"Superstitiously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vigorously, exclaiming: "I will soon let her know whether—" She checked herself, and looked round hastily, superstitiously fancying that Agatha might have stolen into the room unobserved. Reassured that she was alone, she examined her conscience as to whether she had done wrong in calling Agatha impertinent, justifying ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... those that papists call heretics, since by the king and parliament, as by the finger of God, the life and soul is taken out of it. I bring this to shew you, that as there is life in wicked antichristian penal laws, as well as in those that are superstitiously religious; so the life of these, of all these, must be destroyed by the same spirit working in those that are Christ's, though in a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have gone superstitiously to the window to gaze in the direction of the vanished ship, but another instinct restrained her. She would put aside all yearning for him until she had done something to help him, and earned the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... in that respect between the men and women. Ever since the revolution in China, which brought that country under the Tartar yoke, the Tartarian dress has been imposed upon the whole kingdom, which was not effected without great bloodshed: For many of the Chinese were so superstitiously attached to their ancient modes, that they unaccountably chose rather to lose their lives than their hair; as the Tartar fashion is to shave the head, except a long lock on the crown, which they plait in the same manner we do. The Dutch, taking advantage of this superstitious attachment ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the form remained, the spirit departed. Then came that pressure almost to bursting, the new wine in the old bottles, the new society under the old institutions. It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done. All history is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to those which are now operating in England. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the circle of his wagons; his desperate courage urged him to invade the Eastern empire: he fell in battle; and his head ignominiously exposed in the Hippodrome, exhibited a grateful spectacle to the people of Constantinople. Attila had fondly or superstitiously believed, that Irnac, the youngest of his sons, was destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The character of that prince, who attempted to moderate the rashness of his brother Dengisich, was more suitable to the declining condition of the Huns; and Irnac, with his subject ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... too, knew, and conveyed her knowledge in round-about ways to her mother, for they would never speak openly of this strangeness in one they dearly loved. But it was through Rosalie that the mother heard that the same thing had gone on at school. There, the other girls had superstitiously but secretly named Rosanne "The Hoodoo Girl," because to have much to do with her always brought you bad luck, especially if you fell out with her. In fact, whenever you crossed her in any way, "something happened," the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... general name given in the Middle Ages to salamanders, undines, sylphs, and gnomes, spirits superstitiously believed to have dominion respectively over, as well as to have had their dwelling in, the four ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... unless Maurice went with him in the boat. His greedy eyes shone with a light of satisfaction when he saw Tito coming along the dusty white road from Isola Bella, and at night, when he crossed himself superstitiously before Maria Addolorata, he murmured a prayer that more strangers might be wafted to his "Paese," many strangers with money in their pockets and folly in their hearts. Then let the sea be empty of fish and the wind of the storm break up his boat—it would not matter. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... which foretold all the future Popes, their names and qualities; and that of the Emperor Leo, which prophesied all the emperors and patriarchs of Greece. This I have been an eyewitness of, that in public confusions, men astonished at their fortune, have abandoned their own reason, superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes and menaces of the present mishaps, and in my time have been so strangely successful in it, as to make me believe that this being an amusement of sharp and volatile wits, those who have been versed in this knack of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wonder Why (Master Secretary) still the Senate So almost superstitiously adores Gonzalo, the Venetian Lord, considering The ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to urge each other, superstitiously, to leave the place. It was determined that the corpse should be removed and buried; and that afterwards some new expedient should be tried to induce the survivor of the mysterious pair to abandon her inflexible silence. It was anticipated that she would have made some ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... in arms on such an occasion, imagining the church-yard to be full of goblins and spectres. White owls also often scream horribly as they fly along; from this screaming probably arose the common people's imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... strewn in fragments upon the ground. These visitations first occurred in the second year of Donogh, and returned again in 783. When, in the next decade, the first Danish descent was made on the coast of Ulster (A.D. 794), these signs and wonders were superstitiously supposed to have been the precursors of that far more terrible and more ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time, or times before, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent Event, any dependance or connexion at all: And therefore from the like things past, they expect the like things to come; and hope for good or evill luck, superstitiously, from things that have no part at all in the causing of it: As the Athenians did for their war at Lepanto, demand another Phormio; the Pompeian faction for their warre in Afrique, another Scipio; and others have done in divers other occasions since. In like manner they attribute ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... which in town among people is unjust and active beyond measure. Looking at the spring, I have a dreadful longing that there should be paradise in the other world. In fact, at moments I am so happy that I superstitiously pull myself up and remind myself of my creditors, who will one day drive me out of the Australia I have so ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... to have