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Cain   /keɪn/   Listen
Cain

noun
1.
(Old Testament) Cain and Abel were the first children of Adam and Eve born after the Fall of Man; Cain killed Abel out of jealousy and was exiled by God.



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"Cain" Quotes from Famous Books



... There was a scuffle, and Black Sheep was torn off the body by Harry and some colleagues, and cuffed home tingling but exultant. Aunty Rosa was out; pending her arrival Harry set himself to lecture Black Sheep on the sin of murder—which he described as the offence of Cain. ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... his brother became king, sought alliance with the Holstein count Adolf,[4] the very one who had led the Germans at the fatal battle of Bornhoeved. The result was a war between the brothers that raged seven years, and laid waste the land. Worse was to follow, for Abel was only "Abel in name, but Cain in deed." But happily the old King's eyes were closed then, and he was spared the sight of one brother murdering ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... the Garden of Eden.[1] He derives the name Adam from the Hebrew word for red, because the first man was formed out of red earth.[2] He states that the animals in the Garden of Eden had one language, a piece of Midrash which occurs also in the Book of Jubilees. He relates that Cain, after the murder of his brother, was afraid of falling among wild beasts, agreeing with the Midrash that all the animals assembled to avenge the blood of Abel,[3] but God forbade them to destroy Cain on pain of their own destruction. Seth he describes as the model of ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... can't you? Give 'em a chance to swim for a bar. I'm a cowman myself—I cain't let dumb brutes burn and not ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... felicity; And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain. If any part of either yet remain, If any part of either we expect, This may our judgment in the search direct; God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... said to subsist between the Gauls and the Britons, broke out at last in terrible warfare. War is very frightful under any circumstances. It looks very much like murder; and, even at the best of times, a battle-field reminds us of Cain and Abel. Brother slaughters brother, and the conqueror rejoices and describes his sanguinary work as "a glorious victory." In the war between the English and French settlers in America, a new and atrocious feature was introduced. The Indians were engaged, for pay and powder, ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... witness this morning seemed to take me farther still away from all my old happy life, and to stand like another dreadful obstacle between Grace and me. In the Family Bible lying on the table in my aunt's best parlour was a picture of Cain, which I had often looked at with fear on wet Sunday afternoons. It showed Cain striding along in the midst of a boundless desert, with his sons and their wives striding behind him, and their little children carried slung on poles. There ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... she conducted her to the studio. "Them two angels will never do no wrong, anyhow," was Mrs. Tribb's reflection, as she closed the door and left the pair together. "But I do hope as that black-faced husband won't ever learn. He's as jealous as Cain, and I don't want Master Noel to ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... Tubal Cain was renowned as a great alchemist. He was the patriarch of wisdom, a master of all kinds of brass and iron work. (Genesis IV, 22.) He had the knowledge not only of ordinary chemistry and of the fire required ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... evidence against Catharine Howard; and her contemporaries, who had means of weighing and criticizing that evidence, did not agree in believing her guilty. Mr. Froude, who would, to use a saying of Henry's time, find Abel guilty of murder of Cain, were that necessary to support his royal favorite's hideous cause, not only declares that the unhappy girl was guilty throughout, but lugs God into the tragedy, and makes Him responsible for what was, perhaps, the cruellest and most devilish of all the many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... amount of time and words in trying to prove that the reason why Abel's sacrifice was more excellent than that of Cain, and was accepted by God, was that Abel offered animals, and had an eye to the sacrifice of Christ, while Cain offered only the fruits of the ground, that did not typify or symbolize that sacrifice; a notion for ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... branch. On his right were the guest of the evening, the Premier (Mr. Duncan Gillies), and the Postmaster-General of Queensland (Mr. M'Donald Paterson), and on his left the Mayor of Melbourne (Councillor Cain), the President of the Legislative Council (Sir James MacBain), Mr. Justice Webb, and Mr. Nicholas Fitzgerald, M.L.C. The company included a large number of other prominent citizens, many of them not being members ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... the corn that Cain is to offer for his sacrifice, we hear the plain echo of the English farmer's voice in the corn-market mixing with the scriptural verse: "This standing corn that was eaten ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... Eve, because she was the mother of all living beings. She had two sons, Cain and Abel. Abel was a shepherd, but Cain ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... he say; 'but dat 's 'ca'se she so fat she cain't run. She hain't so mighty old, but she sleep all de time; an' I ain't know is she tough or not—you dest better come on an' find out,' he holler. Den he start off ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... which are figures representing the four seasons: The hall is paved with marble, and adorned with pilasters, the intercolumns exquisite paintings in great variety; and on a pedestal, near the foot of the grand staircase, is a marble figure of Cain killing his brother Abel; the whole structure exceeding magnificent, rich, and beautiful, but especially in the ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... Now thar hain't nuthin' on arth fer Mr. Brewster to give thanks fer but jes' toast and jam. Ah cain't bile another pot of coffee on Sunday!" Sary stood contemplating the disaster until Mrs. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... have been struck before By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt If more of horror or disgrace they bore; But this foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... and if it cannot be said that his new life had changed him, at least it had brought out faults for which there had hitherto been no occasion, and qualities latent before. Do we know ourselves, or what good or evil circumstance may bring from us? Did Cain know, as he and his younger brother played round their mother's knee, that the little hand which caressed Abel should one day grow larger, and seize a brand to slay him? Thrice fortunate he, to whom circumstance is made easy: whom fate visits with gentle trial, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... it is difficult to believe that the world is actually peopled. It seems as if it might be the dark of the day after Cain killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's remainder was huddled in affright away from the awful ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... Negroes kindly, as strangers brought out of affliction. Many other arguments were urged in defence of slavery, among which number was the oft-repeated notion that the Africans' color subjects them to, or qualifies them for, slavery, inasmuch as they are descendants of Cain who was marked with this color, because he slew his brother Abel.[181] In short, a large portion of Woolman's time during this second journey was given over to answering such arguments. He travelled in the two months, during which he ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... began with Cain, and isn't likely to go out of fashion in our day. I might find it convenient to give one of my friends—you, for instance—a reminder of his mortality some time. You'll say murder is immoral. Bless you, man, we never ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... and those who had either instigated them secretly or applauded them afterward, were included in a proscription list, drawn by retributive justice on the model of Sylla's. Such of them as were in Italy were immediately killed. Those in the provinces, as if with the curse of Cain upon their heads, came one by one to miserable ends. Brutus and Cassius fought hard and fell at Philippi. In three years the tyrannicides of the ides of March, with their aiders and abettors, were all dead, some killed in battle, some in prison, some dying by their own hand—slain ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... be arrayed in the costume of a contemporary burgomaster, and an almost contemporary French king. In one memorable instance, we are told, so realistic was the scene that Isaac was about to be despatched with a horse-pistol; and in another, representing the birth of Cain, Adam was bringing to the French tester bedside a supply of hot water from the kitchen boiler in a copper saucepan. This kind of anachronism, it is true, is to some degree chargeable on all early work; we see it among the early Italian painters no less frequently ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... Dagoes; sot a gyahd dah: you kin see him settin' out dah now. Well ma'am, 'cordin' to dat gyahd, one er dem Dagoes like ter go inter fits all day yas'day. Dat man hatter go in an' quiet him down ev'y few minute'. Seem 't he boun' sen' a message an' cain't git no one to ca'y it fer him. De gyahd, he cain't go; he willin' sen' de message, but cain't git nobody come nigh enough de place fer to tell 'em what it is. 'Sides, it 'leckshum-day, an' mos' folks hangin' 'roun' de polls. Well ma'am, dis aft'noon, I so'nter'n ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... 2. Cain's day ended with him betimes; for after God had rejected him, he lived to beget many children, and build a city, and to do many other things. But alas! all that while he was a fugitive and a vagabond. Nor carried he any thing with him after the day ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... become unfitted for their struggle with the world, and in order to avoid the pitfalls of mature life they must know where the pitfalls are. It is no longer essential for the individual to pass through the Cain and Abel experience—that has been accomplished by the race as a whole; but it is quite possible to imagine an incipient condition of society in which the distinction of justifiable homicide in self-defence (which is really the justification ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... in honour of the first man who cultivated the earth. In Chinese, he has no name, his title, Shin-nung signifying the "divine husbandman"—a masculine Ceres. Might we not call the place the Temple of Cain? There the Emperor does honour to husbandry by ploughing a few furrows at the vernal equinox. His example no doubt tends to encourage and comfort his ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... make out the much-bepainted Biblical subjects, When I had patience enough: The Temptation, of course, and Expulsion; Cain killing Abel, his Brother—the merest fragment of murder; Noah's Debauch—the trunk of the sea-faring patriarch naked, And the garment, borne backward to cover it, fearfully tattered; Abraham offering Isaac—no visible Isaac, and only Abraham's lifted ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither fought now knew, Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... before thee! To tell the guilty tale were vain— It is enough—the curse is o'er me— And I am but a wandering Cain. What boots it that the world bestows, For deeds of death its honors dear? The blood that from the duel flows, Will cry to heaven, and heaven will hear! Thou shalt not kill!' 'Twas deeply traced In living stone, and thunder-sealed; It cannot be by man effaced, Or fashion's impious act repealed. ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... pattern of our most aesthetic gas lamps, which, of course, are in the style of the most artistic (late eighteenth century) oil lamps, which were in imitation of the most classic Roman lamps, which followed the Persian, and so on back to the time of Tubal Cain, the great arch-artificer in metals, who most likely copied in metal some lamps he had seen in shells or flints. Both rooms were heated by means of the good old blazing coal fire so dear to a Briton's heart; and they were ventilated with all due regard to the latest state of knowledge ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... Wali at defiance. At length some of the loyal inhabitants of Toledo, who knew all its secret and subterraneous passages, some of which, if chroniclers may be believed, have existed since the days of Hercules, if not of Tubal Cain, introduced Temam and a chosen band of his warriors into the very center of the city, where they suddenly appeared as if by magic. A panic seized upon the insurgents. Some sought safety in submission, some in concealment, some in flight. Casim, one of the sons of Yusuf, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... gazed upon this man with a feeling akin to horror, no ways abated when informed that he had voluntarily submitted to this embellishment of his countenance. What an impress! Far worse than Cain's—his was perhaps a wrinkle, or a freckle, which some of our modern cosmetics might have effaced; but the blue shark was a mark indelible, which all the waters of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, could never wash out. He was an Englishman, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... to a standstill. No voice answered him out of that illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. But as he stood there, doubtful as Cain on the outskirts of the unknown, he caught the sound of a footfall on the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... the first part. A prelude by the orchestra, and the curtain rises on Abel, dressed in sheep skin, by his altar, from which smoke ascends, he returning thanks. Enter Cain in leopard skin, much disturbed and angry. They discourse, Abel all sweetness, Cain bitter and cross. An angel in blue mantle, like one of Raphael's in the "Loggia," appears at the side and comforts Abel. Then Eve ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... any more; Adam and Eve did n't have only two children in my Sunday-School lesson, Cain and Abel," ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... "You cain't hit thet bawl," sang out one of the noisiest. A few more whirling, desperate lunges on the part of Nels, all as futile as if the ball had been thin air, finally brought to the dogged cowboy a realization ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... Colour, that it was done by any that had the Least drop of blood Either of Liberty or Christianity in them? No, Im Confident Your Hon'r cant think so, No not Even of their Gov'r under whose vile Commission this was Suffered to be done and went unpunisht Headed by this Francisco that Cursed Seed of Cain, Curst from the foundation of the world, who has the Impudence to Come into Court and plead that he is free. Slavery is too Good for such a Savage, nay all the Cruelty invented by man will never make amends for so ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... that some of these ebullitions have bordered closely on what we may be forgiven for describing as indecorum. But the motive was undoubtedly a generous instinct of self-assertion. Ever since the days of CAIN, the first great self-expressionist, there have always been richly-organised natures to whom even fratricide is preferable to the dull ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various

... and cannon dragged Have trenched their scar; the plain Tramped like the cindery beach of the damned— A site for the city of Cain. And stumps of forests for dreary leagues Like a massacre show. The armies have lain By fires where gums and balms did burn, And the ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... become useful as a means of proving theories. It lacks vitality, and that is sad; but, worst of all, it strives unceasingly to perpetuate itself in the schools. Real teaching power receives looks askance in some of these colleges as if it bore the mark of Cain in not being up to standard on the academic side. And yet these colleges are teaching the teachers of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... place, to be sure—they have been taking place, even among the best people, since the days of Cain and Abel; but all difficulties at Black Hat which did not succumb to force of jaw were quietly locked in the bosoms of the disputants until ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... Giotto has symbolized the principal epochs of human civilization; the traditions of Greece near those of Judea; Adam, Tubal-Cain, and Noah, Daedalus, Hercules, and Antaeus, the invention of plowing, the mastery of the horse, and the discovery of the arts and the sciences; laic and philosophic sentiment live freely in him side ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... woman commits one sexual sin she puts hope behind her, her feet take hold on Hell, she sinks lower and lower until she becomes the shameless associate of bummers and bawds. She is made to feel that she has murdered her womanhood, that the red cross of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... gain for the doer; only loss, the black eternal loss of everything in heaven above, on the earth beneath, or in the waters that are under the earth, for hell itself seemed to spew me out. At least so I thought as I fled away, the mark of Cain upon my brow; the horror was so strong upon me that I could not kill myself, I feared to join the dead. I went to and fro on the earth, and walked up and down in it; I fled to the uttermost parts of the sea, and yet came back again, moved by a strange impulse to be near the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... an exceptional case. It is not too much to say, that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the present century might have been materially changed; that the genius which poured itself forth in "Don Juan" and "Cain" might have flowed in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedom which sent him to perish at six and thirty at Missolonghi might have inspired a long career at home; and that we might at this moment have been appealing to the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the conscience, and they obey it. It is true that many find no trouble within, and some, upon terrible apprehensions of sin and wrath, find ease for the time in some other thing, as a diversion to some other object, and turning aside with Cain to build cities, to worldly pleasures, or employments, or company, that the noise of them may put the clamours of their conscience to silence. Some parleys and cessations men have, some treaties of this kind for peace with God; but alas! the most part make no entire and full peace. They ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... do at the wicked, as if he kept his right from him, for he makes his clownery a sect and damns all that are not of his Church. He manures the earth like a dunghill, but lets himself lie fallow, for no improvement will do good upon him. Cain was the first of his family, and he does his endeavour not to degenerate from the original churlishness of his ancestor. He that was fetched from the plough to be made dictator had not half his pride and insolence, nor Caligula's horse that was made ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... an insurrection of the slaves. The most cruel laws had been passed to hold them firmly in bondage. The city then contained ten thousand inhabitants, two thousand of whom were slaves. If three of these, "black seed of Cain," were found together, they were liable to be punished by forty lashes on the bare back. The same punishment was inflicted upon a slave found walking with a club, outside of his master's grounds without a permit. Two justices could inflict any ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... have fought against it. It cost me ten years' exclusion from office and honor at that period of life when honors are sweetest. No matter; I learned early to do right and to wait. Sir, it is but the development of the spirit of intermeddling, whose children are strife and murder. Cain troubled himself about the sacrifices of Abel, and slew his brother. Most of the wars, contentions, litigation, and bloodshed, from the beginning of time, have been its fruits. The spirit of non-intervention is the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... most terrific cause, immagination added a tenfold weight of woe. I believed myself to be polluted by the unnatural love I had inspired, and that I was a creature cursed and set apart by nature. I thought that like another Cain, I had a mark set on my forehead to shew mankind that there was a barrier between me and they [sic].[72] Woodville had told me that there was in my countenance an expression as if I belonged to ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... to see the play of the Fall of Man (Der Suendenfall). The subject is treated after the manner of Hans Sachs, but with this difference, that the simple-minded old Nuremberger saw nothing incongruous in making Cain and Abel say their catechism, and Cain go away from the examination to fight with the low boys in the street; whereas the author of Der Suendenfall is advisedly irreverent. Another proof, if one were wanted, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... fire-eating captain had killed his brother. The verdict however of the jury who sat to decide the case was, that Dr Jasper Deane had died by the visitation of God. Still Captain Deane was conscious of the angry feelings which had excited his bosom at the moment, and he felt that the mark of Cain was upon his forehead. He could no longer remain at home, and though those who loved him best knew of his innocence, and did their utmost to console him, he determined to leave the country. He accordingly wrote to Captain Bertrand, accepting his offer of a naval command under the Czar of ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... they also were under command and the names of their captains were, Captain Cain, Captain Nimrod, Captain Ishmael, Captain Esau, Captain Saul, Captain Absalom, Captain ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... sat his father, veteran now with the experience that runs back to the time when the first father and mother found the first first-born of the world with hands reddened in the blood of the earliest sacrifice on the altar of Cain. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... murmured he, "we have both lost our honor. And with this Cain's mark upon our foreheads we will wander wearily through the world." [Footnote: Count Weingarten escaped from all his troubles happily. He married his sweetheart, the daughter of the castle-warder, and went to Altmark, where, under the name of Veis, he lived ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... everything save the reception of the breath of eternal life; his eyes are waiting for the Divine spark that will leap into them when God's finger shall touch his own. He creates Eve. In Paradise they sin, and are driven out by angels with flaming swords. Then, a sad sequence to the parents' weakness, Cain murders his brother Abel. The flood comes and destroys all their descendants save Noah. He who has withstood evil is saved with his family in the ark, and becomes the father of a ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... nothin', 'cause I feelin' kind o'weak jes' then—an' so I made up ma min' I wasn' goin' to stay with her. Dis mawnin' she gone out washin', an' I jes' move right out. Hit's no use tryin' to live with a 'ooman who cain't ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... it is said in the same Epistle: "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." When the scholastics come upon the parallel passage in Genesis 4:4 they get no further than the words: "And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering." "Aha!" they cry. "See, God has respect to offerings. Works do justify." With mud in their eyes they cannot see that the text ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... a Lawyer killing a viper, On a dung-hill beside his stable; Ha! quoth he, thou put'st me in mind Of the story of Cain and Abel. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... never to make anything ugly. The Greeks never made anything ugly, and I 'm a Hellenist; I 'm not a Hebraist! I have been thinking lately of making a Cain, but I should never dream of making him ugly. He should be a very handsome fellow, and he should lift up the murderous club with the beautiful movement of the fighters in the Greek friezes who are chopping at ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... has Satan beset me to such an extent that I no longer know where I may find rest, or even so much as live. I am driven hither and yon, a fugitive and a vagabond, even as the accursed Cain (Gen. iv, 14). I have already said that "without were fightings, within were fears" (II Cor. vii, 5), and these torture me ceaselessly, the fears being indeed without as well as within, and the fightings wheresoever there are fears. Nay, the persecution carried on by my sons rages against ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... dere's a pow'ful monstrous tree trunk right across de road at a place whar yo' cain't see it till yo' gits right on top ob it. Ef yo' done hit dat ar tree on yo' lickity-split machine, yo' suah would land in kingdom come. ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... step by step to look closely at the ruins of mortality; to slight the great names of kings and follow heroes to the dust. As he sees the skull tossed out of the grave, the king is already dead to him. "How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder. This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?" He is not satisfied till he takes the skull in his hand, and is sarcastic on beauty and festive wit, and the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... with thoughts devout, Such as I best can frame, give thanks to Him, Who hath remov'd me from the mortal world. But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots Upon this body, which below on earth Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?" ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... collision with outward things, as breaking on some rock of revolt and misery in the depths of their own nature; Manfred, self-consumed, fighting blindly and passionately with I know not what, having nothing of the consistent development and intelligible motive of Faust,—Manfred, Lara, Cain,[268] what are they but Titanic? Where in European poetry are we to find this Celtic passion of revolt so warm-breathing, puissant, and sincere; except perhaps in the creation of a yet greater poet than Byron, but an English poet, too, like ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... cries out for vengeance, The blow that sent me here Was aimed in Hell. My dying scream Has reached Jehovah's ear. Not all the seven oceans Shall wash away that stain; Upon a brow that wears a crown I am the brand of Cain." ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... broke, and she didn't have no folks on earth, and she'd lost all her money—her folks used to be rich, I reckon, like enough. That's the only reason she answered that fool ad about me being in the market, so to speak, fer a wife. That's how she come out. She must of been locoed. You cain't blame her. She was all alone in the whole world, but just one girl that knowed her. We got a letter from that girl—I got it here in my pocket. We opened it and read it, Wid and me did, yesterday. Her name's Annie Squires. But she's broke too, I reckon. Now what are ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... few moments all was silent as the grave, and I felt as if the air had become too thick for breathing, while I looked up like another Cain. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... in the cabin, and the captain went in to her, while I remained outside with all the feelings of Cain upon my brow. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... for necessary food chiefly on an uncooked vegetable diet, nevertheless it is certain that very early in the history of the world people discovered that cooked meat (the venison that our souls love) was a thing not altogether to be despised. Certainly by the time of Tubal Cain, an early worker in metals, not only the methods of producing fire, but also the uses to which fire could be applied, must have been well understood. Imagine the astonishment of our ancestors when they first saw fire! Possibly, the first sight ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy

... nightshade, wood-betony, and centaury; the red and white-striped convolvulus also throws its flowers under your feet; corn fields glow with whole armies of scarlet poppies, cockle, and the rich azure plumes of viper's-bugloss; even thistles, the curse of Cain, diffuse a glow of beauty over wastes and barren places. Some species, particularly the musk thistles, are really noble plants, wearing their formidable arms, their silken vest, and their gorgeous crimson tufts of fragrant flowers issuing from a coronal of interwoven down ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... narrative of the Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any part of the law intended for the government of man in his social or political state. Eve was not yet created; the expulsion had not yet taken place; Cain was unborn; and no allusion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of God to which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this argument deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that God's not expressly giving to Adam "any right over his ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... a lewder tribe? Teague has been here, and, to this learned pit, With Irish action slander'd English wit: You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear, As merited a second massacre: 30 Such as, like Cain, were branded with disgrace, And had their country stamp'd upon their face. When strollers durst presume to pick your purse, We humbly thought our broken troop not worse. How ill soe'er our action may deserve, Oxford's a place ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... thar is in these yere parts, so the rebs thinks; but 'twixt you and me, boy, I'm the tallest kind of a Union—got a piece of the old flag sewed inside of my boots, and every night before sleepin' I prays Lord gin Abe the victory,' and raise Cain generally in t'other camp, and forgive Jack Jennin's for tellin' so many lies, and makin' b'leeve he's one thing, when you know and he knows he's t'other. If I've spared one Union chap, I'll bet I have a hundred, me ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... the Chinaman's falsetto modulations, as he heaps reproaches and cuss-words on his enemy's queue-adorned head. A big boat's crew of naked Chinamen cursing and gesticulating excitedly, advancing and retreating, chasing one another about with billets of wood, knocking things over, and raising Cain generally, in the ghostly glimmer of fantastic paper lanterns, is a spectacle both weird ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... we see (as the Scriptures have infinite mysteries, not violating at all the truth of this story or letter) an image of the two estates, the contemplative state and the active state, figured in the two persons of Abel and Cain, and in the two simplest and most primitive trades of life; that of the shepherd (who, by reason of his leisure, rest in a place, and lying in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative life), and that of the husbandman, where ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... worshipers. To the end of his life, neither society nor the critics ever forgave him, and did not even do justice to his genius. His espousal of the popular cause in Europe embittered the conservative element, and the freedom of speculation in such masterly works as 'Cain' brought upon him the anathemas of orthodox England. Henceforth in England his poetry was judged by his liberal and unorthodox opinions. This vituperation rose to its height when Byron dared to satirize George III., and to expose mercilessly in 'Don Juan' the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... gave rise to the story of the Titans; while, perhaps, the building of the tower of Babel may have laid the foundation of that of the attempt by the giants to reach heaven. Perhaps, too, the descendants of Cain, who are probably the persons mentioned in Scripture as the children 'of men' and 'giants,' were the race depicted under the form of the Giants, and the generation that sprung from their blood. See Genesis, ch. vi. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... let him understand that, besides the pleasure of paying him a visit, I came to be instructed by so great a master in the mystery of making of iron, wherein he had led the way, and was the Tubal Cain of Virginia. He corrected me a little there, by assuring me he was not only the first in this country, but the first in North America who had erected a regular furnace. That they ran altogether upon bloomeries in New England and Pennsylvania till his example had made them attempt ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... the world, back to Docks again, Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain: Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away— We that took the Bolivar ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... the Jews were considered either as the distant progeny of Adam or Eve, resulting from an improper intercourse with supernatural beings, or of Cain. As the doctrine, however, was extremely revolting to some few of the early Christians, they maintained that demons were the souls of departed human beings, who were still permitted to interfere in the affairs of the Earth, either to assist ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... Scotlan's come till a pretty pass, whan they shot men wi' guns, as gien they war wull craturs to be peelt an' aiten. Care what set him! He may weel be a keeper o' ghem, for he's as ill a keeper o' 's brither as auld Cain himsel'. But," he concluded, tying the last knot hard, "we'll e'en dee what we can to ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... will go to hell—tidings of great joy. When I confront them they—say I'm taking away their consolation. The old bible does not mention hell or heaven. Now God should have notified Adam and Cain of hell, but He didn't. When He came to drown all those people He didn't tell a single one that He would drown him. He talked all about water—nothing about fire. When He came down on Mount Sinai, and told Moses how to cut out clothes ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... it wuz wrong—she knew it, but she did it. Jest as Cain did, and jest as David did, when he killed Ury, and Joseph's brother and Pharo, and you and I, and the relations on ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... property that are to be vindicated by it. I lay it down that in any free community, if any particular class of that community are excluded from this right they can not maintain their dignity; it is a brand of Cain upon their foreheads that will sink them into contempt, even in their own estimation. My judgment is that if this right was accorded to females, you would find that they would be elevated in their minds and in their intellects. The best discipline you can offer them would be to permit and to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and is therefore only a dingy yellowish green. Such plants, however, as the broom-rape, Pine Sap, beech-drops, the Indian Pipe, and the dodder—which marks the lowest stage of degradation of them all—appear among their race branded with the mark of crime as surely as was Cain. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... my mere presence in Whitehall would imperil the secret; for, once on my native heath, I should be recognized—possibly haled to judgement; at the best should escape in a cloud of rumour—'last heard of at Norderney'; 'only this morning was raising Cain at the Admiralty about a mythical lieutenant.' No! Back to Friesland, was the word. One night's rest—I must have that—between sheets, on a feather bed; one long, luxurious night, and then back refreshed to Friesland, to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... holy Church, was miserably drawn aside, and afforded a frightful spectacle to beholders; his tongue was speechless and his head shook, showing painfully plainly that the curse which God had thundered forth against Cain was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... speak of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and up to the time Cain went to the land of Nod there is no record of any other people in ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At a little distance the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his contract. Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe; and a shelter had ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... another, deviated. Thus, in the life and achievements of Bacchus or Dionysus, we find the travestied counterpart of the career of Moses, and in the name of Vulcan, the blacksmith god, we evidently see an etymological corruption of the appellation of Tubal Cain, the first artificer in metals. For Vul-can is but a modified form ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window of the room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the house), he would clean up his musket, and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one of the very many descendants of Cain proper to this continent, who seem destined from their birth to serve as pioneers in the great human army: who gladly go on from year to year extending its outposts, and leaving home after home behind them; and die at last, utterly ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... Hrothgar, who, on investigating, discovered gigantic footsteps leading straight from the hall to the sluggish waters of a mountain tarn, above which a phosphorescent light always hovered. These footsteps were those of Grendel, a descendant of Cain, who dwelt in the marsh, and who had evidently slain and devoured ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... no abiding-place; by his motion he gathers heat, thence his choleric nature. He seems to be very devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes in humility goes barefoot, thereon making necessity a virtue. His house is as ancient as Tubal Cain's, and so is a renegade by antiquity: yet he proves himself a gallant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all his substance about him. From his art was music first ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... 'ez fell 'ead over ears in love with me." And sure enough when I goes back to the studero the werry nex' time, my young swell 'e sez to me, "It's your own pootty face as I wants for my moral. I dessay your darter's a stunner—I ain't seen her yit—but she cain't be nothin' to you." And I sez to 'im, "In course she ain't, for she takes arter her father's family, pore gal, and werry sorry she is ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... in our "common humanity," and he traces it from "the grand old gardener" (Tennyson). "We are all descended from Adam," he says, "and related to one another." Now this is not true, even according to the Bible; for when Cain fled into the land of Nod he took a wife there, which clearly implies the existence of other people than the descendants of Adam. But this is not the worst. Fancy a man at this time of day—a burnin' ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... "Good! I am glad that nightmare has lifted its bat's wings from our poor California. Captain O'Cain's raid two years ago made me apprehensive, for he took away some eleven hundred of our otter skins and his hunters were Aleutians—subjects of the Tsar. A negro that deserted gave the information that they were furnished the Bostonian by the chief manager of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... a five and came Of a coifed sisterhood. (O Deutschland, double a desperate name! O world wide of its good! But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town, Christ's lily and beast of the waste wood: From life's dawn it is drawn down, Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... cunning of the fox, the brutality of Cain, using modern science and invention! Feint and draw your enemy into a cul-de-sac; screen your flank attacks; mask your batteries and hold their fire till the infantry charge is ripe for decimation! Oh, I have been brought ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... CAIN'S temptations were, And how attractive it must be to slay. O Lord, the General! This is hard to bear. I think I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various

... God, O thou who didst receive young Abel's sacrifices, thou who didst curse Cain, avenge, O Lord, this innocent penguin sacrificed upon his own field and make the murderer feel the weight of thy arm. Is there a more odious crime, is there a graver offence against thy justice, O Lord, than ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... Imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path Cain took—the six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes—each step a dark disk on the white till the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... in, I thought I was either dreamin' or had got to Bedlam. The seven youngest children was raisin' particular Cain, an' the oldest, a pretty little girl of thirteen, was doin' her best to quiet 'em. There was six others besides what had been accounted for, but I soon found that they belonged to a neighbour, an' was just visitin' to relieve ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... wants to keep him, and his Colonel will raise all the different kinds of Cain there are!" suggested the man who had begun ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... must know himself, and what a wretch he is, so he must know the world, and what an empty thing it is. Cain did see himself, but saw not the emptiness of this world; and therefore instead of going to God by Christ, he went to the world, and there did take up to his dying day. (Gen 4:16) The world is a great snare to the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... stretched out in endless succession, with gallery above gallery, while the roof was blazing with gems like stars whose rays alone illumined the whole building, which was thronged with strange, gigantic figures—like the wild possessors of a lost globe, such as Lord Byron has described in "Cain" as beheld by the fratricide, when, guided by Lucifer, he wandered among the shadowy existences of those worlds which had been destroyed to make way for our pigmy earth. I will not attempt further to describe the magnificent vision which a little pill of "brown gum" had conjured up from the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... to the eras of Tubal Cain and Vulcan, it was to be expected the Khalifa would also have his modern smithy. He made his own gunpowder, shells, and bullets, and the metallic cases for his troops' Remington rifles. The country was laid under contribution to supply copper for that purpose, and he essayed the filling of ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... of Marquis d'Espard, whom he wished to see interdicted, in order that he might be made curator. His face was thin as a knife-blade, and he was frigid and severe. Judge Popinot said he reminded him somewhat of Cain. He was one of the deepest personages to be found in the Marquise d'Espard's drawing-room, and was the political half of that woman. [The Commission in Lunacy. Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. The Secrets ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... another merely because he found his continued existence personally inconvenient. That was what Burr had done; and morally it was undoubtedly murder. Throughout the whole East Burr became a man marked with the brand of Cain. He soon perceived it, but his audacity would not accept defeat. He turned to the West, and initiated a daring conspiracy which, as he hoped, would make him, if not President of the United States, at least ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... the other said simply, "and my shack is over there on the edge of camp. I don't know who you are, but you've thrust the soul from a living man's body,—there's the blood red on your sleeve,—and, like a second Cain, the hand of all mankind is against you, and there is no place you may lay your head. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawk's Last Stand," and ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... all," replied Peter: "I cain't warm my heart to the license. I'll back you in anything but that. The gauger won't come next or near us: he has thried it often, an' never made anything of it. Dang me, but I'd like to have a bit o' fun with the gauger to see if my hand's ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... not made you keep your temper, and where would you have been now?—in prison at Ste. Pelagie for debt, and not established in London in a handsome house, with every comfort about you—you were in such a fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you, and what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we should be friends with your brother's family than enemies, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and the work of the first five days. The Card-makers exhibited the Creation of Adam of the clay of the earth, and the making of Eve of Adam's rib, thus inspiring them with the breath of life. The Fall, the story of Cain and Abel, of Noah and the Flood, of Moses, the Annunciation and all Gospel history, ending with the Coronation of the Virgin ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... was sent back to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and I (small Cain that I was, except that I had never done harm to any one) was handed over as a lodger to a reduced old lady, long known to our family, in Little College Street, Camden-town, who took children in to board, and had once done so at ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... potentates, he was always sure to keep in sufficient prominence the merits of the Pilgrim fathers, and more especially of their descendants. I have no doubt he did. I have no doubt that to those crowned heads, with numerous recalcitrant subjects constantly raising Cain in their dominions, the recital of how the Pilgrims went voluntarily to a distant country to live, where their scalps were in danger, must have ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... dead, and that her offering, like Cain's, had proved unacceptable on high. She drew back in horror, her hands dabbing aimlessly from her own face to the sides of the pew. It was another woman, a comfortable creature who had remained very unaffected throughout the service, who ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... never returned to you. He was guilty of murdering one of the familiars of our most holy Inquisition. Had he ever caught the pirate he could not have returned to Spain, but must have been a wanderer on the face of the earth, with the mark of Cain on his brow." ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... CAIN [to Adam] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I be if I had stuck to the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... I was walking along the Strand in London, when, looking up, I saw a man and woman approaching. It was Arnold with his wife. His face was thin and wasted, a countenance writ over with gloom and disappointment. His masculine vigour was gone. Cain could have borne no plainer marks of vain remorse. He looked straight before him. As I crossed the way, with no desire to meet him, I saw the woman look up at him, a strange, melancholy sweetness in the pale, worn face of ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... the hall; swept through it as if it were not there, obliterating time and space. It was as though the Heavenly Host had descended upon the earth, sweet, wonderful, and yet terrible, with a sweep of pinions, deep-drawn breath—Tubal Cain and his kind, deified and yet human in their immense masculinity ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... flashing from his forehead, set fire to his house, whilst the thorn-crowned countenance seemed to float before him, and he knew that this was his punishment. Such was his confession at the time to the priest who laid the penance of the Church upon him. So he went out into the world like another Cain, and God in His own time was merciful to him. Still, the wounded effigy of the Saviour and the blasted larch tree remain as witnesses on earth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... two hours of the assumation? Is that the manner to handle men either culpable or suspected? So is the journeyer slain by the robber; so is the hen of the fox; so is the hind of the lion; so Abel of Cain; so the innocent of the wicked; so Abner of Joab. But grant they were guilty—they dreamt treason that night in their sleep; what did the innocent men, women, and children at Lyons? What did the sucking children and their mothers ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... "So were Cain and Abel, if I am not mistaken," observed the Cardinal. Paolo looked about the room uneasily. "I only mean to say," continued the prelate, "that men may be brothers and yet not love ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford



Words linked to "Cain" :   man, Old Testament, adult male



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