Wesit†and lookout attheboysintheir happy play†we kneel still with one little cheek wistfully pressed against the pane†and we go and stand before the glass.We see the complexion we were not to spoil, and the white frock† Then the curse begins to act upon us. It finishes its work when we are grown women, who no more look out wistfullyat a more healthy life; we are contented.We fit our sphere as a Chinese woman's foot fits her shoe, exactly, as though God made bothöand yet he knows nothing of either.

-Iron
  Lyndall.The Story of an African Farm, ch.17,'Lyndall'.

This barbarous feeling of nationality†has become the curse of Europe.

-Senghor, Le¤  opold Se¤  dar
  Diary, 20 May.

[This] much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour for lacking skill of a sonnet, and, when you die, your memorydie fromthe earth for want of an epigraph.

-Sidney, Sir Philip
  The Defence of Poetry.

Will there never come a season Which shall rid us of the curse Of a prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse† When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute, beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from kipling And the Haggards Ride no more.

-Stephen,J(ames) K(enneth)
'To R K'.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me', cried The Lady of Shalott.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'The Lady of Shalott' (revised1842), pt.3, l.109^17.

See, the curse of children! In life they keep us frequently in tears, And in the cold grave leave us in pale fears.

-Webster,John
  TheWhite Devil, act1, sc.2.