forgotten those Immonderraze, the wynds and closes of the old town.) I hope the report may not prove true, though from a letter I have received from my cousin Sally (Siddons) the plague is certainly within six miles of them. She writes very rationally about it, and I can scarce forbear superstitiously believing that God's mercy will especially protect those who are among His most devoted and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... pavements. And what pleasure it all was for Marie, to whom everything seemed new, charming, inappreciable! In the morning she had had to allow Raymonde to lend her a pair of boots, for she had taken good care not to put any in her portmanteau, superstitiously fearing that they might bring her bad luck. However, Raymonde's boots fitted her admirably, and she listened with childish delight to the little heels tapping merrily on the flagstones. And she did not remember having ever seen houses so white, trees ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Angekoks, who, they persuade themselves, have influence over some submarine deities who govern their destiny. The mummeries of these impostors, consisting in pretended consultations with their oracles, are looked upon with confidence, and their mandates, however absurd, superstitiously submitted to. These are constituted of unmeaning ceremonies and prohibitions generally affecting the diet, both in kind and mode, but never in quantity. Seal's flesh is forbidden, for instance, in one disease, that ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... therefore notable instances; with the great body of men, the conception of God has steadily enlarged with the progress of science."[75] If science can demonstrate that Evolution is true, then it is God's truth, and as such it is man's religious duty to accept it; if he rejects it, superstitiously or unreasonably, he not only defrauds himself but ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... believe that such miracles would be wrought, and God honoured the faith. But note how carefully the narrative puts Paul's part in its right place. God 'wrought'; Paul was only the channel. If the eager people, who carried away the garments, had superstitiously fancied that there was virtue in Paul, and had not looked beyond him to God, it is implied that no miracles would have been wrought. But still the cast of these healings is anomalous, and only paralleled by the similar instances in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... coloring, in some degree, from thescenery, circumstances, and experience amidst which they were conceived and born. Sometimes these figments were consciously entertained as wilful inventions, distinctly contemplated as poetry. Sometimes they were superstitiously credited in all their grossness with full assent of soul. Sometimes all coexisted in vague bewilderment. These lines of separation unquestionably existed: the difficulty is to know where, in given instances, to draw them. A few examples will serve at once ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that time and all that happened to him during those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously impressed by one circumstance, which, though in itself not very exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the predestined turning-point of his fate. He could never understand and explain to himself why, when he was tired and worn out, when ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... once felt regarding Jesus, whom he had superstitiously thought to be the reincarnation of his murdered victim, John the Baptist, was replaced by amused interest when he saw the far-famed Prophet of Galilee in bonds before him, attended by a Roman guard, and accompanied by ecclesiastical officials. Herod began to question ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... man who believes that he is a bold reformer and a destructive thinker. For real clotted reactionary sentiment I know nothing to match the table-talk of any aged parliamentary Radical. When we get a Labour Government, it will be patriotic, prejudiced, opposed to all innovation, superstitiously reverential of the past, sticky and, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... the Baptist, wrench a stake from a fence, wind a rope round it, and pull it to and fro till it catches fire. This fire they carefully feed with straw and dry sticks and scatter the ashes over the vegetable gardens, foolishly and superstitiously imagining that in this way the caterpillar can be kept off. They call such a fire nodfeur or nodfyr, that is to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... nation in the world so diseased through and through with the spirit of cant, as we English are now: except perhaps the old Jews, at the time of our Lord's coming. You hear men talking as if they thought God did not understand English, because they cling superstitiously to the letter of the Bible in proportion as they lose its spirit. You hear men taking words into their mouths which might make angels weep and devils tremble, with a coolness and oily, smooth carelessness ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... The people were superstitiously religious; one finds their drama saturated with religious feeling, hedged about with tabu, loaded down with prayer and sacrifice. They were poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... colde, and vse the benefite of fire as well as we, especially in the euening when they goe to bed, for as they lye in hanging beds tied fast in the vpper part of the house, so will they haue fires made on both sides their bed, of which two fires, the one they deuise superstitiously to driue away spirits, and the other to keepe away from them the coldnesse of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... them having objected to the 'observance of days, and months, and years,' Johnson answered, 'The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... countries, and throughout all ages, the hooting of the owl has been superstitiously dreaded as ominous of death, and might have dismayed our duellists, had they been men of the common kind of courage. Neither were, or seemed not to be; for, as the lugubrious notes were still echoing in their ears, they advanced, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... to himself, "a mental, like an optical, illusion. In the last, we fancy we have seen a spectre. If we dare not face the apparition,—dare not attempt to touch it,—run superstitiously away from it,—what happens? We shall believe to our dying day that it was not an illusion, that it was a spectre; and so we may be crazed for life. But if we manfully walk up to the phantom, stretch our hands to seize it, oh! it fades into thin air, the cheat of our eyesight is dispelled, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the House of Rurik