"Superstitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relate to a distinguished man. I am therefore exceedingly unwilling that any thing, however slight, which my illustrious friend thought it worth his while to express, with any degree of point, should perish. For this almost superstitious reverence, I have found very old and venerable authority, quoted by our great modern prelate, Secker, in whose tenth sermon there is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Some they would take out and whip, some they would scare to death. They would ask for a drink of water and they had some way of drinking a whole bucketful to impress the Negroes that they were supernatural. Negroes were very superstitious then. Colonel Patterson who was a Republican and a colonel or general of the militia, white and colored, under the governorship of Powell Clayton, stopped the operation of the Klan in this state. After his work, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... superstitious belief in luck, and was convinced that Sabina's and her own had turned with this first piece of good fortune, and that on the following day Malipieri would appear and tell her that he had caught the writer of the letter and was ready to divorce his ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... loved, admired, almost adored, Gave all the tribute mortals could afford. Perhaps we gave so much, the powers above Grew angry at our superstitious love: 40 For when we more than human homage pay, The charming cause is ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... ill, and we all have a touch of superstition, like a syphilitic taint. To eradicate this tyranny of fear and get the cringe and crawl out of our natures, seems the one desirable thing to lofty minds. But the revivalist, knowing human nature, as all confidence men do, banks on our superstitious fears and makes his appeal to our acquisitiveness, offering us absolution and life eternal for a consideration—to cover expenses. As long as men are paid honors and money, can wear good clothes, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... he. She turned promptly to the voice of her master, as she ever insisted on calling him. "Were I superstitious, I should fear that my great joy at Pierre's return might be the prelude ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I do not get them." Instead of artisans, white men to be held as hostages, he received a firm message, holding out no hope of friendship unless he set at liberty all those he had so long unlawfully detained. His answers, so full of meekness, he knew would please his followers; they were superstitious and ignorant, and placed a certain credence in ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... might have been, a beaver's tooth, or the knot of a tree; whatever, it was, the warrior would as little have thought of going to battle without arms, as without it. They treated their prisoners with great cruelty, partly it is said from the superstitious belief that the manes of their fallen companions were soothed by the sufferings of the captives. The prisoners who were not sacrificed, were adopted into the tribes in place of the slain, and treated thenceforth ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... peacemakers held in the highest respect, although they do not hold any sacred function—indeed, no order of priesthood exists amongst the natives. I have never discovered any symptoms of religion in these people, except it consists in a great variety of absurd and superstitious ceremonies. Before I visited this island I used to imagine, from seeing so great a variety of carved figures which had been brought from this country, that they were idols, to whom they paid their devotions; but in this I was deceived. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... whether we'd ever get this line of steel laid before our contract run out on us! Now wasn't that interestin'—wasn't it, especially coming from him? Neatly put and self-possessed, I call it. He was worried because he's dreadful superstitions. [Transcriber's note: superstitious?] He claims when them birds gets to hedgin' in on each other's solos like they did last night it's a sign of bad luck or an accident for somebody, sure. That give me an opening to ask him if the accident hadn't happened already, him having a bandage around his head not much different from this one ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... tremendous force in that superstitious day. Tom felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this poor fellow's guilt was proved. Still he offered the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to amuse or interest them in Boston, and grew very weary of its monotonous life and Puritanic tone. They missed the public amusements to which they were accustomed in their own country, and complained of the superstitious observance of Sunday, when "singing, fiddling, card-playing and bowling were forbidden." Foreigners were not welcome guests in this town of prejudice. The sailors of the French fleet had already been the cause of one riot. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... a laugh; then, going down on his knees, he began to dig at the exact spot on which the feather fell. Imagination had carried him for the moment to a point of almost superstitious energy. But the spell passed quickly. With a scornful laugh, he straightened his lanky ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... are sometimes very superstitious. They even believe in luck, though not in Puck. Some of them have faith in what the almanac, and the patent medicine may say, and in planting potatoes according to the moon, but they scout the idea of there being ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... Balthazar, in regard to his future. He was amazed to find how much of his past this man was able to reveal to him, a past made up of struggles and of obstacles overcome, and he joyously accepted predictions that assured him victory. Balzac was superstitious, not in a vulgar way, but through a deep curiosity in the presence of those mysteries of the universe which are unexplained by science. He believed himself to be endowed with magnetic powers; and, as a matter of fact, the irresistible effect ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... colonial slave traffic, the Negro, as found in his original home, the dark continent, was innocent and simple in his habits, possessed of a very high regard for truth and virtue. And, though very ignorant and superstitious, the result of his