fame, zeal, fear of God, religion and superstition contains: and yet for all that, we have many knights of this order, so dubbed by their wives, many good women abused by dissolute husbands. In some places, and such persons you may as soon enjoin them to carry water ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... civilisation, lifts her head defiantly in the wilderness. She is born of the solitudes, a true daughter of the silent places. Here, where men were few and scattered broadcast by the great hand of adventure across the broken miles of all but impassable mountains, superstition is no longer merely an incident but an essential factor in human life and destiny. And here men long ago had come to frown when their questing eyes found the great, gaunt form of David Drennen in the van of some mad rush ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... nothing more than a caul or part of the omentum attached to the head of the foal, as it is also sometimes to that of infants, was thought to be particularly effective in conciliating love, especially when calcined or reduced to powder, and swallowed in some of the blood of the person beloved. This superstition is, however, in some degree excusable, if it be considered that, even in the present day, many persons in our own country firmly believe the human caul to have the power of saving its possessor from drowning; and that in the good old times, it was regarded ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... one thing; political independence is another. The latter cannot be securely and lastingly established until the former has fitted the nation to use it intelligently. When the component individuals have thrown off the bondage of superstition and of formulas, their next step must be, as an organization, to abrogate external subordination to others, and, like a son come of age, to begin life on a basis and with an aim ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... was brave enough now; a very desperado in the daylight. I laughed at Falkenberg for his superstition, and told him science had disposed of all ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... that even his English was capable of improvement, he replied that that was impossible, because his English was "perfect." When I was showing him the church, he asked if he might go into the sanctuary, and when I said that that was reserved for the ministers, he replied that that was "superstition." Seeing some of the Mission boys, who are simply but nicely dressed, he exclaimed, "Why do you clothe your boys in this miserable way? you should give them fine and beautiful clothing." Ascertaining that ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... have my just causes of anger against him, I own to you, in my quality of Frenchman and thinking being, I am glad that a certain most Orthodox House has not swallowed Germany, and that the Jesuits are not confessing in Berlin. Over towards the Danube superstition is very powerful.... The INFAME—You are well aware that I speak of superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect and love it, like you. Courage, Brethren! Preach with force, and write with address: God will bless you.—Protect, you my Brother, the Widow Calas all you ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "The Thunder Mountain is one of the most appalling objects of the kind that I have ever seen, being a bleak rock, about twelve hundred feet above the level of the lake, with a perpendicular face of its full height toward the west; the Indians have a superstition, which one can hardly repeat without becoming giddy, that any person who may scale the eminence, and turn round on the brink of its fearful wall, will live ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... papal chair, I hope you will not suffer any one to contend with us for your favour." "Well," said a Scott of Cromwell's army, "though the Koran has done great service for eight hundred years, and the superstition of the Pope for a much longer period, yet has the covenant done more since it came out, than the other two have ever done. Moreover it is notorious that, whilst the votaries of those two are every day rapidly diminishing, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... of the north, A goddess violated brought thee forth, Immortal Liberty, whose look sublime, Hath bleach'd the tyrant's cheek in every varying clime. What time the iron-hearted Gaul, With frantic Superstition for his guide, 10 Arm'd with the dagger and the pall, The sons of Woden to the field defied; The ruthless hag, by Weser's flood, In Heaven's name urged the infernal blow, And red the stream began to flow: The ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... rags that caricatured them, their sick or sodden faces, always frowsed with a week's beard, represented typical poverty to her, and accused her comfortable state with a poignant contrast; and she consoled herself as far as she could with the superstition that in meeting them she was fulfilling a duty sacred in proportion to the disgust she felt in ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... when lunching at Chelston Cross he was asked by Mrs. William Froude if he was, or had ever been, a Mason. "No," said Lord Houghton, "no. I have throughout my life been the victim of every possible superstition. I am always wondering why I have never been taken in by that." He was once sitting at dinner by the celebrated Lady E—— of T——, who was indulging in a long lament over the social decadence of the rising ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... doing away with rococo sentimentalisms, mediaeval tatters, and all wretched and ragged remainders and reminders of states of society which have nothing in common with our present needs. And it will be a revival, not of the ancient adoration of Nature as a mythology and a superstition, but as a heartfelt love of all that is beautiful, and joyous, and healthy in itself. Then the gods will indeed return and live again among us; not as literal beings, however, but as blessings in all that is best for man. Nor will 'Romance' be wanting—that ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The superstition of the Arabians and Turks with regard to dogs is somewhat singular: neither have they much affection for these animals, or suffer them to be in or near the camp, except to guard it in the night. They have, however, some charity ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... make the waters of the river bubble. Above Fort Norman, on the Mackenzie, in several spots the banks give out smoke and occasionally flames. These fires have existed for ages, and are regarded with the greatest awe and superstition by the Indians. A little higher up the river there are hot springs and a small Solfaferra, like the larger one near Naples.], when a sound was heard which caused the three men simultaneously to stop ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... is unconnected with some present or future pain of body. Nor is there any fool who does not suffer under some one of these diseases. Therefore there is no fool who is not miserable. Besides these things there is death, which is always hanging over us as his rock is over Tantalus; and superstition, a feeling which prevents any one who is imbued with it from ever enjoying tranquillity. Besides, such men as they do not recollect their past good fortune, do not enjoy what is present, but do nothing but expect what is to come; and as that cannot be certain, they wear themselves ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... which Farel describes his former superstition is so characteristic, that I quote a few sentences: "Pour vray la papaute n'estoit et n'est tant papale que mon coeur l'a este.... Car tellement il avoit aveugle mes yeux et perverti tout en moy, que s'il y avoit personnage qui fut approuve selon le pape, il m'estoit comme ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... born under an elder-tree, and I, poor desolate mother! was terrified into giving my babe that name. Great Hyldemoer, be propitiated! Holy Virgin!" and the widow's prayer became a curious mingling of superstition and piety, "Blessed Mary! let not the elves have power over my child! Have I not kept her heart from evil? does not the holy cross lie on her pure breast day and night? Do I not lead her every Sunday, winter and summer, in storm, sunshine, or snow, to the chapel ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... attachment to the Empress Josephine had always seen or imagined they saw in her a kind of protecting talisman of the success of the Emperor, did not fail to remark that the campaign of Russia was the first which had been undertaken since the Emperor's marriage to Marie Louise. Without any superstition, it could not be denied that, although the Emperor was always great even when fortune was contrary to him, there was a very marked difference between the reign of the two Empresses. The one witnessed only victories followed by peace. And the other, only wars, not devoid of glory, but devoid ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... admonitions of his retainer with incredulity, though not with any degree of disdain. He knew the devotedness of the old Indian, and therefore treated, what he considered a mere superstition, with a show of respect. But he felt an inclination to cure Guapo of the folly of such a belief; and was, on this account, the more inclined to put his original design into execution. To pass the night under the shade of the molle trees was, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... weak complaint in that terrible sonnet, "No longer mourn for me when I am dead;" but his heart-strings held; he kept his dignity at the last, and he gave us the splendours of "The Tempest." I have no manner of superstition about the great poet—indeed I feel sure that at one time of his life he was what we call a bad man, his self-reproaches hinting all too plainly at forms of wickedness, moral wickedness, which pass far beyond ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... consequences. I see no reason why use-inheritance need be credited with any share in the cumulative results of the invention of printing and the steam-engine and gunpowder, or of freedom and security under representative government, or of science and art and the partial emancipation of the mind of man from superstition, or of the innumerable other improvements or changes that take ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... large attempt at an expression in poetry of a knowledge of the earth as one of the orbs, and of man as a microcosm of the whole, and to give to the imagination these new and true fields of wonder and romance. In it fable and superstition are at an end, priestcraft is at an end, skepticism and doubt are at an end, with all the misgivings and dark forebodings that have dogged the human mind since it began to relax its hold upon tradition ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... of monasticism at the instigation of Rome, and the unprincipled and infamous ambition of the Norman Bastard, who crept into England during this great man's exile, and fled in all haste at his return. What he had to contend with, what plots he frustrated, what malice he counteracted, what superstition and stupidity he rendered harmless, will never be known in detail. We perceive the indefinite and indistinct forms of these things floating through the mists of history, but cannot grasp and fix them for the instruction of posterity."[L] This portraiture ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... having the least spark of ingenuity, is not hot at this indignity offered to literature? I deny not but that in this heap of books there was much rubbish; legions of lying legends, good for nothing but fuel . . . volumes full fraught with superstition, which, notwithstanding, might be useful to learned men; except any will deny apothecaries the privilege of keeping poison in their shops, when they can make antidotes of them. But, beside these, what beautiful Bibles, rare Fathers, subtile ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... give, as distinguished from a pleasure arranged for ourselves and got as cheap as possible. Herein lies the impassable gulf between the church and theatre, considered aesthetically; for it is only in the basest times, of formalism in art as in religion, of superstition and sensualism, that we find the church imitating the theatre in its paper glories and plaster painted like marble. The real, living religious spirit insists on bringing, as in St Mark's, a gift of precious material, of delicate antique ornament, with every shipload. The ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... disuse of any personal faculty, surely, though gradually, takes the faculty away. Those who explain away the positive doctrines and facts of the Gospel, delight in representing that God does everything by the instrumentality of law. It is superstition, they say, to suppose that he will put forth his hand to arrest the mighty machinery of nature, with a view either to punish your guilt or reward your obedience. Here at least we can meet them on their own ground, and accept their rule. Let any member of the body, or any faculty of the mind ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... town. Its tenant was apparently