Curse Quotes - Page 12

• Once the concentration camps and the hell-holes of the world were in darkness. Now they are lit by the light of the Amnesty candle; the candle in barbed wire. When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: 'Better light a candle than curse the darkness.'

  Peter Benenson

  Light, Darkness, Chinese

  7 Copy quote

• I curse in everyday life, but usually when I stub my toe. The topics I'm discussing, it's not necessary to curse. I found [cursing] is a sign that a joke is not finished or well-written.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Everyday, Toes, Topics

  "He's bringing home the bacon, from clubs to Super Bowl ads". "The Plain Dealer" Newspaper, February 9, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A people's wrath voiced abroad bringeth grave Danger, no less than public curse pronounced.

  Aeschylus

  Wrath, People, Danger

  Aeschylus (2014). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides”, p.16, Everyman's Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As words have an effective power of their own, curses reported against someone might turn against the speaker.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Might, Turns, Speakers

  4 Copy quote

• You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Religious, Father, Blessing

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien (2012). “The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis”, p.26, Princeton University Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• If 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

  Distance, Mean, One Day

  "The Beauty of Wind Farms". www.newscientist.com. April 13, 2005.

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great deal of what passes by the name of patriotism in these days consists of the merest bigotry and narrow-mindedness; exhibiting itself in national prejudice, national conceit, and national hatred. It does not show itself in deeds, but in boastings--in howlings, gesticulations, and shrieking helplessly for help--in flying flags and singing songs--and in perpetual grinding at the hurdy-gurdy of long-dead grievances and long-remedied wrongs. To be infested by such a patriotism as this is perhaps among the greatest curses that can befall any country.

  Samuel Smiles

  Country, Song, Names

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.27

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being.

  Arnold Bennett

  Heart, Blessing, May

  7 Copy quote

• I have this mistress: show business. I get a lot of love and adulation from outside, and [my wife] lets me have that, while she does all the real-life stuff that counts — making sure the kids are going to school and all that. I married a saint — well, a saint who curses.

  Ray Romano

  Real, School, Kids

  4 Copy quote

• Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.

  John L. Lewis

  Children, Race, Israel

  Labor and the Nation, delivered 3 September 1937 in Washington D.C.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think you can be too ashamed of anything as long as you were being yourself. I think why people feel, um, so entitled over me is that they've watched me grow up. But that's a blessing and a curse.

  Miley Cyrus

  Being Yourself, Growing Up, Blessing

  "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman: the Two Sides of Miley Cyrus". Interview with Tavi Gevinson, www.elle.com. April 30, 2014.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most souls labor under a self imposed curse of desiring but never truly giving themselves over to love.

  Michael Xavier

  Self, Giving, Soul

  FaceBook post by Michael Xavier from Dec 28, 2011

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we withhold the tithe we bring upon ourselves a curse.

  Phil Pringle

  Tithe

  30 Copy quote

• When he was very excited, [John Singer] Sargent would rush at his canvas with his brush poised for attack, yelling, 'Demons, demons, demons!' When he was particularly angry or frustrated, he expressed these feelings with 'Damn,' the only curse he allowed himself. He once had the expletive inscribed on a rubber stamp so he could have the satisfaction of pounding it on a piece of paper.

  Deborah Davis

  Yelling, Feelings, Frustrated

  4 Copy quote

• No action, whether foul or fair, Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere A record, written by fingers ghostly, As a blessing or a curse, and mostly In the greater weakness or greater strength Of the acts which follow it.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Blessing, Weakness, Done

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.160

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What shall be said, then, of those who insist upon ignoring the question of slavery as not involved in this deadly feud, and maintain that the only issue is, the support of the government and the preservation of the Union? Surely, they are "fools and blind"; for it is slaveholders alone who have conspired to seize the one, and overturn the other. As long as the enslavement of a single human being is sanctioned in the land, the curse of God will rest upon it.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Land, Issues, Government

  "The War — Its Cause and Cure". teachingamericanhistory.org. May 03, 1861.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is the crown that glorifies; the curse That brands and burdens; it is life and death. It is the great law of the universe; And nothing can exist without its breath.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Love, Law, Life And Death

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.553, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off, Early Rising!

  John Godfrey Saxe

  Cutting, Men, Names

  John Godfrey Saxe (1873). “The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe”, p.133

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Curses are like young chickens, theyalways come home to roost.

  Robert Southey

  Home, Like You, Chickens

  The Curse of Kehama motto (1810). Geoffrey Chaucer wrote something similar in "The Parson's Tale" (ca. 1387): "And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest."

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul this is the miser's curse this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Soul, Balls, Chains

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps love's greatest gift--that it is indeed unconditional--is also its greatest curse.

  Kristin Armstrong

  Love, Unconditional, Greatest Gifts

  4 Copy quote

• I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.

  Leonid Andreyev

  Dream, Hate, Book

  4 Copy quote

• Never say you are too old. You do not say it now, perhaps; but by and by, when the hair grows gray and the eyes grow dim and the young despair comes to curse the old age, you will say, "It is too late for me." Never too late! Never too old! How old are you--thirty, fifty, eighty? What is that in immortality? We are but children.

  Lyman Abbott

  Children, Eye, Hair

  7 Copy quote

• Greatness, with private men Esteem'd a blessing, is to me a curse; And we, whom, for our high births, they conclude The happy freemen, are the only slaves. Happy the golden mean!

  Philip Massinger

  Mean, Blessing, Greatness

  1627 The Great Duke of Florence, act1, sc.1.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England [sic] for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy which our accurst "love of peace" can lower us are unfathomable.

  Enoch Powell

  Betrayal, Weakness, Depth

  "Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell" by Simon Heffer, (p. 47), 1999.

  88 Copy quote

  Show source