to reign, that had kept them patient, even under the rigors of Ivan's rule; and Boris knew well enough that no usurper, however strongly intrenched in their affections he might be, could hope to win those superstitiously loyal people to his support against any prince of the right line, however brutal, unjust, and despotic that prince might be. He knew, in brief, that so long as any descendant of Rurik should live, no other man could hope ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... which appeared now as a fathomless abyss, now as a steep mountain peak, that filled me with mortal dread; my premonition of some terrible crisis was aroused by the despondency of the crew, whose malignant glances seemed superstitiously to point to us as the cause of the threatening disaster. Ignorant of the trifling occasion for the secrecy of our journey, the thought may have occurred to them that our need of escape had arisen from suspicious or even criminal circumstances. The captain himself seemed, in his extreme ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... resolved. It only remains to add that in the handle of the flat iron, and opposite the bar, was a very little room like a three-cornered hat, into which no direct ray of sun, moon, or star, ever penetrated, but which was superstitiously regarded as a sanctuary replete with comfort and retirement by gaslight, and on the door of which was therefore painted its ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... their hair all off in mourning for the dead. This Moses expressly commands the Israelites not to do, and the Jews do superstitiously observe this last and suffer their hair to grow ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Questmen, and their Assistants, shall suffer no plays, feasts, banquets, suppers, church-ales, drinkings, temporal courts, or leets, lay juries, musters, or any other profane usage, to be kept in the Church, Chapel, or Churchyard, neither the bells to be rung superstitiously upon holy days, or eves abrogated by the Book of Common Prayer, nor at any other times without good cause to be allowed by the Minister of ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... thought of shooting her now. She had not only lived down her unpopularity, but, by dint of her natural fearlessness, her cheerful audacity of speech, and quick comprehension, had won back the fickle hearts of the people, who weighed her words again superstitiously, and made much of her. The workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything than the work in hand, would break off to amuse her at any time. One young carpenter—lean, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... grace in them. They are only ladders by which we may ascend to Him. So let us neither presumptuously antedate the time when we shall be able to do without them—the Heaven in 'which there is no Temple'—nor grovellingly and superstitiously elevate them to a place of importance and of power in the Christian life which Christ never meant them to fill. He heals through material means; the true source of healing is His own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... ancients, it is either agriculturally, with the kind of feeling that a good Scotch farmer has; sensually, in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool winds or sweet scents; fearfully, in a mere vulgar dread of rocks and desolate places, as compared with the comfort of cities; or, finally, superstitiously, in the personification or deification of natural powers, generally with much degradation of their impressiveness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses receiving the winds in bags from AEolus, and of the Cyclops ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... to Jeremiah. As God's tester of the people he has been watching their response to the Revelation they had accepted, and has proved that their obedience was to the letter of this and not to its spirit, that while they superstitiously revered its institutions they shamelessly ignored its ethics. For just such vices as they still practised God Himself must take vengeance. As those had deranged the very seasons and were leading to the overthrow of the state,(289) no one could hope that the Temple ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... fulfilment;—the whole forming one glorious Trinity of judgment, mercy, and truth.[33] And if people would but read the text of their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make most personally their own, (the Psalms,) it is always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost; ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... saying that the old miners had nearly all got "squawed." He had spoken almost superstitiously of the queer, lasting effect ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... he can crawl in the grass or brushwood, and steal silently upon him by surprise, or send a shaft from his bow from behind a tree, or a bullet from his rifle from the brow of a bluff, he has an advantage; but, when he comes face to face with the white man, he is superstitiously afraid of him. The power of the white man, in war, is that of bravery and skill; the power of the red man consists much in stratagem and surprise. Fifty white men, armed, on an open plain, would beat off a ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... Dorians—a people who never desired to disturb tradition, unwilling carefully to investigate, precisely because they superstitiously venerated, the past, little inquisitive as to the manners or the chronicles of alien tribes, satisfied, in a word, with themselves, and incurious as to others—were not a race to whom history became a want. Ionia—the subtle, the innovating, the anxious, and the restless—nurse ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hoeing in the field and a voice at his side asked: "Why persecutest thou me?" He looked up and saw——Here he paused dramatically, though Raven concluded it was simply because he found himself at a loss to go on. He had appropriated the story, but he was superstitiously afraid to embroider it. For he (Raven gave him that credit) honestly ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... quibus auxiliis, superstition climbed to this height, tradition increased, and Antichrist himself came to his estate, let Magdeburgenses, Kemnisius, Osiander, Bale, Mornay, Fox, Usher, and many others relate. In the mean time, he that shall but see their profane rites and foolish customs, how superstitiously kept, how strictly observed, their multitude of saints, images, that rabble of Romish deities, for trades, professions, diseases, persons, offices, countries, places; St. George for England; St. Denis for France, Patrick, Ireland; Andrew, Scotland; Jago, Spain; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of all other men, that he obtained from the greatest critic of that day, the tide of the Tragedy Sheet Anchor." All this is strictly true; but there is this difference between that great actor and Mr. Cooper, Mossop never committed a fault from negligence; studiously, I might almost say superstitiously, devoted to the cultivation of his professional talents, he left nothing undone which industry could accomplish, and whenever he went wrong, failed from an almost pedantic desire to do too much—from a stiffness and stateliness of deportment, and an embarrassment ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... over all Israel, was the enthronement in his recently-captured city of the long-forgotten ark. That venerable symbol of the presence of the true King had passed through many vicissitudes since the days when it had been carried round the walls of Jericho. Superstitiously borne into battle, as if it were a mere magic palladium, by men whose hearts were not right with God, the presence which they had invoked became their ruin, and Israel was shattered, and "the ark of God taken," on the fatal field of Aphek. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... is frequent repairing on certain days superstitiously to some wells within this province, as to one called Dumlorn, in Comrie. In the meantime the Synod ordains and entreats all the gentlemen of these bounds where these wells, or any other of that kind are, that they would use all diligence against these abuses ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... 38; this concludes a "revelation" concerning the divorce and marriage to Mohammed of the wife of his adopted son Zayd. Such union, superstitiously held incestuous by all Arabs, was a terrible scandal to the rising Faith, and could be abated only by the "Commandment of Allah." It is hard to believe that a man could act honestly after such fashion; but we have seen in our day a statesman famed for sincerity and uprightness honestly ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... designare ad hoc quod velint, ut quandocunque homo ille voluerit, in lupum transformari possit, quod vulgaris stultitia, werwolf vocat, aut in aliam aliquam figuram?"—Ap. Burchard. (d. 1024). In like manner did S. Boniface preach against those who believed superstitiously in it strigas et fictos lupos." (Serm. apud ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... times, or Readers reading, to desist, under the paine of deprivation. In the ninth head of the first book of Discipline, the reason is set down against Easter Communion. Your honours are not ignorant how superstitiously the people run to that action at Pascheven; as if the time gave vertue to the Sacrament, and how the rest of the whole year, they are carelesse and negligent, as if it appartained not to them, but at that ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... flare gleaming on an eye here, glinting there on beaded jacket or brass trinkets with which both men and women were adorned. The first mad panic had abated, but Death had stalked through the settlement six times in as many days, and they listened superstitiously for the stark Tread through the woods which hemmed them in. Each whispering wind that stirred the leaves overhead brought a deeper silence, each wail from delirious sufferers in nearby huts ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... usage of war transferred to peace. The inhabitants of a city which forcibly defends itself are threatened with such a vow: it is taken by storm or otherwise. Nothing is left alive; men never: and often women, children, and even cattle, share a similar fate. Such sacrifices are rashly and superstitiously and with more or less distinctness promised to the gods; and those whom the votary would willingly spare, even his nearest of kin, his own children, may thus bleed, the expiatory victims ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... little I scorn to mend myself by halves I see no people so soon sick as those who take physic I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as you will I understand my men even by their silence and smiles I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence I was too frightened to be ill "I wish you good health"—"No health to thee" replied the other I would as willingly be lucky as wise I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... broken down?" he mildly inquired. Deep in his heart he was superstitiously thinking that he would let fate determine his next move; if there were obstacles in the way of his further quest, well and good; he would follow ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... to light through the Gospel." Without a revelation from God, men know neither how to live or die. Our ancestors trusted to the powers of magic, to incantations, for health, for success in tilling the ground, for finding lost articles, for preventing accidents, etc. They superstitiously regarded certain days of the week. If an infant was born upon a certain day it would live; if upon another it ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... New York, and have heard of a dozen others. If people understood generally that this rather ornamental insect is both more perilous to life and health, and rather more prone to attack human beings, than the superstitiously dreaded "deadly" copperhead, there would probably be a heavy mortality in the Latrodectus family at the hands ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... had been a dreaming fool, forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of idealism—forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible custom to eat one's candy cane instead of preserving it superstitiously through barren years! ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... upon them too much. Scott, and Clarke, and Henry, and Jenks, and Calmet, and Barnes, and Bush, may help to show me the true way of finding out and interpreting the Scripture for myself; but if I go farther, and either indolently or superstitiously suffer them to interpret it for me, it were almost better that I had not sought their aid. But the Bible, with or without notes, is—I repeat it—the great volume of self-knowledge which I urge you to study, and which, in comparison with all the books written by man, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... hundred years is but the opening phase. There are many processes, many aspects of things, that are now, as it were, in the domain of natural laws and outside human control, or controlled unintelligently and superstitiously, that in the future, in the days of the coming New Republic, will be definitely taken in hand as part of the general work of humanity, as indeed already, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the control of pestilences has been taken in hand. And ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells |
