Quotes about curse
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“Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King

People, World, Sadness, Sincerity

“May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue,
that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives
but bad receipts for payment in the lower world.
Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go,
all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Book IX, line 402
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Life, World, Travel, Game

“Judy: [yelling at defendant, who is being sued for bleaching plaintiff's clothes and has just cursed at plaintiff in court] LISTEN TO ME!!! Where do you think you are? You think you're on Springer? [audience laughs] You're NOT! You're NOT! You wanna go to a therapist, go someplace else---
Defendant: No, I don't need a therapist.
Judy: Listen to me!
Defendant: I don't need to see a therapist… [continues trying to talk over Judy]
Judy: Only one person is going to have--only one… judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of $5000! Your counterclaim is dismissed!
Defendant: Excuse me? No! What about my computer? But what about my computer? But what about my computer?
Judy: [getting up to walk off the set] That's all. Your counterclaim is dismissed.
Defendant: …and you just gonna walk away like that? That don't even make no sense! What about my computer, I don't get no chance to say nothin'…
Judy: [over defendant's continued protests] I told you - I told you: it's my playpen, I have the word. Goodbye, go someplace else!”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cYWq1bm_Q
Dialogue

Thinking, Sense, Chance, Personality

“For years they have known they are in the presence of something stronger than they—a mystery that renders them powerless. Already constellated is a "god consciousness"—awesome and holy—that has nothing to do with the church or with groups. They know they have to engage in a different arena of reality. That arena is the psyche. By virtue of their temperament, training, consciousness, these women are blessed (or cursed) with an introspective nature, an exploring mind, an invincible curiosity about themselves which connects them to their own inner microscope. For better or for worse, they are convinced that the solution to their lives is in submission not to an externally imposed authority which they cannot understand, but to a truth that abides in themselves.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 99

Women, God, Truth, Understanding

“What dares not impious man for cursed Gold!”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

Winston S. Churchill book The River War

The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248–250 This passage does not appear in the 1902 one-volume abridgment, the version posted by Project Gutenberg. Downloadable etext version(s) of this book can be found online http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4943 at Project Gutenberg Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, Men, World, Fear

“I have always heard in the music what I am finding out from the books: the man was a tyrant who beat his musicians with insults and temper tantrums. He never smiled when conducting (not even in rehearsals!) never thanked or complimented his men, never made them feel they were valuable partners or had even done a creditable job. He would fail to give them cues, then blame them with curses and insults for needing them! Besides being a compulsive perfectionist, he was childish, petulant, inconsiderate, monomaniacal, and monstrously self-centered. His technique was fear, and I always heard that fear in his music…Reading about him - especially books by people who worked with him - strongly confirmed what I had felt in my bones”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

On the subject of Toscanini - from Vroon's foreword to The mystery of Leopold Stokowski, By William Ander Smith, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1990, ISBN 0838633625

Men, People, Books, Fear

“Finnish society could not serve as a blueprint for the United States. National differences matter. Ours is a society driven by money, blessed by huge private philanthropy, cursed by endemic corruption and saddled with deep mistrust of government and other public institutions. Finns have none of those attributes. Nor do they tune in to American individualism. Groupthink seems to be fine with most Finns; con-formity is the norm, risk-taking is avoided — a problem now, when entrepreneurs are so needed. I was bothered by a sense of entitlement among many Finns, especially younger people.”

Robert G. Kaiser (1943) American journalist

2000s, "Why can't we be more like Finland?" (2005)

Money, People, Problem, Sense

“Curse away!
And let me tell thee, Beauseant, a wise proverb
The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens,
And still come home to roost."”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton The Lady of Lyons

The Lady of Lyons (1838), Act v, Scene ii.

Home

“Of passions under complete control, this hero [Pandu], O Madri, had all along been watched by me with care. How did he then forgetting the Rishi's curse, approach thee with enkindled desire? O Madri, this foremost of men should have been protected by thee. Why didst thou tempt him into solitude? Always melancholy at the thought of the Rishi's curse, how came he to be merry with thee in solitude? O princess of Valhika, more fortunate than myself, thou art really to be envied, for thou hast seen the face of our lord suffused with gladness and joy.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in grief on seeing her husband dead during an intercourse with Madri
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXV

Men, Art, Solitude, Passion

“I honestly believe that drink is the greatest curse of the day, except, of course, civil service, and that it has driven more young men to ruin than anything except civil service examinations. p. 78”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 19, The Successful Politician Does Not Drink

Men, Drink

“Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
O! ancient crimson curse
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.”

