"Superstition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Narragansett,—of his kin, his life, his work. His home is at the cross-roads where three townships meet, a cross-roads where has often taken place that curious and senseless survival of old-time tradition and superstition—shift marriages. A widow, a cousin of the Weaver Rose's father, was the last to undergo this ordeal; clad only in her shift, she thrice crossed the King's Highway and was thus married to avoid payment of her first husband's ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... woman, whilst we hear a voice saying, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; speak to the people that they go forward," let us not be dismayed at the hindrances we shall encounter from those whom we are laboring to release from the swaddling bands of infancy, or the grave-clothes of superstition, time-honored opinion and crushing circumstances. We are now in a perilous and difficult position. We feel all the inconveniences of our past condition, all the disadvantages and uneasiness of the one we are constrained to occupy, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Radnor—atrocities that seemed not only purposeless, but at utter variance with the courtesy and gentleness of his bearing—Oswald came to believe that his brain had, to some extent, become unhinged by excitement, flattery, and superstition. ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... the mist of candles before the Ikons, the rough painted pictures on the shops advertising the goods sold within—all these things shared in that crude idealistic, cynical ignorance, in that fairy-tale of brutality, goodness, cowardice, and bravery, malice and generosity, superstition and devotion that was so shortly to be offered to a materialistic, hard-fighting, brave and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... very easy to be made away with. That the corporal's vision was no fiction, was evident—the lad was not to be hurt by mortal man; but although the widow's arsenic had failed, Mr Vanslyperken, in his superstition, accounted for it on the grounds that the woman was not the active agent on the occasion, having only prepared the herring, it not having been received from her hands by Smallbones. The reader may recollect that, in the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Stoics were religious to the point of superstition, yet they did not invoke the terrors of theology to enforce the lesson of virtue. Plato does this even in the very work, the professed object of which is to prove the intrinsic superiority of justice to injustice. But Chrysippus protested against Plato's ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... ought not to cavil at the visible superstition and absurdity of much on which religion is made to rest, for the unknown can never be satisfactorily rendered into the known. To get the known from the unknown is to get something out of nothing, a thing which, though it is being done daily in every fraction of every second everywhere, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... 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 caring, after to-day, very certainly will not grow less. Take somebody, one of your ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... there here, then, So against nature? Help me to perceive it! Oh, let not superstition's nightly goblins Subdue thy clear, bright spirit! Art thou bid To murder? with abhorred, accursed poniard, To violate the breasts that nourished thee? That were against our nature, that might aptly Make thy flesh shudder, and thy whole heart sicken. [3] Yet ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a superstition that death is sometimes foreshadowed by death-fires or fetch-lights. In this instance the fires presaged the death ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... the nervous "fluid," and the lymph,—and must be treated by administering the remedy which will get rid of or counteract the excess of the particular vital fluid in the system. The principal traces of this belief are the superstition of the four "temperaments," the bilious, the sanguine, the nervous, and the lymphatic, and our pet term "biliousness," so useful in explaining any ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... about shipping, whom I took to be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they should all be out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have been the most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not help noticing, even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters' clothes, than in the steaks. This collation disposed of at a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not charged for), we went back to Barnard's Inn and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... leave them educated? Will the voice of its leader be lifted in the cause of justice and humanity? Will it tend after all to elevate or lower the moral sentiments of mankind? Will it increase the love of truth or the power of superstition or self-deception? Will it divide or unite the world? Will it leave the minds of men clearer and more enlightened, or will it add another element of confusion to the chaos? These are the tests we put to this new church and to our ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... will, I trust, pardon the following lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for their causes from popular superstition:— ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... flinched from the sight he saw. For a strange thing had happened. Although not actually unusual, it had never before come within the experience of any of these watchers of the dead, and thus it suggested to them nothing but the old superstition which in old times caused a supposed murderer to be brought face to face with the man he was accused of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... distinct from the bride's cake, which may be served by the latter at a dinner to her bridesmaids a day or more before the wedding, and in which a thimble, a coin, and a ring are hidden. The superstition is that the young women who by chance receive the slices containing these are respectively destined for a future of single ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... said, his pale face brightening a little. "I am very glad myself. Do you know I have a superstition that I must fulfil every wish of—like that—even half ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... distant rustling of his wings, As up his force the tempest brings, 'Twere sweet, ere yet his terrors rave, To sit upon the wizard's grave - That wizard-priest's, whose bones are thrust From company of holy dust; On which no sunbeam ever shines - So superstition's creed divines - Thence view the lake, with sullen roar, Heave her broad billows to the shore; And mark the wild swans mount the gale, Spread wide through mist their snowy sail, And ever stoop again, to lave Their bosoms on the surging wave: Then, when against the driving ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... a school-room or see a book. As it is, only one sixth part of the children are, or ever were, under instruction. And the instruction they receive is too often from persons themselves illiterate and full of superstition, but who are the best teachers who can be obtained with limited means. Consider, then, the real condition of affairs,—three hundred and fifty thousand blacks, a large share of them children or grandchildren of those who were brought from Africa, with the wild blood of their fathers scarcely diluted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... natural and healthy movements of his mind. He had gone forth to slay, and had been foiled by shadows; he had come with a tragic, if beautiful, memory haunting him, and that memory had clothed itself in flesh and stood before him, pitiful, solitary,—a woman. He had scorned all legend and superstition, and here both were made manifest to him. He had thought of this woman as one who was of this world no more, and here she mourned before him and bade him go and look upon her dead, upon the man who had wronged him, into whom, as he once declared, the soul of a cur had entered,—and now what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you one thing Penloe has done for me. He has cut what few strings there were which kept me in bondage to my sexual nature. I am free." And here the beautiful and intellectually bright girl laughed, and shouted again, "I am free! Free from that awful superstition of sexual bondage. Bless Penloe for helping me to ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... have been already leveled to the ground; and thus the citizens, who raised her again from the ashes to which Attila had reduced her, would have laboured in vain." See Paradise, Canto XVI. 44. The relic of antiquity to which the superstition of Florence attached so high an importance, was carried away by a flood, that destroyed the bridge on which it stood, in the year 1337, but without the ill effects that were apprehended from the loss of ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... exchange their profession of diviners for that of astronomers; and this, he says, marks the beginning of the conflict between religion and science. At first an expression of primitive "science," astrology became a superstition, from which the human mind has not yet escaped. In contrast to divination, astrology does not seem to have made much impression on the Hebrews and definite references in the Bible are scanty. From Babylonia it passed to Greece (without, however, exerting any ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, to imagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose. His house is of logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loft accessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney. The chimney is a huge construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; in fact, the chimney was built first, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... courage. She had persisted, in spite of all that could be said, in residing in her castle of Libokovo. The population, whom she had cruelly oppressed, demanded her death, but no one dared attack her. Superstition declared that the spirit of her mother, with whom she kept up a mysterious communication even beyond the portals of the grave, watched over her safety. The menacing form of Kamco had, it was said, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this attribute by astronomical discovery. Even real and tragic misfortunes, if believed to be such as flow from fixed law, and especially if they can be predicted sometime before they arrive, do not excite religious feeling. As Bishop Hall quaintly observes, referring to a curious medieval superstition: "Crosses, after the nature of the cockatrice, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... comfort. I've wished a thousand times you might, though nobody could have given me better care than these bully fellows have. But I've a sort of superstition that one look at trouble from Jack Leaver is enough to make it ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... The Pixies, in the superstition of Devonshire, are a race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man. At a small distance from a village in that county, half-way up a wood-covered hill, is an excavation called the Pixies' Parlour. The roots of old trees form its ceiling; and on its sides are innumerable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... playing at cat's-cradle all along, and as I went it broke on me that, after all, my faith in Gouvernant mainly rested on my knowing less of him than of the others—that I was really going with the crowd. But really I was running to back a superstition—my belief in Foe, who knew nothing about ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lonely spot, casting timid glances around him. He was not a nervous man at ordinary times, but like many country people, he had a vein of superstition running through his phlegmatic temperament, and the events of the night had swept away his calmness. The croaking of the frogs and the whispering of the trees filled him with uneasiness, and he kept glancing backwards and forwards from the lake to the wood, as though ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... however, entirely banished those ridiculous sects and schisms of which the kingdom had been formerly so productive. Imposture and fanaticism still hung upon the skirts of religion. Weak minds were seduced by the delusion of a superstition styled Methodism, raised upon the affectation of superior sanctity, and maintained by pretensions to divine illumination. Many thousands in the lower ranks of life were infected with this species of enthusiasm, by the unwearied endeavours of a few obscure preachers, such as Whitfield and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of infidels than in the extinction of this heresy. Burning with zeal for the salvation of souls, and a vehement desire of laying down his life for Christ, he preached the gospel to the idolaters, who had remained to that time obstinately attached to their superstition among the Carantani in Carinthia and Stiria; in which provinces also St. Severinus the abbot, who died in 481, and afterwards St. Virgilius, bishop of Saltzburg, who died in 785, planted several numerous churches. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... indicate a reasoning faculty. Such seems to be the case with the common garden spider, which, on the approach of rainy or windy weather, will be found to shorten and strengthen the guys of his web, lengthening the same when the storm is over. There is a popular superstition that it is unlucky for an angler to meet a single magpie, but two of the birds together are a good omen. The reason is that the birds foretell the coming of cold or stormy weather, and at such times, instead of searching for food for their young in pairs, one will always remain on the ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bean is an obsession; it is rapidly becoming a superstition. To the stranger it is an infliction; but, bad as the bean is to the uninitiated, it is a luscious morsel compared with the flavorless cod-fish ball which lodges in the throat and stays there—a second Adam's apple—for lack of something ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... (Long Legs), of Tomi, who raised an army and resisted the landing of the invaders. It was in the battle that ensued at this place that Prince Itsu-se, the elder brother, received a wound in his hand from an arrow shot by Prince Nagasune. The reason given reveals a curious superstition which seems to have prevailed from this early time. The Japanese prince on receiving the wound exclaims, "It is not right for me, an august child of the Sun Goddess, to fight facing the sun. It is for this reason ...
— Japan • David Murray
... either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new Revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organization,—into how many strange shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... prevent my being whipped by Mr. Covey. He was "a clever soul." We used frequently to talk about the fight with Covey, and as often as we did so, he would claim my success as the result of the roots which he gave me. This superstition is very common among the more ignorant slaves. A slave seldom dies but that his death ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As a girl she had been mystical and devout; ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... To the frivolities and meannesses of a second-rate fashion, inculcated into her till her father's death, had now succeeded the quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant bigotries, of a transcendental superstition. In a change so abrupt and violent, the whole character of the poor girl was shaken; her principles unsettled, vague, and unformed, and naturally of mediocre and even feeble intellect, she clung to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a pause; 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 little better than an infidel. To see a perishing ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... much of the Fallaba, which seems to have been a celebrated, or rather notorious, vessel. Every one declared her engines to have been of immense power, but this I believe to have been a mere local superstition; because in the same breath, the man who referred to them, as if it would have been quite unnecessary for new engines to have been made for H.M.S. Victorious if those Fallaba engines could have been sent to Chatham dockyard, would mention that "you could not get any pace up on her"; and all ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in the house were in their illuminations, and those wrought in metal and carved in wood, and the immortal, stony flowers of many brilliant hues in their mosaics. I began to fear that there was some superstition which made it seem wrong to them to gather flowers, except for funeral ceremonies, and afraid of offending from want of thought, I dropped the lily on the ground, and said nothing ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... supplies, would yet so honour, one would think, the persuasive Christian influences, operating around him and about him in so many benign and kindly ways, as to abandon many of the practices that savour of the superstition of a by-gone age. Though there has been a decline, if not a positive discontinuance, of his traditionary worship of idols; though his adoration of the sun, of certain of the birds of the air, and of the animal creation, is not now blindly ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the latter. Two doors, one on either side of the passage in which we now were, opened into a third gallery, where I was told stood the "gates of heaven and hell." They are of marble, but the origin of this superstition I could not learn. The floor of the mosque was covered with beautiful carpets, and the ornaments resembled those I saw in that of Soliman the Magnificent, which is considered a much finer building. St. Sophia is also surpassed ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the "Green Sea of Darkness" or the Atlantic. And what we have to note is that they imparted much of this paralysing cowardice to the Christian nations. Only the Northmen of Scandinavia, living a life apart, and forced to make their way over the wild North Sea, were untouched by this southern superstition, and ventured across the ocean by the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, to the coast ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... era of ignorance and superstition. Christendom went insane over an idea. When the year ended, and the world rolled on, none the worse for conflagration or deluge, green with the spring leafage and ripe with the works of man, dismay gave way to hope, mirth took the place of prayer, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that he wanted to drive to Shinglebay and fetch Mr. Ball, but Lea thanked him and half smiled at his superstition of thinking that a minister was needed to speed his soul; but he was pleased that Fulk came to him on each of the four or five remaining days of his life, and read to ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his rank and regiment. And proud of it, too, Lizzie added; you might have taken from her manner that she was one of us. Her version of Mrs. Kraemer's description sounded as though August were an ewe-lamb. McGeorge, besotted in superstition, missed this. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Bible to be of value, they regarded it rather in the light of a mystic charm than the word of God. Thus all the great truths of our most holy faith were so travestied and changed as to produce alone a degrading superstition. They believed that the Bible had the power of exorcising spirits of evil. So it has; but it is not the closed Bible, which they in their ignorance employed—not the mere printed paper bound into a volume—unread, or ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... the one good, the other bad, a dogma that had perhaps come from the Indians. Among them numbers of people still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly prone to overtake human ignorance and superstition, since very many barbarous peoples, even in America, have been deluded by it, without having had need of philosophy. The Slavs (according to Helmold) had their Zernebog or black God. The Greeks and Romans, wise as they seem to be, had a Vejovis or Anti-Jupiter, otherwise ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... of scientific men, the insignificant circumstance of a person habituating himself to the partial deglutition of his knife, while partaking of food, may produce antipathetic emotions on the part of others, whom prejudice or superstition has led to regard the knife as an article designed for cutting only. This kind of outrage I allude to merely for the purpose of illustrating a case. In first-class boarding-houses, like that of Mrs. Silvernail, such rusticities have long since become traditional, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peculiar scorn of aristocracies, and no men have been so bitterly persecuted in history as those who represented the religious opposition to despotism. The Hebrew aristocracy in old Palestine called this sentiment 'atheism' in Jesus Christ, and crucified Him. The pagan aristocracy called it a 'devilish superstition' in the early Christians, and slaughtered them like cattle. The priestly and civil absolutism of the sixteenth century called it 'fanaticism' in the Dutch and German reformers, and fought it eighty years with fire and rack and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Never mind; whatever Richard Doyle might have been strictly bound to do, generosity at least urged him to make the sacrifice—the sacrifice of his career, of his future success it may be. At least he could show that Catholic belief was no empty superstition, no set of mere traditional observances, which sat lightly on the man of culture, even if in his heart he accepted them at all. So he wrote to resign his connection with Punch, stating the reasons plainly and simply. This was in 1850, after he had ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... 