somewhat of a scandal and a stumbling-block to the reforming party. He was a disgrace, they wrote, to the city; he practised secret and wicked arts, and had sold his soul to the enemy. It was of a piece with the gross corruption and superstition of the Babylonish Church that such a viper and blood-sucking Troldmand should be patronized and harboured by the Bishop. The Bishop met these reproaches boldly; he protested his own abhorrence of all such things as secret arts, and required his antagonists to bring the matter before the proper ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... Far different was the effect produced when the preacher, filled with the same overpowering sincerity of belief which had inspired his description of the joys of heaven, traced the downward progress of the lost man, from his impenitent death-bed to his doom in hell. The dreadful superstition of everlasting torment became doubly dreadful in the priest's fervent words. He described the retributive voices of the mother and the brother of the murdered man ringing incessantly in the ears of the homicide. "I, who speak to you, hear the voices," he cried. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... then the accident—the probable accident—of the Italian superstition place any hindrance in the way of one whose mind is all at sea because of its existence. What, O man with a soul, is all the world else to thee? Christianity, whatever be its broad way of pretences, is but ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the knot," which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... kindness of some wandering member of the "Fair Family," or Tylwyth Teg, the fairies. Nor did his figure, if discovered vanishing between the trees, if some one ventured to peep out, in a light night, dispel the illusion; for it appears, that the fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature."[22] That he was "very learned," had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books, however little of men, was reported on both sides of the river; and these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... was especially interesting, because it corroborated the contention of Buckle, who, but a few years before, in his "History of Civilization in England,'' had stated that earthquakes and volcanoes had aided the clergy of southern countries in maintaining superstition, and who had afterward defended this view with great wealth of learning when it was attacked by a writer in the "Edinburgh Review.'' Certainly this Santo Domingo example was on the side ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... that we could have gained by imitating the doublings, the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries which have been employed against us, is as nothing, when compared with what we have gained by being the one power in India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath which superstition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the "yea, yea," and "nay, nay," of a British envoy. No fastness, however strong by art or nature, gives to its inmates ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... name, was despatched to Sparta for aid. In just thirty-six hours he was in Sparta, which is one hundred and fifty miles from Athens. But it so happened that it lacked a few days of the full moon, during which interval the Spartans, owing to an old superstition, were averse to setting out upon a military expedition. They promised aid, but moved only in time to reach Athens when all was over. The Plataeans, firm and grateful friends of the Athenians, on account of some former service, no sooner received ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... those who would escape from private or 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 thereto unobstructed. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... going in his estimation to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great charms to H. H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar and associated himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased because through superstition they imagine that such mad ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... superstition attributed to the diamond many virtues. It was supposed to protect the possessor from poison, pestilence, panic-fear, and enchantments of every kind. A wonderful property was also ascribed to it when the figure of Mars, whom the ancients represented as the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... is, not what he has usually been credited with, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of doubt is superficial, and arises from his fondness for illuminating fine but only half-perceptible traces of truth with the torch of superstition. Speaking of the supernatural, he says in his English journal: "It is remarkable that Scott should have felt interested in such subjects, being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but then, indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do clothe the ethereal with earthly attributes, and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... our age of unrest makes us the prey of impulses, and to the majority of our contemporaries, the robe, half green and half yellow (by recalling to them the worship of common sense), will become a fetish, more precious than all the amulets with which superstition loves to adorn logic, or to incorporate fantastic outline in the classic setting of ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... the greatness of the task, if we would be the means, under God, of saving them from perdition: that we have idol gods without number to destroy—a veil of superstition forty centuries thick to rend—a horrible darkness to dispel—hearts of stone to break—a gulf of pollution to purify—nations, in God's strength, to reform and regenerate. With such thoughts the conviction forced itself upon me, that the work could ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... sacrifice.* Isaiah complains bitterly of these unbelievers who profaned the land with their idols, "worshipping the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers had made."** The new king, obedient to the divine command, renounced the errors of his father; he removed the fetishes with which the superstition of his predecessors had cumbered the temple, and which they had connected with the worship of Jahveh, and in his zeal even destroyed the ancient brazen serpent, the Nehushtan, the origin of which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... remembered also owing to the catastrophe whereby some twenty persons out of a large crowd of strangers, who had imprudently ascended to the Atrio del Cavallo to get a closer view of the phenomenon, were suddenly caught by the lava stream and enfolded in its burning clutches. For if ignorance and superstition seem to make the poor fisherman or peasant unduly alarmed on such occasions, curiosity and self-confidence are sometimes apt to lead the educated or scientific into unnecessary peril. Naples itself was once more ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point, and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens just now ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... sought to rally his men-to remind them of their late victory. His English alone hearkened to his call; superstition had laid her petrifying hand on all the rest. The Irish saw a terrible judgment in this scene; believing it had fallen upon them for having taken arms against their sister people; the Welsh, as they descried the warlike Bishop of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... then the visitor went on, dropping her voice with a certain mystery. "You may talk of superstition, Phoebe, but I must say I'd sooner be what some folks call superstitious than have no belief at all. I don't wish to reflect upon any person, but I must say that, in my opinion, Doctor Strong is ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of their religion was soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of the Roman dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly depraved. The fantastic intermixture of Roman mythology with the gloomy but modified superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple character of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... we are to get on. Somebody said we got on so badly because we had thirteen pigs on board; another said it was because we caught so many birds, and I had caught no less than fourteen albatrosses and four Cape pigeons. Altogether there is quite enough of what I will call superstition at sea. One particular bird brings fine weather, another storms; it is very important to notice which way the whale swims or the dolphin leaps; the success of seal-hunting depends on whether the first seal is seen ahead or astern, and so on. Enough ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... adapted to my powers. I understood them fairly well, and I secretly wondered at this; for if during the day I opened these same books at random, I found myself brought to a standstill at every line. With the superstition natural to young lovers, I willingly imagined that in passing through Edmee's mouth the authors acquired a magic clearness, and that by some miracle my mind expanded at the sound of her voice. However, Edmee was careful ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... to be punished; if for nothing else, for their invincible obstinacy. He found no crimes proved against the Christians, and he could only characterize their religion as a depraved and extravagant superstition, which might be stopped if the people were allowed the opportunity of recanting. Pliny wrote this in a letter to Trajan. He asked for the emperor's directions, because he did not know what to do. He remarks that he had never been engaged in judicial inquiries about the Christians, and that accordingly ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... and cold unbelief which distinguished the last century, and which is still aped by would-be philosophers in the present, would sneer at our faith, and call it superstition, enthusiasm, etc. But were we believers in human progress and no more, there must be a glorious future for our world. Our dreams must come true, even though they are no more than dreams. The world is rolling on to the golden age.... Discoveries and Inventions are cumulative. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... still possessed speech and the ability to transmit experiences. No matter how beclouded in superstition, they still remembered that aircraft dropped bombs, and bombs killed people, and where people had been killed, they would find fresh meat. They had seen the helicopter circling about, and had heard the blasting: everyone in the area had been drawn ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... he tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... such matters!—attended the opening of a radical club in the Calle del Principe with a party of friends. We were all drinking champagne. Like other revolutionists and parvenus generally, Lerroux is a victim of the superstition of champagne. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... of reasoning.] Intuition. [False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] Sophistry. — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology[obs3]; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy[obs3], perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet[obs3], quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c. adj.; nonsense &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... clergyman to the vacant living. On the other hand, a married clergyman is as great a trial to the Sister of Mercy as an unmarried one to the Deaconess. The "Sister" idealizes the priesthood as she idealizes the poor. Their poverty is a misfortune; their improvidence an act of faith; their superstition the last ray of poetic religion lingering in this world of scepticism and commonplace. All the regularity and sense of order which exists in the Sister's mind is concentrated on her own life in the sisterhood; she is punctilious about her "hours," and lives in a perpetual ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... trail one stumbles upon the tiny, hidden village where the last handful of a once powerful nation has sought refuge. Half-clad, half-fed, half-wild, one might say, they hide away there in their poverty, ignorance, and superstition. But oh, the road one must travel to reach them! I hadn't anticipated Arizona trails when I so blithely announced to White Mountain, "Whither thou goest, I will go." Neither had I slept in an Indian village when I added, "And where thou ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... would linger to cherish thoughts of his lost love, Virginia Dare, and marvel on the wonders of her death. Then it came to pass that when fruit came upon this vine, lo! it was purple in hue instead of white like the other grapes, and yielded a red juice. Full of superstition, and still credulous of marvels, O-kis-ko imagined the change to be due to the magic arrow buried at its root. He gathered the grapes and pressed the juice from them, and lo! it was red—it was the semblance of blood, Virginia Dare's ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten |