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) English poet

On Receiving News of the War (1914)

Men, God, Children, Kiss

“The Tippoo himself led the defenders north of the breach. The Tippoo had cursed Gudin for blowing the mines too early and thus wasting its terrible destructive power, but now he tried to revive the defense by his personal example. He stood in the front rank of his soldiers while behind him a succession of aides loaded jewel-encrusted hunting rifles. One by one the rifles were given to the Tippoo who aimed and fired, aimed and fired, and redcoat after redcoat was struck down.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 351
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Success, Personality

“Be in line and then see what’s going on!’ a fat lady shouted at me. ‘Hell yeah! you greasy piece of flesh.’ I cursed her in my mind. But ‘Yes I am going back in line!’ I shouted at her.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

Hell

“All I saw was the dame standing there in the glare of the headlights waving her arms like a huge puppet and the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash of power and almost ran up the side of a cliff as the car fishtailed. The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to the pavement and held.
Somehow I had managed a sweeping curve around the babe. For a few seconds she had been living on stolen time because instead of getting out of the way she had tried to stay in the beam of the headlights. I sat there and let myself shake. The butt that had fallen out of my mouth had burned a hole in the leg of my pants and I flipped it out the window. The stink of burned rubber and brake lining hung in the air like smoke and I was thinking of every damn thing I ever wanted to say to a hairbrained woman so I could have it ready when I got my hands on her.
That was as far as I got. She was there in the car beside me, the door slammed shut and she said, "Thanks, mister."”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Kiss Me Deadly (1952)

Cars, Way, Thinking, Time

“What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God, in time if New Orleans recovers and becomes the pristine city it can become it may in time be called a blessing. But at this time it's called a curse.”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

God, Time

“He falsely asserted that Jews hated Christians so much that they never met them without ejaculating curses on their heads, thus pretending that the bigotry and intolerance of the Jews was equal to those qualities inherent in the breasts of Dominican friars.”

Elias Hiam Lindo

Of Dominican friar Nicholas de Valencia
The Jews of Spain and Portugal (1848) pp57-8

Hate, Falseness

“I was a little confused as a kid because I grew up with my mom, and my mom is black. So, I was cultured in a very 'black' way. But when I go to school, I'm getting called 'white.' They would look at me, and they would curse me out. I didn't understand. I just knew I saw people of all different shades, and I was light. Now, I'm in a much bigger world.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

Allure magazine, January 2008.

People, World, School, Way

“Of a woman are we conceived,
Of a woman are we born,
To a woman are we betrothed and married,
It is a woman who keeps the race going,
Another companion is sought when the life-partner dies,
Through a woman are established social ties.
Why should we consider woman cursed and condemned,
When from woman are born leaders and rulers.
From woman alone is born a woman,
Without woman there can be no human birth.
Without woman, O Nanak, only the True One exists.
Be it man or be it woman,
Only those who sing His glory
Are blessed and radiant with His Beauty,
In His Presence and with His grace
They appear with a radiant face.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Raag Aasaa Mehal 1, p. 473; in Aad Guru Granth Sahib (1983 edition by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee); also in Guru Nanak and His Times (1971) by Anil Chandra Banerjee, p. 78

Life, Beauty, Birth, Appearance

“Dweller in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation, mark!
Who in widow weeds appears,
Laden with unhonoured years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse?”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Ode on Mrs. Oswald.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“The soldiers stumbled forward doggedly, cursing the bite of the wind while reminding one another that generals are seldom of sound mind and unbesmirched ancestry. They would not be generals if they were.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 19 (p. 334)

“…whereas the vices of Messalina were in themselves venial, being mostly a passion for sensual gratification which subordinated all things to its encompassing, Agrippina lived solely for power, frightening enough in a man but terrifying in a woman…. she would sleep with anyone, though not for physical pleasure, only for political advantage. She was cursed or blessed with a certain sexual coldness, knowing as much as a temple prostitute about the arousing of male passion and the procurement of its ecstatic release but keeping herself aloof, despite an occasional simulation of desire and the odd false orgiastic shudder and scream of fulfilment, from a process she found distressingly bestial when it was not frankly comic.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

Pleasure, Sleep, Passion, Falseness

““I don’t pretend to be anything but a soldier,” growled Galt.
“And it’s precisely that that makes you dangerous in negotiations,” replied William. “Politicians and businessmen always feel more at home with someone who they know doesn’t mean what he says. Honest men always have been a curse laid upon the sharpshooter.”
“A pity,” put in Anea, “that there aren’t enough honest men, then, to curse them all.””

Gordon R. Dickson book Dorsai!

“Protector II” (section 19, p. 488)
Dorsai! (1960)

Men, Feeling, Home

“Now, we are poor people, individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.
We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda — fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

God, Children, People, World

“You know I can't abide curse-words, but this time I'm going to use one because I am damn tired of hearing what Lee's going to do to us! Start thinking about what we're doing to do to him. Some of you think he's about to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both flanks at the same time.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

North and South, Book II https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=vopVVBiC80g#General_Grant_s_Strategies (1986). In fiction, North and South, Book II http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090490/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast (1986)

Thinking, Time

““Myth, Symbol, and Tradition” was the phrase I originally wrote at the top of the page, for editors like large, cloudy titles. Then I looked at what I had written and, wordlessly, the words reproached me. I hope I had the grace to blush at my own presumption and their portentousness. How could I, if I lived for a thousand years, attempt to cover more than a hectare of that enormous landscape?
So, I let out the air, in a manner of speaking, dwindled to my appropriate size, and gave myself over to that process which, for lack of a more erudite term, I have coined the phrase “Thinking is linking.” I thought of Kerenyi — “Mythology occupies a higher position in the bios, the Existence, of a people in which it is still alive than poetry, storytelling or any other art.” And of Malinowski — “Myth is not merely a story told, but a reality lived.” And, along with those, the word “Pollen,” the most pervasive substance in the world, kept knocking at my ear. Or rather, not knocking, but humming. What hums? What buzzes? What travels the world? Suddenly I found what I sought. “What the bee knows,” I told myself. “That is what I’m after.”
But even as I patted my back, I found myself cursing, and not for the first time, the artful trickiness of words, their capriciousness, their lack of conscience. Betray them and they will betray you. Be true to them and, without compunction, they will also betray you, foxily turning all the tables, thumbing syntactical noses. For — note bene! — if you speak or write about What The Bee Knows, what the listener, or the reader, will get — indeed, cannot help but get — is Myth, Symbol, and Tradition! You see the paradox? The words, by their very perfidy — which is also their honorable intention — have brought us to where we need to be. For, to stand in the presence of paradox, to be spiked on the horns of dilemma, between what is small and what is great, microcosm and macrocosm, or, if you like, the two ends of the stick, is the only posture we can assume in front of this ancient knowledge — one could even say everlasting knowledge.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

"What the Bee Knows" in Parabola : The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February 1981); later published in What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)

People, World, Hope, Art

“Her (India’s) great curse is caste; but English education has already proved a tremendous power in levelling the injurious distinctions of caste.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech at Hannover Square Rooms on the occasion of a Soiree held to welcome him on 12th April 1870.

Education

“I don't think there is any harm in it, but I tell you, there are demons and there are evil people in the world, and you post a picture like that and some cultist gets hold of it or a coven and they begin muttering curses against an unborn child. […] You never know what somebody's going to do.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

2015-02-16
Pat Robertson
The 700 Club
Television, quoted in * 2015-02-17
Pat Robertson: Satanic Covens Use Facebook To Curse Your Family
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-robertson-satanic-covens-use-facebook-curse-your-family
Answering a viewer question from Cynthia: "Young parents now regularly post fetal ultrasound photos as their Facebook photo. From a spiritual point of view is there any harm in doing this?"

People, World, Thinking, Evil

“Who saves his country, saves himself, saves all things, and all things saved do bless him! Who lets his country die, lets all things die, dies himself ignobly, and all things dying curse him!”

Benjamin Harvey Hill (1823–1882) American politician

Reported in Benjamin H. Hill, Jr., Senator Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia; His Life, Speeches and Writings (1893), epigraph, p. 594. From "Notes on the Situation", a series of articles appearing in the Chronicle and Sentinel, Atlanta, Georgia.

Country

“But most, thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.”

William Blake London

London, st. 4
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Marriage, Youth, Tear

“Roger: On a single tour.. Hmm.. Probably more than five. Cause when we first started, we had a really old van. It was a '79 Chevy. It was like the kind of thing where we'd pull over and get gas and it'd need two quarts of oil every time. That kind of thing. It'd break down pretty frequently. We have bad luck with vans. It's some sort of curse. But, then we got another one after that and that one was good to us for many years.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Bad luck, Time

“For crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of all organised human life.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 1

Life, Falseness

“Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the mere spirit of scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 71

Age

“Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.”

Samuel Beckett From an Abandoned Work

From an Abandoned Work (1957)

Hell

“Bush has said something new. He said, "If I will be president again, I will be a man of peace and serenity." May the Lord curse the liars, wherever they may be.”

Ali Meshkini (1922–2007) Iranian ayatollah

Friday Sermon in Qom, Iran: US Wants To Bring the Ba'th Party Back Into Power http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/170.htm July 2004. 2004

Peace

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Life, Women, God

“"The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!"
"I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair."”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 379

God

“Our daily life is no longer cursed by fear of those pestilences, plagues, black deaths, which used to devastate Europe. The layman has abolished those plagues by using the medical expert's knowledge. The medical expert has said in effect, "There are not many things that we are agreed upon, but at least we are agreed upon this: that though we cannot cure bubonic plague or cholera, we can prevent them, for we know that they are caused by microorganisms transmitted through water and vermin. Keep sewage from your drinking water and vermin from your homes, and you will prevent these plagues." The layman has seen the point, applied appropriate measures, and these dreadful pestilences have disappeared.
Now, if our publics these last twenty years could have grasped certain social truths, not inherently more difficult to understand than the microbic theory of disease, a large part at least of the economic and political pestilences which have come upon us in our generation would not have arisen.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Life, Death, Truth, Fear

“What if God provided everything for everybody all the time and you never had to work a moment in your life. All we would do is sit around and think up ways to get into trouble. That's one of the problems of welfare. The Bible says God's welfare program is real simple. If you don't work, you don't eat. That was my welfare program with my kids when they were growing up; if you don't work, you don't eat. It doesn't take long for them to get their chores done. In the morning you give them a list to do. You know, you make your bed, do your homework, clean your room, etc. You sit down for supper, you all pray together, "Lord, bless the bunch as they crunch their lunch. Amen." And you go, "Stop, before anybody eats, let's see. I noticed son that your bedroom is not clean, and daughter, your homework is not done, so you guys go finish that and come back and eat when you are done." You only have to do that once to get their attention. If you don't work, you don't eat. That's God's welfare program. But in America today, we have a serious problem because we pay people to not work. And God said, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake." Work is one of the best things for you. It's a wonderful therapy.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Life, God, People, Way

“Not that I don't think irreverent humor and someone being filthy is funny, I just do what I do. Any comedian would admit throwing an f-bomb in there would help get a reaction. … I'm not on a Puritanical pursuit, but when I would curse in a joke, I believe I'm not done writing it.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Tim Brouk (September 6, 2007) "Jim Gaffigan returns to his old stomping grounds, Purdue", Journal and Courier, pp. 1, 2D.

Thinking, Help

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 2
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo

War

“Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare?
A Blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a Curse — why, then, Who set it there?”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

God

“Yes. I like to see people get angry. I like it very much. But here in England they do not get angry like they do in Spain. In Spain they take out their knives and they curse and shout. In England they do nothing, just get very red in the face and shut up their mouths tight.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Murder for Christmas (1939, Holiday for Murder, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas)

People

“I am glad that you admit that a bad God is worse than no God. If so, the atheist is far better than the believer in Jehovah, and far better than the believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ—because I am perfectly satisfied that none but a bad God would threaten to say to any human soul, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” So that, before any Christian can be better than an atheist, he must reform his God.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Answer to Lyman Abbott (unfinished), responding to Abbott, Lyman. "Flaws in Ingersollism." The North American Review 150, no. 401 (1890): 446-457.

God, Angels, Soul, Christ

“My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon … I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands … I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket … I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry.”

George Grosz (1893–1959) German artist

as cited by Otto Friedrich in Before the Deluge, Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1987, p. 37 - ISBN 0-88064-054-5

Love, Men, Hate, War

“The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind.”

Edwin Muir (1887–1959) British poet, novelist and translator

Scott and Scotland (1936), Introduction.

Literature

“In the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man when reduced either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. …
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Pain, Happiness, Health, Pleasure

“In the society of Jesus’s time, physical illness was typically construed as a curse, and in many cases sickness or deformity prevented one from participating fully in the life of the community, especially in common worship. Curing the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the leprous, Jesus was Yahweh binding up the wounds of his people and restoring them to communion.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Father Barron, Robert. Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (Kindle Locations 246-249). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Life, People, Communication, Time

“A Wolf eats sheep but now and then;
Ten thousands are devour'd by men.
An open foe may prove a curse,
but a pretend friend is worse.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable XVII, "The Shepherd's Dog and the Wolf"
Fables (1727)

Men, Wolf

“If we are correct in placing the beginning of the Time of the End at 1799, we should expect that there the falling into the error of church and state union would measurably cease, though it might require long years for the full recovery out of that snare of the devil. Looking back, we find that facts exactly correspond with this. Since that date there have been separations between empires and churches, but no new unions. Really, this date marks a new reformation on a more substantial basis. The influence of the Papacy over the kingdoms of Europe had previously been so great that its curses were dreaded by the nations as a withering blight, and its blessings desired for national prosperity. When Protestants separated from Papacy, they were received by the world as being merely a less corrupt substitute for the Papacy; and their favor, advice or sanction was often very similarly sought. But when Napoleon boldly ignored both the blessings and the curses of Papacy, and yet prospered phenomenally, his course not only greatly weakened the Papal influence of the various Protestant systems, in matters civil and political - which influence has grown very strong in two and a half centuries.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 49.

World, Error, Strong, Time

“For their abuse of [the Black African] race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, Vol.10, 1863, p. 110
1860s

“When the streets are paved with brilliants and the skies made of rainbows I suppose you'll be contented and satisfied with red, blue and yellow.... how to satisfy your tawdry friends while you steal back into the mild evening gleam and quiet middle term[? ]. I'll tell you, my sprightly genius, how this is to be done. Maintain all your lights, but spare the poor abused colours till the eye rests and recovers. Keep up your music by supplying the place of noise by more sound, more harmony and more tune, and split that cursed fife and drum.... he [Mr. Garrick] must feel the truth of what I am now saying, that neither our plays, paintings or music are any longer real works of invention, but the abuse of Nature's lights and what has been already invented in former times.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in a letter of Gainbourough, 1772; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 88 1770 - 1788

Truth, Music, Feeling, Nature

“If those who despise us stone us as prophets, they must listen to us as prophets. If they curse us as sorcerers, they must learn to curse from us, as sorcerers.
Let us enlighten the young, and let us be condemned for corrupting the young, like Socrates. Let us awaken the old before they sleep forever, though they must read us in secret like the Kabbalah. […] The difficulties and successes of our books and magazines, and the rejection and misinterpretation of the films made from our ideas—are the flounderings of the human mind upon the Paleozoic shore. We are the sand in its gills; let's not lose our grit.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Guest of Honor speech at Aussiecon Two (August 1985), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Secret, Books, Idea, Sleep

“I recommend that the pilgrims [to Mecca and Al-Medina] pray there, that they be persistent in their prayer. Prayer is a very good way of worshiping God. They should not forget to pray. But for every prayer there should also be a curse. Your prayers should also include curses. Pray for the good and curse the evil. Say: "My Lord, end the lives of three people shortly – Bush, Sharon, and Blair. End their lives and the lives of their followers. Ask the Lord.”

Ali Meshkini (1922–2007) Iranian ayatollah

Ayatollah Meshkini in a Friday Sermon at Qom: Pray that God Ends the Lives of Bush, Blair and Sharon Soon. Iranian Leaders Must Promote Nuclear Activities http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/400.htm December 2004. 2004

God, People, Way, Evil

“Originally I was content to just simply accept the money, that was offered when people had adapted my comic books into films. Eventually I decided to refuse to accept any of the money for the films, and to ask if my name could be taken off of them, so that I no longer had to endure the embarrasment of seeing my work travested in this manner. The first film that they made of my work was "From Hell" Which was an adaptation of my "Jack the Ripper" narrative … In which they replaced my gruff Dorset police constable with Johnny Depp's Absinthe-swigging dandy. The next film to be made from one of my books was the regrettable "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"… Where the only resemblence it had to my book was a similar title. The most recent film that they have made of mine is apparently this new "V for Vendetta" movie which was probably the final straw between me and Hollywood. They were written to be impossible to reproduce in terms of cinema, and so why not leave them simply as a comic in the way that they were intended to be. And if you are going to make them into films, please try to make them into better ones, than the ones I have been cursed with thus far.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

From the BBC2 show The Culture Show (9 March 2006) (separate quotes shown; edited together for the segment of the show)

Money, People, Books, Way

“The abolition of enslavement to interest signifies the restoration of the free personality, the redemption of man from slavery, from the curse whereby Mammonism has bound his soul.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" (1919)

Soul, Personality

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in Voyage of Purpose : Spiritual Wisdom from Near-Death Back to Life (2011) by David Bennett and Cindy Griffith-Bennett, p. 6; also at the official site of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation http://www.ekrfoundation.org/quotes/

Courage

“When rent in twain, British Abolition, which in fanaticism and sacrificial spirit, far exceeds that of the North (for it has been willing to pay for its fanaticism, a thing the North never will do), will have none of the impediments in its path, now to be found. England will no longer fear the power of the mighty nation which twice has humbled her, and whose giant arm would, so long as we are united, be stretched forth to protect the weakest State, or the most obscure citizen. The State that secedes, when pressed by insidious arts of abolition emissaries, supported by foreign powers, when cursed by internal disorders and insurrections, can lay no claim to that national flag, which when now unfurled, ensures the respect of all nations and strikes terror to the hearts of those who would invade our rights.”

Sam Houston (1793–1863) nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier, namesake of Houston, Texas

1860s, Speech in Austin (1860)

Fear, Art, Support, Heart

“Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.”

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) American poet

Children of the Night (1910).

People, School, Home, Light

“The one enemy in the world that America has is England. But then, England is the great land of Christian civilization, and it may not be a thing to be much wondered at that our Americans whom we send to represent us in London become in a short time somewhat civilized, and learn to love those who hate them, bless those that curse them, and do good to those that persecute and calumniate them.”

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (1831–1915) Irish Republican Brotherhood member

"Rossa's Recollections 1838 to 1898: Memoirs of an Irish Revolutionary", p. 232

Love, Hate, World, Learning

“The first cut is the deepest, Baby I know —
The first cut is the deepest
'Cause when it comes to being lucky, she's cursed
When it comes to lovin' me, she's worst
But when it comes to being loved, she's first
That's how I know
The first cut is the deepest.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

The First Cut Is the Deepest, from New Masters (1967)
Song lyrics

Love, Baby

“It is costing much money here, a thing I regret. But you will get your money's worth. My legs curse you. But my heart says 'Thank you.”

Maynard Owen Williams (1888–1963) American journalist

from a letter to John Oliver la Gorce, the Geographic's assistant editor (1923)

Money, Heart

“[I]f one day I look out from my cabin's porch and see a row of windmills spinning in the distance, I won't curse them. I will praise them. It will mean we are finally getting somewhere.”

David Suzuki (1936) Canadian popular scientist and environmental activist

ibid.

“If this uncertain age in which we dwell
Were really as dark as I hear sages tell,
And I convinced that they were really sages,
I should not curse myself with it to hell”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1940s, The Lesson for Today (1942)

Age, Hell

“God wants not man to humble himself:
That is the trick of the Ancient Elf.
This is the race that Jesus ran:
Humble to God, haughty to man,
Cursing the Rulers before the people
Even to the Temple’s highest steeple,
And when He humbled Himself to God
Then descended the cruel rod.
‘If Thou Humblest Thyself, Thou humblest Me.
Thou also dwell’st in Eternity.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

1810s, The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1818)

God, People

“When the blessed canopy had been fixed about a mile from the gate of Arangal, the tents around the fort were pitched together so closely that the head of a needle could not go between them' Orders were issued that every man should erect behind his own tent a kathgar, that is wooden defence. The trees were cut with axes and felled, notwithstanding their groans; and the Hindus, who worship trees, could not at that time come to the rescue of their idols, so that every cursed tree which was in that capital of idolatry was cut down to the roots'….
'During the attack, the catapults were busily plied on both sides' 'Praise be to God for his exaltation of the religion of Muhammad. It is not to be doubted that stones are worshipped by Gabrs,74 but as the stones did no service to them, they only bore to heaven the futility of that worship, and at the same time prostrated their devotees upon earth”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 81-83
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

God, Religion, Tree, Time

“With the dried blood stiff on my temples I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic way of men, yet knowing myself vile, for they had not known what they were doing, but I betrayed an innocent; and the tears— weak, whiskey tears— would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother.”

Henry Williamson (1895–1977) British ruralist and natural history writer

The Village Book (1930) – after a killing of a badger by villagers.

Men, Way, Tear

“"One of the worst major wrong actions is for a man to curse his parents." It was said, "O Messenger of Allah, how can a man curse his parents?" He said, "He may curse another man's father who in turn curses his father, and curse his mother and he in turn curses his mother."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 338
Sunni Hadith

Parent

“A thousand newspapers vulgarise knowledge, debase aesthetical appreciation, democratise success and make impossible all that was once unusual and noble. The man of letters has become a panderer to the intellectual appetites of a mob or stands aloof in the narrowness of a coterie. There is plenty of brilliance everywhere, but one searches in vain for a firm foundation, the power or the solidity of knowledge. The select seek paradox in order to distinguish themselves from the herd; a perpetual reiteration of some startling novelty can alone please the crowd…. Of all literary forms the novel only has still some genius and even that is perishing of the modern curse of overproduction.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

March 26, 1910
India's Rebirth

Search, Knowledge, Success

“that the Messenger of Allah (saw) said: "The curse of Allah is upon the one who offers a bribe and the one who takes it."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Ibn Maja, 2313 http://ahadith.co.uk/permalink-hadith-9685 Sunni Hadith

“Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life, Happiness, People, Fear

“My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Home

“And through that Golgotha of blood and clay,
Where watchers cursed the sick dawn, heavy-eyed,
There (in my dream) Christ passed upon His way,
Where His cross marks their nameless graves who died
Slain for the world's salvation where all day
For others' sake strong men are crucified.”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, Advent 1916

Men, World, Dreams, Way

“While utterly discarding all creeds, and denying the truth of all religions, there is neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for the hopeful, loving and tender souls who believe that from all this discord will result a perfect harmony; that every evil will in some mysterious way become a good, and that above and over all there is a being who, in some way, will reclaim and glorify every one of the children of men; but for those who heartlessly try to prove that salvation is almost impossible; that damnation is almost certain; that the highway of the universe leads to hell; who fill life with fear and death with horror; who curse the cradle and mock the tomb, it is impossible to entertain other than feelings of pity, contempt and scorn.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Gods" (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879).

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Hatred is an essential part of war. During the conflict it is regarded as treason to "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you." In war, the enemy are regarded as targets, not as sons of God.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"What is War?" (1924)

Love, God, Hate, War

“A large proportion of allegedly feeble-minded children are actually attempted abortion cases... However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God... All these things are scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Dianetics : The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950)

God, Children, Sex

“Well, Fitz, I looked all through that bible, it was in very fine print and stumbling on that great book Ecclesiastics, read it aloud to all who would listen. Soon I was alone and began cursing the bloody bible because there were no titles in it — although I found the source of practically every good title you ever heard of. But the boys, principally Kipling, had been there before me and swiped all the good ones so I called the book Men Without Women hoping it would have a large sale among the fairies and old Vassar Girls.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (15 September 1927); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Women, Men, Books, Hope

“Don't you know I have achieved a great victory recently in Malabar and over four lakh Hindus were converted to Islam? I am determined to march against that cursed Raman Nair (Rajah of Travancore) very soon. Since I am overjoyed at the prospect of converting him and his subjects to Islam, I have happily abandoned the idea of going back to Srirangapatanam now.”

Tipu Sultan (1750–1799) Ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore

Tipu Sultan. In Tipu’s letter of 19 January 1790 to the Governor of Bekal, Budruz Zuman Khan (Badroos Saman Khan). quoted in K.M. Panicker, Bhasha Poshini, August 1923
From Tipu Sultan's letters

Idea, Victory

“I remember reading about a story about a guy – and this was in England, and no more than a couple of years ago. He’d gone to see a psychic, and was told there was a curse on his family, and in order to release the curse, he had to bring with him the following week £5,000 and burn it… if he didn’t do that, either he or his son would die. The scam is quite a common one – the money is put in an envelope, and apparently burnt, but of course the ‘psychic’ secretly switches the envelope and burns an envelope full of newspaper. What happened was the guy went away, and he knew he couldn’t raise £5000, but didn’t want his son to die; so he killed himself.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV recordings of stage shows, Something Wicked This Way Comes (2006), Something Wicked This Way Comes tour brochure

Money, Family, Guy, Reading

“Men would bless you or curse you;
The curse, a protest against failure,
The blessing, a hymn of the hunter
Who comes back from the hills
With provision for his mate.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

Men, Failure

“Miles cursed himself silently, then out loud. He really had to try to cultivate a more normal attitude toward senior officers…. When a normal ensign looked at his commander, he ought to see a god-like being, not a, a… future subordinate.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)

God, Future

“Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.”

Gene Wolfe book The Death of Dr. Island

"The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3 (1973), ed. Terry Carr, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980). Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Wolfe Archipelago (1983), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Men, God, Communication

“He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 14, “Denouement: Ascent to the Acropolis” (p. 265)

Forgiveness

“Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime.
I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Letter to Edward Garnett, expressing anger that his manuscript for Sons and Lovers was rejected by Heinemann (3 July 1912)

God, Hate, Swine, Help

“For the Able Man, meet him where you may, is definable as the born enemy of Falsity and Anarchy, and the born soldier of Truth and Order: into what absurdest element soever you put him, he is there to make it a little less absurd, to fight continually with it till it become a little sane and human again. Peace on other terms he, for his part, cannot make with it; not he, while he continues able, or possessed of real intellect and not imaginary. There is but one man fraught with blessings for this world, fated to diminish and successively abolish the curses of the world; and it is he. For him make search, him reverence and follow; know that to find him or miss him, means victory or defeat for you, in all Downing Streets, and establishments and enterprises here below.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Fate, Truth, World, Peace

“Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "May Allah curse the Jews, because Allah made fat illegal for them but they sold it and ate its price."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

[3, 34, 427]
Sunni Hadith

“Unto the third and fourth generation, General Motors, you have visited your greed on the children. Unto the twentieth, AEC, you have twisted their limbs and closed their eyes. Unto the last dawn of man you have cursed us, O Father. Our Father. Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt.
Amen.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Children, Art

“Here is tragedy—and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"More Tips for Novelists" in the Chicago Tribune (2 May 1926)
1920s

Men, Democracy, Sense, Country

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939), Lines 66–77

Singing, Heart, Night

“Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act I, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Country

“Thus the Koran, in this matter of slavery, is the enemy of mankind … While the prescriptions by the Prophet regarding the just and humane treatment of slaves contained in the Koran are praiseworthy, there is nothing whatever in Islam that lends support to the abolition of this curse.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 228

Support

“In this supremacy of tragedy, we find it only in our hearts, to wish that God's curse may overwhelm the treacherous…”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Speaking in elegy regarding the recent death of Michael Collins. From " Poblacht na-Eireann (War News ) No. 47 " Thursday 24 August 1922.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

God, Heart

“Curse on his virtues! they've undone his country.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act IV, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Country

“Another characteristic of the idler's work is that it looks suspiciously like play. This, again, makes the non-idler feel uncomfortable. Victims of the Protestant work ethic would like all work to be unpleasant. They feel that work is a curse, that we must suffer on this earth to earn our place in the next. The idler, on the other hand, sees no reason not to use his brain to organise a life for himself where his play is his work, and so attempt to create his own little paradise in the here and now.”

Tom Hodgkinson (1968) British writer

“Idleness and Industry,” The Idler.

Life, Feeling, Suffering

“We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art…what we are talking about — and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth — I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to Hugh Walpole (21 August 1913).

Love, Youth, Age, Beauty

“The desire not to destroy the palace but to move into it oneself has always been the occupational curse of revolutionaries.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Writers' Politics" (1971), p. 66
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“I do a lot of speaking engagements and sometimes I feel like I’m being paid to curse in front of people who haven’t heard it in a while.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

from a 2008 interview http://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/dining/anthony-bourdain-restaurants.html

People, Feeling

“Paul Ryan combines a profound sense of responsibility for what we owe the next generation with an unbounded optimism in America's future and an understanding of all the wonderful things the American people can do. Paul also combines firm principles with a practical concern for getting things done. He has never been content to simply curse the darkness; he would rather light candles. And throughout his legislative career he's shown the ability to work with members of both parties to find common ground on some of the hardest issues confronting the American people.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-11
http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/08/11/video-and-transcript-romney-making-his-vp-announcement/
Video and Transcript: Romney Making His VP Announcement
Mitt Romney Central
2012

People, Optimism, Understanding, Sense

“If large classes of the population live under conditions which make it difficult if not impossible for them to keep a home together in decent comfort, if the children are habitually underfed, if the housewife is habitually overstrained, if the bread-winner is under-employed or under-paid, if all are unprotected and uninsured against the common hazards of modern industrial life, if sickness, accident, infirmity, or old age, or unchecked intemperance, or any other curse or affliction, break up the home, as they break up thousands of homes, and scatter the family, as they scatter thousands of families in our land, it is not merely the waste of earning-power or the dispersal of a few poor sticks of furniture, it is the stamina, the virtue, safety, and honour of the British race that are being squandered.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 147
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, Children, Age, Family

“Vehicular traffic is completely forbidden in the green strips, where tranquility shall reign and the curse of noise shall not penetrate.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

"The Edict of Chandigarh," 1959

Quotes about curse page 5

Quotes about curse
page 5