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 a clearer sense and a deeper ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... regarded certain old men, as corrupt and as deceived as the divinities whom they were serving, as the ministers of those deceitful gods. The customs of those people were very analogous to the doctrines that directed them. Every kind of superstition was practiced; homicide was a praiseworthy and meritorious action; and their sacrifices on some occasions were human lives. In that vineyard so filled with wickedness the above-mentioned fathers announced the triune and one God, the mystery of the incarnation, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... often rode Gaston Phoebus and his fierce men of Orthez, in pursuit of a fiercer than they, the now disappearing Pyrenees bear. At no time was superstition more rife than then; savage souls were imputed to these savage animals; the spectres of the killed brutes returned to trouble the dreams of the hunter-knights, as the growl of their familiar torrent penetrates ours. We seem to hear old Froissart's ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... 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
... a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more. We may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend it to ourselves privately—and we don't. We do confess in public that we are the noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit, and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places of our souls we recognize that, if we ARE the noblest work, the less said ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and socialists 159 Appendix I.—Reply to Spencer 173 Appendix II.—Socialist superstition and individualist ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... waking in the morning, has no useful occupation of the day presented to his mind. To such a one respiration is a toil, and existence a continued disease. Self-oblivion is his only resource, indulgence in alcohol in various disguises his remedy, and death or superstition his only comfort and hope. For what was he born, and why does he live? are questions which he constantly asks himself; and his greatest enigmas are the smiling faces of habitual industry, stimulated by the wants of the day, or fears for the future. If he is excited to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... of analogy. This propensity assists us much in the cultivation of the memory; but it must be managed with discretion, or it will injure the other powers of the understanding. There is, in some minds, a futile love of tracing analogies, which leads to superstition, to false reasoning, and false taste. The quick perception of resemblances is, in other minds, productive of wit, poetic genius, and scientific invention. The difference between these two classes, depends upon this—the one has more judgment, and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... monstrosities of Brahminism, it extends in one direction from the Persian Gulf to Formosa and Japan, and in the other from the wastes of Siberia to the Gulf of Siam. Scarce any of the other forms of heathenism darken so large a portion of the map as Buddhism,—a superstition which is estimated to include within its pale nearly one third ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... I was superior to the belief in ghosts, you are right. I never had a grain of faith in such superstition in my life; and I have tried all means to convince my son what folly it was of him to hover round about the Willow Pond, with any thought that Rachel might 'come again.' No, sir, I have never ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 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 not be done without an immense ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... was realised such as earth never before or since beheld. But surely not less sacred or hallowed than any of these is the scene presented on the green ridge rising to the west of the village, overlooking its groves of palm. Before superstition ventured to raise its cumbrous monument on the heights of Olivet, may we not think of the scene of the Ascension, rather in connexion with three living Temples? May we not think of it as oft ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... assured was not worth exploring. Blair was just using, or about to use, "any romance of chivalry" as a hyperbolical exemplification of the contemptible in literature. Hume had been arguing against, and Voltaire was still sneering at, all sorts of superstition and supernaturalism. The common cant of criticism for generations had been that "sense" and "reason" were to be the only criteria. Walpole's egregious helmet dropped from no one knew (or knows) where on all these Philistinisms: and squelched them. How ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... The superstition is well known that if a new-married man hear the cuckoo before he hear the nightingale in the spring, his married peace will be invaded by some stranger within the year. But if the nightingale be heard first he will be happy ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... of his being a tale-teller, as well as a musician, now occurred to me; and as you know I like tales of superstition, I begged to have a specimen of his talent as we ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... favoured with. Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our republic assumed its rank among the nations. The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and superstition, but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood, and more clearly defined, than at any former period. The researches of the human mind after social happiness have been carried to a great extent; the treasures of knowledge acquired by the labours of philosophers, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... fate has awaited the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... early this morning and wash her face in the dew on the grass." He braved a smile and looked about on the troubled group. "She must be out somewhere upon the place," he continued, gathering courage with the thought; "she told me it was an old superstition. She has maybe wandered further than she intended, and perhaps got into some trouble. I'd better go and search for her. Is there any place near here where she would be likely to be?" He turned to Marcia ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... parliaments and lay tribunals of the kingdom; but many bishops, and the Jesuits in general, were its most strenuous assertors. All the artifices of priestcraft were practised on both sides to inflame the enthusiasm, and manage the superstition of the people. Pretended miracles were wrought at the tomb of abbe Paris, who had died without accepting the bull, consequently was declared damned by the abettors of that constitution. On the other hand, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... windows in your soul, That all the glory of the universe May beautify it. Not the narrow pane Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays That shine from countless sources. Tear away The blinds of superstition: let the light Pour through fair windows, broad as truth itself And high as heaven. . . . Tune your ear To all the worldless music of the stars And to the voice of nature, and your heart Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands Reach down ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... enemies, instead of one another, and made everybody wild about liberty, and citizens, and the noble march of intellect, and the dignity of mankind, and the rights of labour—when they wouldn't work a stroke themselves—and the black superstition of believing anything, except what they chose to make a fuss about themselves. And thousands of people, even in this country, who have been brought up so much better, were foolish enough to think it very grand indeed, especially the poets, and the ones that ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... future, when we have acquired the necessary political and social education and the habit of behaving justly towards ourselves and towards our fellow-brothers; when free from all superstition, healthy, strong and vigorous, we find ourselves capable of governing ourselves, without there being the possibility of the preponderance of our passions in the consideration, direction, and administration of the interests of our country, then, and only then, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Lord, from them who misprofess arts of healing the soul, or of the body, by means not imprinted by thee in the church for the soul, or not in nature for the body. There is no spiritual health to be had by superstition, nor bodily by witchcraft; thou, Lord, and only thou, art Lord of both. Thou in thyself art Lord of both, and thou in thy Son art the physician, the applier of both. With his stripes we are healed,[45] says the prophet there; there, before he was scourged, we were healed ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... George. Since the night before he had appeared totally subdued. Never once did he venture a comment. And ever Donnegan was conscious of big, bright eyes watching him in a reverent fear not untinged by superstition. Once, in the middle of the night, he had wakened and seen the vast shadow of George's form leaning over the sack of money. Murder by stealth in the dark had been in the giant's mind, no doubt. But when, after that, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... conductors of the ancient mysteries made high pretensions, just as do the modern advocates of secret societies. Perhaps the original design of the ancient mysteries was to civilize mankind and promote religion; that is, pagan superstition. But whatever may have been the design of the authors of them, it is certain that they became schools of superstition and vice. Their pernicious character and influence were so manifest that the ancient Christian writers almost ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... suppression: a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated July 22, 1541, commands "that from henceforth all suche superstitions be loste and clyerlye extinguisshed throughowte all this his realmes and dominions, forasmoche as the same doo resemble rather the unlawfull superstition of gentilitie [paganism], than the pure and sincere religion of Christe."{25} In Mary's reign the Boy Bishop reappeared, along with other "Popish" usages, but after Elizabeth's accession he naturally fell into oblivion. A few traces of him lingered in the seventeenth ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... said that Young "by the native force and vigor of a strong mind" had taken from beneath the Mormon church system "the monstrous stilts of a miserable superstition, and consolidated it into a compact scheme of the sternest fanaticism."* In other words, he might have explained, instead of relying on such "revelations" as served Smith, he refused to use artificial commands of God, and substituted the commands of Young, teaching, and having his associates teach, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the wealthy. They argue: "The commercial clerk with his reading, his writing, his arithmetic, and his shorthand is a proletarian, and a very miserable proletarian, only needing to be awakened from his poor little superstition of shabby gentility to take his vote from the Tories and hand it over to us. The small tradesmen and ratepayers who are now allying themselves with the Duke of Westminster in a desperate and unavailing struggle—against the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... colonists, hungry for land and little scrupulous as to the means by which they could gratify that hunger, largely undid the good effected through the agency of missionaries, the countrymen of these oppressors, whose evil deeds they were helpless to hinder. A superstition that was nothing Christian laid hold of many who had once been altogether persuaded to embrace the teachings of Jesus, and the relapsed Maoris doubtless were guilty of savage excesses; yet the original blame lay not chiefly with them; nor is it possible to regard without deep ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... of the town. This name it has preserved, with less alteration in the mode of spelling than almost any other town in the kingdom, through the barbarous reigns of the Saxon kings, the oppressive system of the feudal times, the dark gloom of monkish superstition, and the fatal revolutions occasioned by the civil commotions ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of various Countries," new edition, London (Bohn), 1860, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... buried Balthazar Becker, the antagonist of superstition and author of The Enchanted World. Near by was Martena Castle, where Alderman Sjuck van Burmania once kept a crowd of assailants at bay by standing over a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted brand while he ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... has the stomach of an ostrich and an appetite to correspond, but about whom the home superstition is that he has a feeble digestion and must take care of his diet, has also to run the gauntlet of his wife's interfering forces. He never dines or sups jollily with his friends without being plucked at and reminded that salmon ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Fever broke out, the water proved to be poisonous, and in a short time half the force were dead or dying, Randolph himself being amongst the former. An explosion which occurred in a magazine finished the disaster, and the scared survivors escaped in dismay to Carrickfergus. Local superstition long told tales of the fiery portents and miracles by which the heretic soldiery were driven from the sacred precincts ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... sense—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 life ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... London presents much romance and poetry, as well as strenuous activity; much religion and genuine piety, as well as superstition and narrowness of vision. It would not, indeed, be difficult to write lengthy volumes on such a subject, but it will of course be quite understood that in the present brief chapter anything of the nature of minute detail will be impossible. All that can ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... her shout of weird exultation. The man, ridden by his racial superstition, stared open-mouthed at the tiny demon who screeched defiance ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... child, and the many little trips—usually to Dresden, where my grandmother Ebers lived—which I was permitted to take, I wonder whether they inspired the love of travel which moved me so strongly later, or whether it was an inborn instinct. If a popular superstition is correct, I was predestined to journey. No less a personage than Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten system, called my attention to it; for when I met him for the first time in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of coming events, foreshadowed in the wild visions of sleep? But to what purpose could this dream, or indeed any dream, tend? Why had it remained incomplete, failing to show me the visionary consequences of my visionary actions? What superstition to ask! What a waste of attention to bestow it on such ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... remained—the power only had gone. It was a sight never to be forgotten. With head raised to the full stretch of his neck, he glared at me with an expression of such malignity, that it almost made one quail. I thought of the native superstition of singeing off the whiskers of the newly killed tiger to lay his spirit, and no longer wondered at it. With ears back, and mouth bleeding, he growled and roared in fitful uncertainty, as if he were trying, but ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... incidents such as are there described. In the selection of these, preference has been given to those of unusual character, as for instance those dealing with the "tupilak" theme, and matters of wizardry or superstition generally, which the reader would find more difficult to visualize for himself than ordinary scenes ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... most of the hot forenoon away on the porch of his cabin, there came to him rumor of the swift spread of the superstition running from mind to mind in the neighborhood, and catching like fire in dry grass. The rumor came in different voices, some piously meant to shake him with fear in the scorner's seat which he held so stubbornly; some in their doubt seeking the help of his powerful unfaith; ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... The Capitularies threaten death in vain. In the twelfth century, Burchard, of Worms, attests their inutility. In 1389, the Sorbonne inveighs against certain traces of heathenism, while in 1400, Gerson talks of it as still a lively superstition. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Presbyterians went, and then the Baptists. It was dark. Mighty night had beclouded the intellect and obscured the spiritual senses; civilized sensuality swayed with unchecked hand the destinies of the masses. The blinded people groped for light in the pitchlike blackness of the new superstition. ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... time to oppose themselves, not to Paganism, but to Christianity. A happier lot indeed had befallen poor Sultan Mahmood than befell his kindred who followed in his wake. Mahmood, a Mahomedan, went eastward and found a superstition worse than his own, and fought against it, and smote it; and the sandal doors which he tore away from the idol temple and hung up at his tomb at Gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him through centuries as the soldier ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... be content to be just Lee's wife? Why, practically every woman in our crowd does something. There used to be a superstition that two brain-workers could not live comfortably under the same roof, but as a matter of fact we've proved that a woman keeps her husband far longer if her brain is as productive as his. Each inspires and interests the other. Another old cliche gone to the dust bin. Our sort of ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... signify nothing, then representing them in a shape strangely ugly to the fancy, and thereby raising derision at them, may effectually discountenance them. Thus did the prophet Elias expose the wicked superstition of those who worshipped Baal: "Elias (saith the text) mocked them, and said, 'Cry aloud; for he is a god, either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleeps, and must be awaked.'" By which one pregnant instance it appeareth that reasoning pleasantly-abusive ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... 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 as ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... round the house at night were due to August's trying to find out whether his wife was as likely to be haunted as the Maoris were. He didn't dream of such a thing at the time, for he did not believe that one of them had the pluck to venture out after dark. But savage superstition must give way to savage hate. The girl's last "try-on" was to come down to the school fence, and ostentatiously sharpen a table-knife on the wires, while she scowled murderously in the direction of the schoolmistress, who was hanging out her washing. August looked, in her dark, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... and Hierostoli. Now, by the former of these are meant such who carry about them looked up in their souls, as in a chest, the sacred doctrine concerning the gods, purified from all such superfluities as superstition may have added thereto. And the holy apparel with which the Hierostoli adorn the statues of these deities, which is partly of a dark and gloomy and partly of a more bright and shining colour, seems aptly enough to represent the notions which this ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... for the present; so her Grace would have to get on without him as well as she could. There would be no Popish mass to-morrow, then, in the oratory that he had heard was made upstairs.... He marvelled at the superstition ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... strength for no more than your book and your theory! You have become slave to a small point of inquiry, and you call it the advance to a new time. "The crusade is on," you say. Coronation rites for the commoners and destruction to superstition. I put my hand out to you in joy. The joy is in unholy worship of a fetish, the pain that there is no joy also deference to a fetish. Your creed thunders "Thou shalt not." Love is a thing of yesterday. No room for anything that intimately concerns the self. But what are the apostles of the young ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... thieving servants, or we were eternally disgraced. How I got the money didn't matter, so long as I got it. And she hadn't courage—she thought it wrong to defy them. As if the wrong wasn't in giving way to such a base superstition! I believe she has seen that since her father's death. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... beauty of the Temple, unmoved. It was the most famous religious edifice in the world. From all parts, pilgrims flocked to it; and kings made offerings to it. It was believed by the Jews to be the special seat of their deity; and the Romans, partly from policy, partly from superstition, paid respect and reverence to the gods of all the nations they subdued, and annual offerings had been sent by Rome to ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... reed, dedicated to the east, which they called Tlapcopcopa and Tlavilcopa, nearly towards the fire or the sun. Tecpatl, which is the figure of a flint, was dedicated to Mictlampa, nearly towards hell, because they believed that the dead went towards the north. For which reason, in the superstition which represented the dead as covered with mantas (cloths) and their bodies bound, they made them sit with their faces turned toward the north, or Mictlampa. The fourth figure was the house, and was dedicated to the west, which ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... ruin; if she saw him once, the care of her children, the trust of their fortunes, all was forfeited. She entreated him to keep away; anxious, perhaps, in this sudden loneliness of death, to retrieve the past, or by some tender superstition made less willing to betray the dead than the living; or, it may be, merely eager to retain at all costs the rank, the station, the honours to which she was accustomed. Be it as it ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... true, found expression to a large extent in mythology; but the sanity of the Greek genius in its best days kept it free from excessive superstition. Not till the invasion of the West by the cults of the East do we find ghosts and spirits ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... rank superstition, you say? Aye, it may be! But in the region of the front everyone you meet has become superstitious, if that is the word you choose. That is especially true of the soldiers. Every man at the front, it seemed to me, was a fatalist. What ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... gloomy cast to his 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 a slow deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave some additional weight to the sterling metal ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... in some ways unfortunate. Though a man of sterling worth, Lowe was reserved, and had little acquaintance with the ways of courtiers. Moreover, the superstitious might deem that all the salient events of his career proclaimed him an evil genius dogging the steps of Napoleon; and, as superstition laid increasing hold on the great Corsican in his later years, we may reasonably infer that this feeling intensified, if it did not create, the repugnance which he ever manifested to la figure sinistre of the Governor. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... their supreme gods 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 of excellence ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.... I have as little superstition in me as any man living; but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... night and morning meet," Mysterious time, to superstition dear, And superstition's guides, now passes by; Deathlike in solitude. The sentinels, In drowsy tones, from post to post, send on The signal of the passing hour. "All's well," Sounds through the camp. ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... whether a child of his met his obligations or not. Such fulfilled the injunction to owe nothing by acknowledging nothing. One man, when pressed, gave as a reason for his refusal, that Christ had paid all his debts. Possibly this contemptible state of feeling had been fostered by an old superstition that it was unlucky to pay up everything, whence they had always been in the habit of leaving at least a few shillings of their shop bills to be carried forward to the settlement after the next fishing season. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... court, the 'Brigues' of the cardinals, the tricks of the Conclaves; and, in general, everything that relates to the interior of that extraordinary government, founded originally upon the ignorance and superstition of mankind, extended by the weakness of some princes, and the ambition of others; declining of late in proportion as knowledge has increased; and owing its present precarious security, not to the religion, the affection, or the fear of the temporal powers, but to the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Lerat had crossed two knives on the table in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman defended herself from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved fallacious. There could be no doubt that something unpleasant ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... preached long enough of hell and torment. It is time for a gospel of love to our brothers. Hell is a superstition of the Dark ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Empire—the most marvellous thing, Polybius says, which God ever brought about {200a}—are to be found in the excellence of their constitution ([Greek]), the wisdom of their advisers, their splendid military arrangements, and their superstition ([Greek]). For while Polybius regarded the revealed religion as, of course, objective reality of truth, {200b} he laid great stress on its moral subjective influence, going, in one passage on the subject, even so far as almost to excuse the introduction ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the fraud he felt certain was lurking somewhere, but that the Prince seemed to feel so certain of his consent; and he feared by thus fulfilling an idly expressed prophecy to plunge the unhappy man still deeper in his slough of superstition. One thing was certain, the Abbe told himself with a smile—nothing on earth or from heaven or hell—if the two latter absurdities existed—could make him believe in the devil. No, not even if the devil should come and take him by the hand, and all the hosts ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... a thought more good-natured than the rest, arranged that lovely, happy Nancy should be married from a pleasant country house, in a dear little country church. Braving superstition, the wedding took place in the last week of May, and bride and bridegroom had gone to Italy—though, to be sure, it was rather late for ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... objects in the folds of metaphor. Men prefer not to name plainly their god or their dread, but find roundabout phrases for the one, and coaxing, flattering titles for the other. The furies and the fates of heathenism, the supernatural beings of modern superstition, must not be spoken of by their own appellations. The recoil of men's hearts from the thing is testified by the aversion of their languages to the bald name—death. And the employment of this special euphemism of sleep is a wonderful witness to our weariness of life, and to its endless toil and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Shakespear, "Kept by a Devil," (King Henry VI., Part II., Act 4, and Scene 3,) Steevens makes the following annotation:—"It was anciently supposed, and is still a vulgar superstition of the East, that mines, containing precious metals, were guarded by evil spirits." So in Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature, by Edward Fenton, 1569, "There appeare at this day many strange visions and wicked spirites in the metal mines of the Greate ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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., ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... might say: "Permit me to observe that you made a curious and somewhat amazing statement, just now, in reference to faith and an all-wise purpose. Is it possible that you are still under the influence of an out-grown mediaeval superstition? The only reasonable assumption with regard to man's place in the universe has been quite clearly and scientifically established by the modern theory of evolution. It appears from that, that you and I are descended from an ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... in chap. 72: post id locorum. See Zumpt, S 434. Marius did not venture to aspire to the consulship; for appetere is not the same as petere, the latter denoting the actual suit or canvass. His ambition had not yet been directed to that highest of all offices, until religious superstition suggested it to him, and encouraged him. [340] The nobiles transmitted the consulship to one another per manus; that is, after one nobilis had been invested with it, it was, as it were by agreement, given to another, care being taken that no homo novus should ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... that it was no use our hammering them, for they could not go for the horses because they were too much afraid of the Cockata blacks, and unless we sent old Jimmy or a white man they would not go out of sight of the camp. This showed the state of superstition and fear in which these people live. Indeed, I believe if the whole Fowler's Bay tribes were all encamped together in one mob round their own fires, in their own country, and any one ran into the camp and shouted "Cockata," ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... saying what might be done, not what I proposed to do. I found this emblem of good chance by chance, and I picked it with the 'wish' attacked to the stem. Thus to the utmost I have honored the superstition, and you have only to make your wish to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of Saint Germain no longer pleases me," replied the King. "I shall enlarge Versailles and withdraw thither. What I am going to say may astonish you, perhaps, as it comes from me, who am neither a whimsical female nor a prey to superstition. A few days before the Queen, my mother, had her final seizure, I was walking here alone in this very spot. A reddish light appeared above the monastery of Saint Denis, and a cloud which rose out of the ruddy glare assumed the shape of a hearse ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... sooner had we fairly left the bayou than the sky suddenly became threatening. The captain shook his head and spoke of a very ugly night for the lake, which sent everybody's heart to their throats, and alarmed us immeasurably. We got talking of the sailor's superstition of crossing the water with a corpse, until we persuaded ourselves that it was more than probable we would founder in the coming storm. But the severest storm we met was the one in the cabin; and all night the only wind was a head breeze, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Of the islanders had trooped no petty throng, To witness that strange fight, who by a vain And miserable superstition stung, Esteemed such holy deed a work profane; And said that this would be another wrong To Proteus, and provoke his ire again; Make him his herds pour forth upon the strand, And with the whole old warfare ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... and gave a conventional assent to the existence of a deity in the second. For the peasant was still religious at heart with a naive unquestioning faith—more characteristic of the fourteenth or fifteenth century than of to-day—and still fervently aspired to God although sunk in superstition and held down by the despotism of the Greek Church. It was the cumbrous ritual and dogma of the orthodox state religion which roused Tolstoy to impassioned protests, and led him step by step to separate the core of Christianity from its sacerdotal shell, thus ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the sheep, nor the goat, have any peculiar sanctity annexed to them by the Braminical superstition; it is otherwise with the cow, which in India is everywhere regarded with veneration, and is an object of peculiar worship. Representations of objects are made upon the walls with cow-dung, and these enter deeply into their ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... would indeed have been too arduous even for such a statesman as the Prince of Orange, had not his chief adversaries been at this time smitten with an infatuation such as by many men not prone to superstition was ascribed to the special judgment of God. Not only was the King of England, as he had ever been, stupid and perverse: but even the counsel of the politic King of France was turned into foolishness. Whatever wisdom and energy could do William ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... graced with the accession of organs. And seeing musick is one of the liberal arts, how could it be quarrelled at in an University if they sang with understanding both of the matter and manner thereof. Yet some took great distaste thereat as attendancie to superstition."[13:1] ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Scriptures, from existing traditions of Christianity to its authentic original documents, which is the essence of Protestantism. In Puritanism, reverence for the Scriptures is exaggerated to the point of superstition. The doctrine that God of old had spoken by holy men was supplemented by the pretension that God had long ago ceased so to speak and never would so speak again. The claim that the Scriptures contain a sufficient guide to moral duty and religious truth was ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon |
