"Portentous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as she gave me the money. At this instant, a jerk at my elbow came near causing me to drop the silver. It was Jason, who had taken this liberty, and who now led me aside with a earnestness of manner it was not usual for him to exhibit. I saw by the portentous look of the pedagogue's countenance, and his swelling manner, that something extraordinary was on his mind, and waited with some little curiosity to learn what ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... serieux has not led to the formation of any school of writers adopting it and working it out, or to the production of any masterpiece that has held its ground, as has happened in tragedy, comedy, and farce. Beaumarchais, who at last achieved such a dazzling and portentous success by one dramatic masterpiece, began his career as a playwright by following the vein of The Father of the Family; but The Marriage of Figaro, though not without strong traces of Diderotian sentiment in pungent application, yet is in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... his library one afternoon when there came a knock at the door; and being bidden to enter, the portiere was drawn aside and old Hannah appeared, her face wearing an unusually solemn and portentous expression. ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... a meal of homely succulence, in an unfashionable tavern, in a back street, where the wine was sound, the cutlets tender, and the serving-maid rosy. Then I walked along—for a mile, it seemed—through a dreary, gray grand rue, where the sunshine was hot, the odors portentous, and the doorsteps garnished with aged fishwives, retired from business, whose plaited linen coifs looked picturesquely white, and their faces picturesquely brown. I inspected the harbor and its goodly basin—with nothing in it—and certain pink and blue houses, which surround ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... only,—but that one thing is worth a thousand;—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impunity,—if we meet this energy with poor commonplace proceeding, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
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