paganistic worship, vice and immorality was to him almost unknown. He was a lover of the beautiful, and in disposition easily entreated; and, because of these very tractile elements in his character, he fell an easy prey to the machinations ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... certain place above the vein of coal and began to strike with my sledge hammer, when I received a presentiment to remove my wedges from that place to another. Now I would not have the reader believe that I was in any manner superstitious, but I was so influenced by that presentiment that I withdrew my wedges and set them in another place; then I proceeded to strike them a second time with the sledge hammer, when, unexpectedly, the vein broke and the coal fell ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... a storm and suffered some damage, but the most precious of the relics it bore escaped harm. "The golden candlestick reached the African capital, was recovered a century later, and lodged in Constantinople by Justinian, and by him replaced, from superstitious motives, in Jerusalem. From that time its history is lost." —Merivale.] Carthage, through her own barbarian conquerors, was at last avenged upon her hated rival. The mournful presentiment of Scipio had fallen true (see p. 271). The cruel fate of Carthage might have ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... by an Indian alphabet[3]. But in all, especially in Japan, the influence of Buddhism has been profound and penetrating. None of these lands can be justly described as Buddhist in the same sense as Burma or Siam but Buddhism gave them a creed acceptable in different forms to superstitious, emotional and metaphysical minds: it provided subjects and models for art, especially for painting, and entered into popular life, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Even those three countries, the wealthiest, according to all accounts, that ever were in the world, are chiefly renowned for their superiority in agriculture and manufactures. They do not appear to have been eminent for foreign trade. The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce. The greater part of the surplus produce of all those three countries seems ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... about fifty. He intended to build trading-posts as he went westward and to make the last post always a base from which to advance still farther. His difficulties read like those of Columbus. His men not only disliked the hard work which was inevitable but were haunted by superstitious fears of malignant fiends in the unknown land who were ready to punish the invaders of their secrets. The route lay across the rough country beyond Lake Superior. There were many long portages over which his men must carry the provisions and heavy stores for trade. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... Domitian, and by Severus, and were now renewed the fifth time, on the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand years from the foundation of Rome. Every circumstance of the secular games was skillfully adapted to inspire the superstitious mind with deep and solemn reverence. The long interval between them [57] exceeded the term of human life; and as none of the spectators had already seen them, none could flatter themselves with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... from place to place, vainly looking for some one who would pull her out of the statue, and leaving everywhere she went a trail of superstitious terror, such as had never been known in the annals of the city. For a week the papers were full of the mysterious appearance of the armed woman, which was taken as a presumptive augury of war. Many affirmed that she had stopped them on the street and commanded them in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... faithfully the condition and action of the people. Folk Lore has thus an important historical bearing. Every age has had its own living Folk Lore, and, beside this, a residuum of waning lore, regarded as superstitious, and so it is at the present day. When we speak of the Folk Lore of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, we believe that we are speaking of beliefs which have past away, beliefs from which we ourselves are free; but if we consider the matter carefully we will find that in ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... grandchild, marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makes her a Papist too. Money abounds with the husband, who buys the house, and then the house becomes the rankest Popish house in Britain. A superstitious person might almost imagine that one of the old Scottish Covenanters, whilst the grand house was being built from the profits resulting from the sale of writings favouring Popery and persecution, and calumniatory ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... have a tenant at last. For twelve long years its massive walls of dark grey stone had frowned in gloomy silence upon the passers-by, the terror of the superstitious ones, who had peopled its halls with ghosts and goblins, saying even that the snowy-haired old man, its owner, had more than once been seen there, moving restlessly from room to room and muttering of the darkness which came upon him when he lost his fair young wife and her beautiful baby ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the Rewarder and Avenger of all, but they also worship the sun, moon, fire, earth, and water, and idols made in felt, like human beings. They have little toleration, and put Michael of Turnigoo and Feodor to death for not worshipping the sun at midday at the command of Prince Bathy. They are a superstitious people, believing in enchantment and sorcery, and looking upon fire as the purifier of all things. When one of their chiefs dies he is buried with a horse saddled and bridled, a table, a dish of meat, a cup of mare's milk, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... street wherein I dwelt was lonely, poor, Lantern in hand, at times, a shade passed by, When the gale whistled through the half-oped door. One seemed to hear afar a human sigh. I know not to what omen, sooth to say, My superstitious spirit fell a prey. Vainly I summoned courage—coward-like I shuddered when the clock began to strike. She did not come! Alone, with downcast head, I stared at street and walls like one possessed. How may I tell the insensate passion bred By that inconstant woman in my breast! I loved ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... "I'm a little superstitious about that number," he declared. "Is that an elevated railway there? I think we've ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... want it,' I said angrily, being somewhat confused with the turn things had taken. 'I am not superstitious ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pleasure the dear old fellow would have taken in this new opening—and in Melrose's marvellous possessions! By the way—Melrose had said nothing about the gems for a long time past, and Faversham was well content to leave them in his temporary keeping. But his superstitious feeling about them—and all men have some touch of superstition—was stronger than ever. It was as though he protested anew to some hovering shape, which took the aspect now of Mackworth, now of Fortuna—"Stand by me!—even as I hold ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into the society of young women. This for the time being took my attention from running away, as waiting on the girls appeared to be perfectly congenial to my nature. I wanted to be well thought of by them, and would go to great lengths to gain their affection. I had been taught by the old superstitious slaves, to believe in conjuration, and it was hard for me to give up the notion, for all I had been deceived by them. One of these conjurers, for a small sum agreed to teach me to make any girl love me that I wished. After I had paid ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... virtuoso, and had a wonderful collection of rings. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. He had shrewdness enough to employ Greek generals, but not enough to keep him from being grossly superstitious. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... for the sake of the beloved son that she supported the lie of his father's goodness, in superstitious awe of "duty and decency." She learned, alas! too late, that the sacrifice of her entire life had been in vain, and that her son Oswald was visited by the sins of his father, that he was irrevocably doomed. This, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... waters purely Basque. Bucalaos is the Basque name for codfish, and the Basques called the whole coast Bucalaos land, or codfish land, because of the multitudes of codfish along the coast. And up to this day, underlying the thin veneer of saint this and saint that, which superstitious piety has given to every bay and cape and natural object in gulf and on river, you find the old Basque names of places and things—the solid oak beneath the tawdry coating applied by priestly brush for churchly ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... sin for me to use the intelligence that God had given me, and I resolved to follow the Catholic doctrine, regardless of what it might lead me to, consequently I closed my eyes to reason and common sense and became a blind and superstitious follower ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... always preferred, on account of the exercise of hospitality usual on such occasions. The attendants must be likewise careful never to leave the corpse for a moment alone, or, if it is left alone, to avoid, with a degree of superstitious horror, the first sight of it.' —(Ed. 1803, vol. iii. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of facts, as the necessary basis of argument or illustration; and these refer to the state of women, in countries and during periods in which the religion of the Bible was wholly unknown, as in the nations of Pagan antiquity, in Greece and Rome; in savage, superstitious, and Mahometan regions; and their condition previously to the establishment of Christianity, in patriarchal time and places, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... hedges on Candlemas-day that it will be a good pease yeare. It is generally agreed on to be matter of fact; the reason perhaps may be that there may rise certain unctuous vapours which may cause that fertility. [This is a general observation: we have it in Essex. I reject as superstitious all prognosticks from the weather on particular days.-JOHN ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... country. If such a case could be established, would not adherence to a formula established under eighteenth century conditions have the same relation to sound politics that the incantations and taboos of superstitious barbarians have to sound religion? And I think such ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... differentiated the Breton peasant, when I first knew him, while it would be difficult indeed to say what it has gained. At all events the progress which can be stated is mainly to be stated in negatives. The Breton, as I first knew him, believed in all sorts of superstitious rubbish. He now believes in nothing at all. He was disposed to honour and respect God, and his priest, and his seigneur perhaps somewhat too indiscriminately. Now he neither honours nor respects any earthly or heavenly thing. These at ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... we are to credit the following paragraph, extracted from the "Morning Post" of May 2nd, 1791, the virtues of May dew were then still held in some estimation; for it records that "on the day preceding, according to annual and superstitious custom, a number of persons went into the fields, and bathed their faces with the dew on the grass, under the idea that it would render them beautiful" (Hone's "Every Day Book," vol. ii., p. 611). Aubrey speaks of May dew as "a great ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... infected. A dried toad was suspended round his neck, as an amulet of sovereign virtue. Every nostrum sold by the quacks in the streets tempted him; and a few days before, he had expended his last crown in the purchase of a bottle of plague-water. Being of a superstitious nature, he placed full faith in all the predictions of the astrologers, who foretold that London should be utterly laid waste, that grass should grow in the streets, and that the living should not be able to bury the dead. He quaked at the terrible denunciations of the preachers, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... matter-of-fact woman, I really admire the vein of superstitious fervour that gives coloring to her ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... something like a human being—it was nothing but seaweed. Still she felt frightened, and hastened on; and as she hurried on, many things she had heard in her childhood recurred to her thoughts, especially all the superstitious tales about "the apparition of the beach"—the spectre of the unburied that lay washed up on the lonely, deserted shore. The body thrown up from the deep, the dead body itself, she thought nothing of; but its ghost followed ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... fer pilin' up sech a heap ob 'plexity on my honey," cried Aun' Jinkey, who was as practical as she was superstitious. "I kin tell you w'at ter do. I doan projeck en smoke in my chimbly-corner fer not'n. W'at kin you do but do ez you tole twel Marse Scoville en de Linkum gin'ral come agin? S'pose you say you woan ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... could be some recondite bit of screen etiquette which he was infringing. Actors were superstitious, he knew. Perhaps it boded bad luck to talk of a forthcoming production. Baird and the girl not only ignored his reference to Hearts on Fire, but they left Baird looking curiously secretive and the Montague girl ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... strong and simple, my Mother possessed no quality of the mystic. She never pretended to any visionary gifts, believed not at all in dreams or portents, and encouraged nothing in herself or others which was superstitious or fantastic. In order to realize her condition of mind, it is necessary, I think, to accept the view that she had formed a definite conception of the absolute, unmodified and historical veracity, in its direct ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... we have abundant testimony, and it will be found in all such cases that there is some peculiarity about the contour of the land on which are placed these objects, that would be sure to catch the eye of a superstitious race." ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... followers, by telling them I have no regard for Christianity. Still, it will be for me to settle which, in present circumstances, is best,—to remain in, and not be misconstrued, or to go out and bear a testimony against the superstitious keeping of the day. Different circumstances will dictate different ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... not these idle people sent off to the colonies?" As for the notions of humanity, virtue and religion, adopted by all nations, she said, they were only the inventions of their rulers, to serve political purposes. Then, flying all at once to the other extreme, she abandoned herself to superstitious terrors, which filled her with mortal fears. She would then give abundant alms to the wealthy ecclesiastics who governed her, beseeching them to appease the wrath of God by the sacrifice of her fortune,—as if the offering to Him of the wealth she had withheld from the miserable ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... inflicted on them by the persecuting Jews and Romans, reacted on their brethren to give profounder firmness and new intensity to their faith in a glorious life beyond the grave. The Christians thrown into the amphitheatre to the lions calmly kneeled in prayer, and to the superstitious bystanders a bright nimbus seemed to play around their brows and heaven to be opened above. As they perished at the stake, amidst brutal jeers and shrivelling flames, serenely maintaining their profession, and calling on Christ, over the lurid ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... somehow guess right. This appealing to chance to settle questions of fact is characteristic of society in its primitive state. Modes of establishing justice similar in principle to these boy practices prevail to this day among superstitious peoples. They have prevailed even in Europe, not only among people of low mental power, but also among the cultured Greeks. Among our own Saxon ancestors the following modes of trial are known to have been used: A person accused of crime ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... nodosam nescit medicina Podagram; [4095]quartan agues, a common ague sometimes stumbles them all, they cannot so much as ease, they know not how to judge of it. If by pulses, that doctrine, some hold, is wholly superstitious, and I dare boldly say with [4096]Andrew Dudeth, "that variety of pulses described by Galen, is neither observed nor understood of any." And for urine, that is meretrix medicorum, the most deceitful thing of all, as Forestus and some other physicians have proved at large: ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... writers themselves are great innovators, sometimes coining new words, and still oftener new expressions and idioms, to embody their own original conceptions and sentiments, or some peculiar modes of thought and feeling characteristic of their age. Even when a language is regarded with superstitious veneration as the vehicle of divine truths and religious precepts, and which has prevailed for many generations, it will be incapable of permanently maintaining its ground. Hebrew had ceased to be a living language before the Christian ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind — the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk — the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg — the dead ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... he have? He deals out to it no measure of philosophical justice. He accepts the faith of every age but his own. He will accept, as the best thing possible, the trustful and hopeful spirit of dark and superstitious periods; but if the more enlightened piety of his own age be at variance even with the most subtle and difficult tenets of his own philosophy, he will make no compromise with it, he casts it away for contemptuous infidelity to trample ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... character wherein the wrath of God is denounced against the impious and cruel tribes of Palestine. It is doubtful whether the ideas of God and man, promulgated and spread among the people by Calvin and Knox, have ever been equalled in evil consequences by the most superstitious beliefs of ancient pagans. Let us look well at those teachings. According to them, God is the author of evil: he issues forth his decrees of election or reprobation, irrespective of merit or demerit; inflicting eternal torments ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... inexpedient and unnecessary, yet rejoicing that it would benefit the territories and forbidding any attempt to undo it. It put the stamp of Nebraska upon the proceedings, and the deathlike stillness which greeted its reading shook the nerves of the superstitious as an unfavourable omen. Immediately, a short substitute was offered, unqualifiedly disapproving the repeal as a violation of legislative good faith and of the spirit of Christian civilisation; and when ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... with whom he works. He wants the best people in the best places. He begins to have a practical partner's imagination about the men who are over him, and about their knowing more than he does. If he is merely paid wages, he is superstitious, and jealous toward those who know more than he does. If he is paid profits, he is glad that they do, and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... was but imperfectly obtained, as his people were so very much occupied in the hunt that they could pay but little attention to the preaching of the word; and their heathen companions disliked the presence of a missionary, as it caused those to keep back who believed in their superstitious customs and practices, and who practised them, and on whom, according to their notions, the success of the ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... sympathy to which reference has already been made. Some of the bolder of the young fishermen of the neighbouring coasts had several times made futile efforts to find out where and how the hermit lived, but the few who got a glimpse of him at a distance brought back such a report that a kind of superstitious fear of him was generated which kept them at a ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... control Destiny, shape events and his own life as he liked. He had been shot at, pursued by posses, all but lynched upon an occasion, and always he had escaped in some unlooked-for manner little short of miraculous. As a result, he had come to cherish a superstitious belief that he bore a charmed life, that no real harm could come to him. So he courted each woman according to her nature as he read it, and ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... husband, is certain; but it may be doubted whether his mighty genius ever leaned for support upon the political skill and counsel of a woman—even though that woman were Josephine. She, like her wonderful husband, seems to have cherished a superstitious reliance upon destiny—a weakness singularly inconsistent with their general character. The story of the early prediction that she would become a queen is given with an amusing simplicity and earnestness. The ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... "that's the most perfect echo I ever heard. I've no doubt the holy fathers of the Middle Ages knew of it, and used it in some shape to keep the superstitious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... (with 60 others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said to my mother "it means that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that boat a year and a half—he was born lucky." Yes, I was somewhere else. I am so superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were unlucky people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large size, and whenever they were wasted ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... escape the witchcraft delusion, though I believe that no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Isle of Crete but the rock from which the father of Theseus threw himself—is still here! Also the hill upon which Paul stood and told the Athenians they were too superstitious. You can imagine my feelings at finding all of these things are true. After this I am going to the North Pole to find Santa Claus and so renew ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... by the Dyaks themselves. In 1873, Mr. Chambers, who was then bishop, wrote: "These Sea Dyaks have made the greatest advances in civilization and Christianity. Looking back even five years, there is a great difference. They have abandoned superstitious habits." "They no longer listen to the voices of birds to tell them when to sow their seeds, undertake a journey, or build a house; they never consult a manang[1] in sickness or difficulty; above all, they set no store by the blackened skulls which used to hang from ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... had brought too much blood to his head and he was seeing red. He raised himself upon his elbows and stared at the owl which stared back from red rimmed eyes, cold, emotionless, implacable. He had been terribly shaken, and now a superstitious fright overcame him. The raven and the albatross were in his mind and he murmured under his breath passages from their ominous poems. The scholar had his raven, the mariner had his albatross and now he alone ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had Chet called these dark areas? "Lake of Dreams" and "Lake of Death." Spud's superstitious mind was a-quiver with dread and an ominous premonition to which the empty, frozen wastes below him gave ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... examination of phenomena such as have been discussed in this chapter, ay, throughout this book, we must lay aside the dogmatic assertions of our superstitious ancestors, who, to paraphrase Roscoe, "when awed by superstition, and subdued by hereditary prejudices, could not only assent to the most incredible proposition, but could act in consequence of ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... prevent the critics detecting any similarity between the speech of the Duke of Rhododendron at the agricultural dinner, and the speech of my personage. My sensibility on the subject of my writings is so great, that sometimes a chance word is sufficient to unman me, I apply it to them in a superstitious sense; for example, when you said some time ago that the dark hour was coming on, I applied it to my works—it appeared to bode them evil fortune; you saw how I touched, it was to baffle the evil chance; but I do not ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and massacre of its principal fighting men. There was a strong temptation, therefore, to the victor to be merciless; not so much to gratify any cruel revenge, as to provide for future security. The Indians had also the superstitious belief, frequent among barbarous nations and prevalent also among the ancients, that the manes of their friends who had fallen in battle were soothed by the blood of the captives. The prisoners, however, who are not thus sacrificed, are adopted into their families in the place of the slain, and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... conversation between herself and some strong, brown, wild Neapolitan, she questioning and he replying. How he would misunderstand her! He would probably think her mad. And yet sometimes the men of the sea in their roughness are imaginative. They are superstitious. But a man—no, she could not question a man. Her mind went to the boy diver, Ruffo. She had often thought about Ruffo during the last three days. She had expected to see him again. He had said nothing about returning to the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the most part arranged against the inner wall of the hut, and opposite the entrance, so as to be observable by any one looking in at the door, or even passing by it. For its purpose is to impress the superstitious victims of Shebotha's craft with a belief in her witching ways. And to give this a more terrifying and supernatural character, a human skull, representing a death's head, with a pair of tibia for crossbones underneath, is fixed centrally and prominently ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... and superstitious observances peculiar to this group. They have curious clubs, confraternities with secret rites of initiation. The candidate for admission pays pigs and native money, and after many days' seclusion in a secret place is, with great ceremony, recognised as a member. No woman ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... increasing it. The scene of this affair was the puritanical colony of New England, since better known as Massachusetts, the colonists of which appear to have carried with them, in an exaggerated form, the superstitious feelings with regard to witchcraft which then prevailed in the mother country. In the spring of 1692 an alarm of witchcraft was raised in the family of the minister of Salem, and some black servants were charged ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... or for insertion in a shaft, on the right side. The earth behind the skull being removed, three enormous conch shells presented their open mouths. One of my assistants started back as if the ghost of the departed had come to claim the treasure preserved, in accordance with superstitious notions, for its journey to the "happy lands." The alarm seemed to be a warning, for at the moment the embankment, overloaded on one side, caved in, nearly burying three workmen, myself, and a spectator. Our tools being at the bottom of the heap, and the wall on the other side, shaken by ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... games of Pirate, or Outlaw, which were handicapped, however, by the scarcity of playmates, and their curious hesitation to serve as victims. As pirates and outlaws are well known to be the most superstitious of creatures, inclining to the primitive in their religious views, we were naturally led into a sort of dread enthusiasm for—or enthusiastic dread of—the whole pantheon of spooks, sprites, and bugaboos to which savages and children, great and small, bow the knee. My ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... alive to the importance of the impending stroke, was aware that the Governor had planned it with the care he brought to the most trifling matters, though veiled by his indifference, which in turn was enveloped in his superstitious reliance on occult powers. Whether through some gift of prevision the Governor anticipated needs and dangers in his singular life, or whether he was merely a favorite of the gods of good luck, Archie had never ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... amazement. A Burman, and particularly one who chases the wild elephants in their jungles, is intensely superstitious, and for an instant it seemed to him that the wild trumpeting must have some secret meaning, it was so loud and triumphant and prolonged. It was greatly like the far-famed elephant salute—ever one of the mysteries ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... this incident on the authority of a Swiss lady who had seen the cave, and who assured us that the simple mountaineers avoid the spot with superstitious horror. To them there must have appeared to be some strange magic in the hidden treasure; and so to the calmest judgment it would seem, when in the ordinary course of life we behold, not only the fearful and painful sacrifices made for the attainment of gold, but the court paid, the homage ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... pointing out that the church of England retains all the machinery desired for supporting priests and preventing the growth of intellect and morality, he proceeds to ask what the clergy do for their money. They read prayers, which is a palpable absurdity; they preach sermons to spread superstitious notions of the Supreme Being, and perform ceremonies—baptism, and so forth—which are obviously silly. The church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister interest of the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... reappearance of the dead in disembodied form. Spirit may denote a variety of incorporeal beings—among them angels, fairies (devoid of moral nature), and personalities returned from the grave and manifested—seldom visibly—through spiritualistic tappings and the like. "The superstitious natives thought the spirit of their chief walked in the graveyard." "The ghost of the ancestors survives in the descendants." "I can call ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... strong, so rich in enthusiasm, is a humble moral quality that she disdains, and when she has occasion to speak of it, even slanders,—namely resignation. This is not, as she seems to think, the sluggish virtue of base souls, who, in their superstitious servitude to force, hasten to crouch beneath every yoke. That is a false and degrading resignation; genuine resignation grows out of the conception of the universal order, weighed against which individual sufferings, without ceasing to be a ground of merit, cease to constitute ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Poor Netta is superstitious and as easily frightened as a child; she starts and gives an involuntary little cry as the lightning flashes before her eyes, and the thunder seems to shake her as she kneels. She turns paler and paler as the storm continues, and can scarcely hear the concluding ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... own motions, he is able to perceive the least sound from the motion of any other object, and overtakes his prey by coming upon it in silence and darkness. The stillness of his flight is one of the circumstances that add mystery to his character, and which have assisted in rendering him an object of superstitious dread. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... night slipped away and the silence became a burden, a dead weight upon brain and heart, the old haunting dread of those days in Dalhousie came back upon her, and she shivered. The Pagan in her leaned too readily to superstitious fancy, and her dread shaped itself finally in a definite thought. "If he comes to me now, I know I shall conquer the mountains in the end. But if he doesn't come, they will be too strong for me. They will take him from ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... laurels, and bringing peace as the reward of his triumphs. It was remarked that Napoleon's first great disaster followed the first enterprise he undertook after his marriage with Maria Louisa. This tended to confirm the popular belief that the presence of Josephine was favourable to his fortune; and superstitious as he sometimes was, I will not venture to affirm that he himself did not adopt this ides. He now threw off even the semblance of legality in the measures of his government: he assumed arbitrary power, under the impression ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... must rest on a perfect understanding; at the first lifting of the eyes in wonder there is a jar which by and by must make the whole emotion restless. An unconquerable curiosity lay at the very root of their lives. She thought him English and self-sufficient; he thought her foreign and a little superstitious. This ineffable criticism was constant, fretful, and ever nearing the climax of uttered reproach. Sara had inherited all the amazement, but she owned, as well, its comprehension. She adored passionately the mother she had never seen; she loved her father, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... wise as we were at the beginning. It was doubtless some philosophical wild-goose chase of the kind that made the old poet Macrobius rail in such a passion at curiosity, which he anathematises most heartily as "an irksome, agonising care, a superstitious industry about unprofitable things, an itching humor to see what is not to be seen, and to be doing what signifies nothing when it ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... manner. Pan, like other gods who dwelt in forests, was dreaded by those whose occupations caused them to pass through the woods by night, for the gloom and loneliness of such scenes dispose the mind to superstitious fears. Hence sudden fright without any visible cause was ascribed to Pan, and ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... quite as much in love with Gertrude as she is with him, Susan. It is not he whom she distrusts—it is fate. She has a little mystic streak in her—I suppose some people would call her superstitious. She has an odd belief in dreams and we have not been able to laugh it out of her. I must own, too, that some of her dreams—but there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such heresy. What have you found of much ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... joy he counted the window panes, knowing then that sight was surely coming back. He did not tell them how through all that terrible suspense Nina seemed always with him; he would not like to confess how superstitious he had become, fully believing that Nina was his guardian angel, that she hovered near him, and that the touch of her soft, little hands had helped to heal the wound gaping so cruelly when he last bade adieu to his native land. Richard was not a spiritualist. He utterly repudiated their ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... of the various expeditions encouraged by the Royal Geographical Society, and they will see how few deaths have occurred; and of those deaths how small a proportion among young travellers. Savages rarely murder new-comers; they fear their guns, and have a superstitious awe of the white man's power: they require time to discover that he is not very different to themselves, and easily to be made away with. Ordinary fever are seldom fatal to the sound and elastic constitution of youth, which usually has power to resist the adverse ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... can you compare the superstitious fancies of your horrible savages with the manifestations . ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... chimneys fell through the roof during the storm last night. It shook down the plaster upon papa's cabinet. The glass was broken and the rain came in so that this morning it was in a sorry condition. I am repairing damages, you see. If I were superstitious," she continued, "I should fear that something was going to happen. I meet with so many omens lately. I spill salt, cross funerals, and make one of thirteen ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... no. For three reasons. Firstly, because I couldn't take so much upon myself when I have respected family friends to remember. Secondly, because I am not so vain as to think that I look the part. Thirdly, because Anastatia is a little superstitious on the subject and feels averse to my giving away anybody until baby is old enough ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... also mean hanging, but the usual term for the latter in The Nights is "shanak." Crucifixion, abolished by the superstitious Constantine, was practised as a servile punishment as late as the days of Mohammed Ali Pasha the Great e malefactors were nailed and tied to the patibulum or cross-piece without any sup pedaneum or foot-rest and left to suffer tortures from flies and sun, thirst and hunger. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... propitious, and everything avoided that might be supposed to destroy or weaken the force of the charm. From the earliest ages the Oriental races have had a firm belief in the prevalence of occult evil influences, and a superstitious trust in amulets and similar preservatives against them. There are references to, and apparently correctives of, these customs in the Mosaic injunctions to bind portions of the law upon the hand and as frontlets between the eyes, as well as write them upon the door-posts and the gates; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... era. Exaggerated tradition has described inks as well as other things and imagination is not lacking. Some of these legends, in later years put in writing, compel us to depend on translations of obscure and obsolete tongues, while the majority of them are mingled with the errors and superstitious of the time in which ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... superstitious rites employed by Fetish-men for the detection of crime; and whether it is that these people really possess such powerful influence over their wretched dupes, as to frighten into confession of his guilt the perpetrator of crime, or whether it is that they manage by their numerous spies ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... torn the cawl from Nella-Rose's baby face—had felt, in her superstitious heart, that the child was mysteriously destined to see wide and far; and now, with agony that she struggled to conceal, she knew that to her was given the task of drawing the veil from the soul of the girl at her feet in order that she might indeed see far and wide into ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... watched the interview between the dead and living scrupled not to affirm that at the instant when the clergyman's features were disclosed the corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and muslin cap, though the countenance retained the composure of death. A superstitious old woman was the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... inclined to become attached to the locality in which he finds himself placed. There are formed ties of various kinds which tend to hold him to his home. These are the ties of family, friendly associations, customs and habits of the community, politics, religion, business, property, and superstitious reverence for graves. His life is, therefore, closely bound up with his surroundings, and the changing of it for that of another locality is a matter of serious concern. Thus, "there is a marked inertia, a resistance to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... heart of the pioneer. In a day when the "jerks," and falling and rolling on the ground, and dancing still accompanied religious emotion, he still knew how to give to his hearers, whether bond or free, the wholesome bread of life. Frequently he inspired an awe that was almost superstitious and made numerous converts. Sometimes he would make appointments a year beforehand and suddenly appear before a waiting congregation like an apparition. At Montville, Connecticut, a thief had stolen ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... little time making up their minds concerning it, and would sit on the back fence and rub their beaks on the posts, at intervals, as if making a great effort to comprehend the cause of the "manifestations" inside the boiler. No doubt the more superstitious ones attributed it to "spirits." Skepticism increased, however, and by the second day one unbelieving red fellow refused to budge, till the line was jerked twice, and soon after that they wore the girls out, pulling it, and got ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... three men while hunting have been killed by bears in the same vicinity as Ignati's brother, two instantly, and one living but a short time. I think it is from these accidents that the natives in this region have a superstitious dread of a "long-tailed bear" which they declare roams the hills between ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... until he brought them safe to the other side. The fifth day a fragment of a ship drifted by them—"a wreck!" cried the sailors, and grew gloomy over the bad omen. One night a "remarkable bolt of fire" fell into the sea, and the superstitious men were panic-stricken. How could they go on in the face of this message from heaven? But go on they must. This remarkable admiral said calmly: ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... shutters about which the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen door. The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors, the pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the abbot had good warrant for what he said, as Demdike, having paused at a broad green patch on the hill-side, was now busied in tracing a circle round it with his staff. He then spoke aloud some words, which the superstitious beholders construed into an incantation, and after tracing the circle once again, and casting some tufts of dry heather, which he plucked from an adjoining hillock, on three particular spots, he ran quickly downwards, followed by his hound, and leaping a stone wall, surrounding a little orchard ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the survivors aboard as a prisoner. Lieutenant-Commander Bagley, with five others, landed in a small boat on the Scilly Islands while other survivors reached shore in various ways. The Jacob Jones was regarded by superstitious navy men as something of a Jonah, she having figured in one or two incidents involving German spies while ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... Our science is still so brutal and unfair; our professors exhibit so much impertinence with so little knowledge; they deny so impudently facts which embarrass them, in order to protect the opinions which they champion,—that I distrust strong minds equally with superstitious ones. Yes, I am convinced of it; our gross rationalism is the inauguration of a period which, thanks to science, will become truly PRODIGIOUS; the universe, to my eyes, is only a laboratory of magic, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... scrambled down from the altar and ran like a rat past Chonita, his swollen mouth dropping. The others crouched and followed, stumbling one over the other, their dark evil faces bloodless, their knees knocking together with superstitious terror. They fled from the church and down to the bay, and swam to their craft. Estenega and Chonita rode out. They watched the ugly vessel scurry around Point Lobos; then Chonita ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... paused and sank, as if benumbed by the increasing frost. Leaning again to put back the hand-glass she fell over too far and dropped it. The glass fell face downwards and was smashed. Cuckoo laughed aloud, revelling feebly in the additional misery a superstitious mind now began to promise her. The fragments of broken glass actually pleased her, and, on a sudden, she resolved to set her feet in them, that she might be cut and wounded, that she might bleed outwardly as she had been bleeding ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sin of my soul? Balaam answers him, he hath showed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Here is a good man expressly characterised, as distinct from a dishonest and a superstitious man. No words can more strongly exclude dishonesty and falseness of heart than doing justice and loving mercy; and both these, as well as walking humbly with God, are put in opposition to those ceremonial methods of recommendation, which Balak hoped might ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler |
