"Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word, O Women, Friend, makes that sharp terror start Out at thy lips? What ominous cry half-heard Hath leapt upon ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... political parties. No one can pretend, for instance, that there is any body of theoretic opinion so compact and so well thought out as Benthamism was in its own day and generation. Again, in practice, there are ominous signs that Parliament is likely to break up into groups; and the substitution of groups for parties is certain, if continental experience is to count for anything, to create new obstacles in the way of firm and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... weeded till they seemed unstinted praise. Thus: "It was not the fault of the management that the new play was so far from being a triumphant success," was cut down to one modest sentence, "A triumphant success." "A few enthusiastic cheers from personal friends alone broke the ominous silence when the curtain ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the move! They were spreading from their central citadels in ominous, expanding circles—circles that engulfed villages, towns and cities in a swift, relentless ring of annihilation that ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... doctor had spoken began to appear with ominous regularity in fatal succession. At first he noticed only a constant high fever that seemed to grow worse with severe chills at the end of the afternoon. Then he observed sweats that were terrifying in their frequency—sweats at night that left the print of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... across the road, and Nick did not catch sight of it until too late to check the flying mare. The carriage seemed to bound fully a foot into the air, and an ominous wrench told the driver that it had ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... but showing no lanterns, they made to windward and dropped anchor, unless their craft were stanch and their pilot's brains unvexed with liquor. On summer nights, when falls that curious silence which is ominous of tempest, the storm ship is not only seen spinning across the mirror surface of the river, but the voices of the crew are heard as they chant at the braces and halyards in words devoid of meaning ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... had an ominous sense of impending peril; but she was too angry to avoid even the risks she saw. To her surprise Raymond put his arm about her with a smile. "There are many reasons why I have to think about money. One is that YOU don't; and another is that I must ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... succeeding the Conference announcement brought very little in the way of further developments. So still was the insurance stage, indeed, that Mr. Gunterson began to think that there would be no trouble, after all, and Smith to speculate on the ominous stillness and on what new moves would flash from behind ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... prevent them from hearing the first warning of Peggy's approach. The roaring of the logs in the stove, and the monotonous clicking of the buttons and bullets one against the other as Eyelids shook them, and again as he emptied them upon the floor, like the ominous tapping of muffled hammers at work about a coffin, were the only sounds, and these, at last, by reason of their regularity, began to grow nerve-racking. Between the emptying of the moccasin, and the gathering up and re-shaking of the counters, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... with the hens, who are awake all night and uneasy when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kukin was detained in Moscow, and wrote that he would be back at Easter, adding some instructions about the Tivoli. But on the Sunday before Easter, late in the evening, came a sudden ominous knock at the gate; some one was hammering on the gate as though on a barrel— boom, boom, boom! The drowsy cook went flopping with her bare feet through the puddles, as she ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... house of gods, and Dardanian city renowned in war! four times in the very gateway did it come to a stand, and four times armour rang in its womb. Yet we urge it on, mindless and infatuate, and plant the ill-ominous thing in our hallowed citadel. Even then Cassandra opens her lips to the coming doom, lips at a god's bidding never believed by the Trojans. We, the wretched people, to whom that day was our last, hang the shrines of the gods with festal boughs throughout the city. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... chicken feed and wot felt like about four one-bone bills." The highwayman's accent was both ominous and contemptuous. "Say, wotcher mean drillin' round dis town in some kinder funny riggin' wit'out no plunder on you? I gotta right to belt you one ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... in love: Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried; I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme: for 'school', 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor cannot woo ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... time they halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable, nameless flutter of falling snow—a sensation rather than a sound, a vague, ominous murmur. A command was given in a low tone and when the troop resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of white phantom standing in the snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared. It was the echelons who were ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... shook this relation of confidence and obedience. Peace between France and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of any attack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet Godoy's inquiries after his Portuguese principality with an ominous silence. The next intelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had been offered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing an indemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte (July, 1806.) This contemptuous ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... here but now She dropped her new-yeaned twins on the bare flint, Hope of the flock- an ill, I mind me well, Which many a time, but for my blinded sense, The thunder-stricken oak foretold, oft too From hollow trunk the raven's ominous cry. But who this god ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... you upon whom the duty of regulating my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the eleventh day of the Month of Gathering-in?" demanded the Mandarin in an ominous tone. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... anxious to show off her newly acquired skill with firearms. Starr had told her that lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound; pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... his grating. He was faint with pain. The blistering cylinders were growing cold; the steel floor beneath was awash. More ominous still, as the ship's head sank, came crackings and groanings from the engines below. They would fall through at the last, ripping out the bulkheads and carrying her down ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... knees a week before, had in one hour been spirited from home and family, and vanished like an image from a mirror, leaving not a print behind. It was terrible, indeed; but so was death, the universal law. And even if the talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries? I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... look back to 1874 as the last of the really good years, and consider that the palmy days of British agriculture began to dwindle at about that time. The shadow of the approaching depression had already fallen upon the land before the year 1875 had run its course, and the outlook became ominous as the decade of the 'seventies neared its close. One memorable feature was associated with 1877 in that this was the last year in which the dreaded cattle plague (rinderpest) made its appearance in England. The same year, 1877, was the last also ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... another parting snap, and his nose came down over his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an ominous and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the night with funeral wing The ominous depths o'ershadowing, But she lay a dumb insentient thing— Alone with a heart of stone, With neither tears nor hopes nor fears And the booming swell like a monstrous knell Tolled ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... leave of these valiant Frenchmen and cheery Senegalese and pushed on to the advanced observation post of the Artillery where I met General Stockdale, commanding the 15th Brigade, R.F.A., and not only saw how the land lay but heard some interesting opinions. Also, some ominous comments on what armies spend and what ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Knew he and that man had been confabbin'. She's clean gone," he added. "They've destroyed her. She didn't know me." His face worked, and an ominous fire ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... down to the roadside at this point, and the trees back of the heap of poles moaned and writhed like tortured creatures while great branches lashed over their heads with now and then an ominous crackle, but it was lost in the surge of the winds and the ceaseless crash and roar of the thunder. Jagged forks of lightning played all about them like rapiers of steel, and at last the ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... everywhere, and in some nations a religious obligation, against transacting any important business on that day. For on such a day our thoughts are likely to be of misfortune. For a similar reason, any untoward occurrence in commencing an undertaking has been considered ominous of failure; and often, doubtless, has really contributed to it by putting the persons engaged in the enterprise more or less out of spirits; but the belief has equally prevailed where the disagreeable circumstance was, independently ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the light of this setting sun ominous, but everything about me seemed ominous—the landscape, my father's face, the fret of the babe in my mother's arms that she could not still, the six horses my father drove that had continually to be urged and that were without any ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder! Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earth-work they will swarm! But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken, And a bellowing crash has emptied all the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of anger went up, a dull, savage, guttural sound that died away almost at once into silence, a quiet more ominous than an outcry could have been. Terrified by that strange apparition out yonder upon the waters, the Indians saw themselves deserted by the one person to whom they could look for courage and counsel. Only half understanding, they ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... and beautiful as moors can be, and by glimpses, now and then in the valleys between, of entirely civilized villages, with even a town or two here and there, prick-up spires and roofs; and, even more ominous, in this direction and that, lie patches of ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... An ominous stillness succeeded this question, the men around following Ching Whang's example and sneaking inside the forecastle and otherwise slily disappearing from view. Presently, only Tim Rooney and Matthews remained before the captain besides ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was aroused one cold November morning by a direful conglomeration of sounds;—strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans, a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of earthquakes in the bowels of the earth. Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... point of the far-reaching horizon, signalling to his mates the appearance of a spar against the heavens. Then, with course changed and wheel set, and sped on by conspiring winds, they bore down upon the unfortunate vessel, displaying at the proper moment the ominous and fateful black flag and its ghastly emblem ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... not only in this company but in the world at large. But it is that postulate that I dispute. I hold that the good life must either be the privilege of a few, or not exist at all. The good life in my view, is the life of a gentleman. That word, I know, has been degraded; and there is no more ominous sign of the degradation of the English people. But I use it in its true and noble sense. I mean by a gentleman a man of responsibility; one who because he enjoys privileges recognizes duties; a landed proprietor who is also, and therefore, a soldier and a statesman; a man with a natural capacity ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... us both," she whispers. And Golightly tosses up his head with a little whinny of comprehension, and, bracing up every nerve, prepares for a rush through that ominous path blocked as it is ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... feelings, but whether as an omen for good or ill, she would not tell. On all matters connected with her religions notions she was shy and reserved, though occasionally she unconsciously revealed them. Thus the warnings of death or misfortunes were revealed to her by certain ominous sounds in the woods, the appearance of strange birds or animals, or the meanings of others. The screeching of the owl, the bleating of the doe, or barking of the fox, were evil auguries, while the flight of the eagle and the croaking of the raven were omens ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... pay him no rent, and the cattle of his neighbours devoured his meadows. He was troubled with rheums and colds. He met a severe fall when he first came to Chertsey, of which he says, half in jest and half in earnest—'What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging.' Robert Hall said of Bishop Watson that he seemed to have wedded political integrity in early life, and to have spent all the rest of his days in quarrelling with his wife. So Cowley wedded his long- sought-for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... distance on an unobstructed route, in the then heavy state of the roads, in less than three hours. Long before that time it would be dark, and no doubt stormy, for the sky, which had lowered all the afternoon, every now and then uttered an ominous growl, and seemed ready to fall down upon us. But turning back was out of the question, so, thanking the "native," I was about to proceed, when he ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... Norton with an ominous sternness. "And in your place. . . How long do you think that you can keep out ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... meantime there was dead silence in the Fane-Smiths' carriage, an ominous silence. There was an unmistakable cloud on Mr. Fane-Smith's face; he had been exceedingly annoyed at what had taken place, and with native perversity, attributed it all to Erica. His wife was miserable. She felt that her intended kindness had proved a complete failure; she was afraid of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... I like not this sudden and general heaviness amongst our godheads; 'tis somewhat ominous. Apollo, command us louder music, and let Mercury and Momus contend to please and revive our senses. [Music Herm. Then, in a free and lofty strain. Our broken tunes we thus repair; Cris. And we answer them again, Running division on the panting air; ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... to rattle by; always an ominous sign, for it meant that battle was imminent. It was a remarkable thing that neither infantry nor artillery took much notice of each other as they met. The guns and carriages would thunder and bump and clatter over the pave, the thickset horses straining at their harness, the drivers ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... brackish water made one of us so ill that he could retain no food. A high fever set in on the evening of August 15, and as we pulled into the station of Bay-doon-sah, he was forced to go to bed at once. The other, with the aid of our small medicine supply, endeavored to ward off the ominous symptoms. In his anxiety, however, to do all that was possible he made a serious blunder. Instead of antipyrin he administered the poison, sulphate of zinc, which we carried to relieve our eyes when inflamed by the alkali dust. This was swallowed before the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... subjects from it; it had reached the stages of Madrid and of London (where one critic had called it "a very beautiful composition"), while French approval had been practically unanimous. Nay, a game had been founded thereon, and—crowning, but perhaps rather ominous honour—somebody had actually published ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... this, for, with the ominous sound, one of the horses broke from its traces, and the other was now dragging the old wagon along by the straps that had withstood the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... the tent and backed noiselessly against the front pole. Indeed, not a sound was created by his entrance, not even the rustling whisper of bare feet on dry grass. It seemed very ominous, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the further side of the hill, overlooking Barrowford and Colne; but Richard knew its position well, and while his gaze was fixed upon the point, he saw a star shoot down from the heavens and apparently alight near the spot. The circumstance alarmed him, for he could not help thinking it ominous of ill to Alizon. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Angie Miller's face, and then the truth dawned upon him. He sank back in his chair so suddenly that the legs gave forth an ominous crack. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... objects that met us on our way. The sullen crocodile basking in the sun, sank noiselessly; a splash would be heard, and a four feet albicore would fling himself madly into the air, striving vainly to elude the ominous black triangle that cut the water like a knife close in his rear. Small chance for the poor fugitive, with the ravenous shark following silent and inexorable. We lay on our oars and watched the result. The hunted fish doubles, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... parliamentary assemblies, which had swept on their course, under various denominations, in rapid and stormy succession, were now followed by one which, like Aaron's rod, was to swallow up the rest. Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in his anticipations from ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... out," was the response, and one of the double-bass players ran down the steps to attend to the order. The men smiled; and some whispered that they were evidently in for a hard morning—all signs were ominous. Again ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... extinguished the holy light of Hymen's torch, and re-lighted it with Lucifer matches in Register offices; and out it soon goes, leaving worse than Egyptian darkness in the dwellings of the poor—the smell of its brimstone indicative of its origin, and ominous of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... something ominous in the knock. It was a short, quick, clear, and decisive knock. It was the knock of a man in authority; of one who felt that although standing on the outside of the door, he had a right to be within. Marguerite and Dumiger both ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurels' mimic'd leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel-wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... window. An instant later the submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... It was an ominous sign when Aunt Polly addressed any one as "sir." "But that was before our time. Peter and I cleaned the place out as best we could, but there are times now, even, while I sit here alone in the dark, when I seem to see ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... scenery under my direction. If I had already been impressed by the significance of the fact that my first journey through the German Rhine district, so famous in legend, should have been made on my way home from Paris, it seemed an even more ominous coincidence that my first sight of Wartburg, which was so rich in historical and mythical associations, should come just at this moment. The view so warmed my heart against wind and weather, Jews ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... moment, his laughter sounded harsh and ominous; but I had done no wrong, and so, in ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... sylvan openings, and imagined recesses of primeval shade and virgin wilderness in their dim perspectives. Had he descended, however, and followed one of these diverging paths, he would have come upon some rude wagon track, or "logslide," leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominous saw-mill, half hidden in the forest it was slowly decimating. The woodland hush might have been broken by the sound of water passing over some unseen dam in the hollow, or the hiss of escaping steam and throb of an invisible engine ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... an ominous pause. Every old student there knew Clifford to be one of the most skillful and dangerous boxers ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... ghastly battle-field, yet to be fought, but foredoomed of old to be bloodier than the one where we had reaped such shame. Of all haunted places, methinks such a destined field should be thickest thronged with ugly phantoms, ominous of mischief ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sinister fog at the wane—at the change of the moon cometh forth Like an ominous ghost in the train of a bitter, black storm of the north! At the head of the gully unknown it hangs like a spirit of bale. And the noise of a shriek and a groan strikes up in the gusts of the gale. In the throat of a feculent pit is the beard of a bloody-red sedge; And a foam like the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... foolish if I ask you to wait here while I go in there"—she pointed to the ominous thicket near ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... denied the immortality of the soul has been the subject of innumerable debates from his own time until now. It is certainly a most ominous fact that his great name has been cited as authority for rejecting the doctrine of a future life ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... they failed to discover any addition to the solitary track they were following. It was curious. It was almost ominous. But its significance was lost in the thought that here at least was shelter for themselves against the real winter ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... a large fire was lighted on the platform of the fortress. My attention being drawn to that point, I perceived, by the now increasing daylight, a wooden scaffolding, on which were erected five black and ominous looking gibbets. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of ominous calm, with an hour of bright sun, gradually softening into a white shadow, as a fleecy cloud of fairy whiteness rolled over the sun's face, giving a light on the earth like the garish light in a tent at high ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... him as he hurried by. And, now that he thought of it, the first vice-president had smiled pleasantly and had said something that sounded like "good morning, Mr. Bingle," although it certainly couldn't have been that. It was regarded as especially ominous when an official of the bank said good-morning to a clerk or a bookkeeper. It meant, according to tradition, that his days were numbered. It was a sort of preliminary sentence. Later on, there would come a summons ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... ominous shade fell on the tawny Libyan hills, and covered Memphis, the Nile, and the palace gardens with lightning swiftness. Night embraced the earth, and in the heavens appeared a ball as black as coal surrounded ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... had stepped full upon it. He hastened from the spot, and rejoined Oliver in a somewhat shaken state of mind. Common as such an incident was in the woods, where sandy soil warned the hunter to be careful, it seemed ominous that particular morning, and, joined with the discovery of Bushman traces, quite destroyed his sense of ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of which it is easy ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... was awakened, but not until after the last vessel in that ominous procession had ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... sides and stared into the glass, noting the ghastly pallor that had come over his face—the dull, whitish yellow of muddy marble. He could not turn, his legs were quivering. He knew it was conscience—only that. And yet Corrigan's ominous silence continued. And now he caught his breath with a shuddering gasp, for he saw Corrigan's face reflected in the glass, looking over his shoulder—a mirthless smirk on it, the eyes cold, and dancing with a merciless and cunning purpose. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hand there with a rope for the boat coming alongside," sung out the captain in a loud voice, which sounded as ominous of evil to the ears of the superstitious crew. "Bring a lantern here to the gangway," he added. Bowse, with his first mate and Colonel Gauntlett, stood near the gangway, which was lighted up with a lantern to receive the strangers, as a small boat containing in all only ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... rang out the tolling of the mysterious bell. To the anxious watcher, its tones no longer rang full and sweet as upon the previous evening, but sounded slow and threatening, as if freighted with an ominous meaning. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, forebodings of an impending catastrophe were prevalent at the Court of Vienna, and so imbued was Emperor Francis-Joseph with ominous presentiments, that he repeatedly exclaimed in the hearing of his entourage: "Oh, if only this ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... feel as if this were my fault," cried Algitha, on one still, ominous night, after she had resigned her post at the bedside to the nurse, who was to fill it for a couple of hours, after which Hadria took her ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... bone. Marian. Now o'er head sat a raven On a sere bough, a grown, great bird, and hoarse, Who, all the while the deer was breaking up, So croaked and cried for 't, as all the huntsmen, Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous.'" ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Stars and Stripes moving to and fro, and we knew the Federals were making preparations for the mighty contest. We could hear but the rumbling sound of heavy guns, and the distant tread of a marching army, as a faint roar of the coming storm, which was soon to break the ominous silence with the sound of conflict, such as was scarcely ever before heard on this earth. It seemed that the archangel of Death stood and looked on with outstretched wings, while all the earth was silent, when all at once a hundred guns from the Federal line opened upon us, and ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... was no longer to be thought of, the advent of a man like Croft, who had been making her acquaintance all summer, and who had now returned to Virginia, no doubt for the sole purpose of seeing her again was, to say the least, exceedingly ominous. One thing only could correct this deplorable state of affairs. The absurd bar to the union of Junius and Roberta should be removed, and they should be allowed to enter upon the happiness ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... He would scarcely deign to notice the insolent 'Qui va la!' of the sentry, a summons he at least thought superfluous in a town which had known his ancestry for eight or nine generations. At the repetition of the cry, accompanied by something that sounded ominous, in the sharp click of a gun-lock, he replied, haughtily, 'Je ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... hearing no mention of his ship all this while, began first to murmur, and then to leave him: six of them deserted in one night. In other respects events occurred ominous of evil for the termination of the enterprise. To occupy the attention of his companions, and prevent them from brooding on apprehended ills, as well as to guard them against a surprise by any hostile natives, he set them on erecting a fort upon an eminence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... "has engrafted the right of regulation onto the First Amendment by placing in the hands of the legislative branch the right to regulate 'within reasonable length' the right of free speech. This to me is an ominous and alarming trend." Ibid. 285. Justices Black, Reed and Jackson also dissented. Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion is characteristically paradoxical: "An Illinois Act, construed by its Supreme Court to be a 'group libel' statute, has been used to punish criminally the author ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... impression which it had made. This way of linking the two anecdotes, as cause and effect, would also bring a third anecdote under the same nexus. We are told that Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar, dreamed on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances of her dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that account its import was less open to doubt: she dreamed, in fact, that after the roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was stabbed in her bosom. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... tricks," responded Mrs. McKinstry dolefully from within. "On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and in the nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself outer the pork bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up to." Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently made her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her black woollen dress "tidied," and a smile of fatigued but not unkindly welcome and protection on her face. Dusting a chair ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... throb of leaping guns; Crown in thy streets the deed that never dies, And tell their fathers' fame to all thy sons! Behold! behold! on that unchanging sea Where day behind Trafalgar rises pale, How dread the storm to be Drifts up with ominous breath Cloud after towering cloud of billowy sail Full charged with thunder and the ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... high did angry passion run that there might have been repetition of the famous fisticuffs on floor of House that marked progress of first Home Rule Bill. Ominous sign when Royds of Sleaford, ordinarily mildest-mannered of men, rushed between Front Opposition Bench and Table and shook a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... Oriel is safe, but the look on the captain's face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over his shoulder. The bow of St. Ambrose is within two feet of their rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He pulls his left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern of his own boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls on his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... charged those who had seen it not to tell that which had happened to any one, and he considered with himself what to do. And having regard to the words spoken by the Babylonian, who had said at first that when mules should produce young, then the wall would be taken, having regard (I say) to this ominous saying, it seemed to Zopyros that Babylon could be taken: for he thought that both the man had spoken and his mule had produced ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... magnitude of proportions, it was an intellectual nose. It was thin, horny, transparent, and sonorous. Its snuffle was consequential and its sneeze oracular. The very sight of it was impressive; its sound, when blown in school hours, was ominous. But the scholars loved the nose for the warning which it gave: like the rattle of the dreaded snake, which announces its presence, so did the nose indicate to the scholars that they were to be on their guard. The Dominie would attend to this ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage; —the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... drew himself up with a certain arrogance, but his narrow black moustache did not hide the fact that his lips were twitching with excitement. His dark eyes shone like the eyes of a beast, green and ominous. "But we have never spoken. I thought not. Now, Mr. Rivington, will you permit me to come ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... about him, that not even the eyes of the gods could endure; but he moved not. There he lay on the horizon; and when the deities sent Tlotli, their messenger, to him, with orders that he should go on upon his way, his ominous answer was that he would never leave that place till he had destroyed and put an end to them all. Then a great fear fell upon some, while others were moved only to anger; and among the others was one Citli, who immediately ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... him and pondered upon the mystic gloom, he began to believe that at any moment the ominous distance might be aflare, and the rolling crashes of an engagement come to his ears. Staring once at the red eyes across the river, he conceived them to be growing larger, as the orbs of a row of dragons advancing. He turned toward the colonel and saw him lift his gigantic arm ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... An ominous silence lay about us. I felt sure that the scoundrels were crawling up along the ditch, and told her this. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders with his hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily ominous manner, 'the parish authorities down town will have it out of you, if you go on, you may take your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... There was an ominous movement among the bystanders, and those in the rear did some excited talking, while several left the building. Presently the sound of heavy blows was heard in the store-room adjoining the shop. Then a rush of feet ensued, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Blessed relief. I've been looking forward to taking them off for the last half-hour—which is ominous at my time of life. But, as I was saying, we listened and heard The Dowd drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g's like a barmaid or a blue-blooded Aide-de-Camp. 'Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond 0' me,' she ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... there came a sudden ominous growl from the interior of the cave. It was the growl of a wild beast and caused the youth to leap back in alarm. Then a slinking body came into view and a full-sized mountain lion ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... the blood,—and borne indeed by few who are not,—and whom he desires to see contract an alliance that will bring him enough of riches to enable him to bear his title with becoming dignity." I glanced at Mademoiselle, whose cheeks were growing an ominous red. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... hear General Howard's guns at intervals, away off to our right front, but an ominous silence continued toward our left, where I was expecting at each moment to hear the sound of battle. That night we reached Renfrew's, and had reports from left to right (from General Schofield, about Morrow's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... all at once, as they stared into each other's eyes, Barnabas leaning forward, strong and compelling, Barrymaine upon his knees clinging weakly to the table, sudden and sharp upon the stillness broke a sound—an ominous sound, the stumble of a foot that ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... stairs. As I entered the sitting-room so silent, so peaceful, so undisturbed, it seemed that my alarm was only a part of a dream till the sobbing of my daughters and my wife's voice at the telephone calling for help, convinced me of the frightful reality. I heard, too, the ominous crackling ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Be thou my magic book, which reading o'er Their counterspells we'll break; or if the King Will not by strong hand fix me in his Throne, But that I must be held Spain's blazing star, Be it an ominous charm ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... answer. So all round the class: all voted for the big sullen-looking blockhead. One or two did not give their votes quite promptly; and I could discern a threatening glance cast at them by the big sullen-looking blockhead, and an ominous clenching of the blockhead's right fist. I went round the class without remark; and the blockhead made sure of the prize. Of course this would not do. The blockhead could not be suffered to get the prize; and it was expedient that he should be made to remember the occasion on which he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... with a cooked up deputyship to the Cortes, that salaried reptile of the Philippine convents, who, with the aid of that tyrant General Weyler, his worthy godfather, the despotic incendiary of the town of Calamba, of ominous memory amongst us, does nothing but vomit rabid foam, insulting us by day and night with calumnies and shrieks, in that paper whose expenses the Procurators ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... even ominous, that in this play, and from the voice of Prospero, issues that magnificent prophecy of the total destruction which should ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... find her own questions, wonderings, reproaches, dying away unuttered in the atmosphere of silentness which always seemed to surround Nathanael Harper. This silentness had from the very beginning of their acquaintance induced in her that faint awe, which is the most ominous yet most delicious feeling that a woman can have towards a man. It seems an instinctive acknowledgment of the much-condemned, much-perverted, yet divine and unalterable law given with the first human marriage—"He shall rule ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a two story structure built of rough hewn logs, was the most comfortable one in the settlement, and occupied a prominent site on the hillside about one hundred yards from the fort. It was constructed of heavy timber and presented rather a forbidding appearance with its square corners, its ominous looking portholes, and strongly barred doors and windows. There were three rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a magazine room for military supplies, and a large room for general use. The several sleeping rooms were on the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... days went on, bright, golden days, cloudless, and full of the zest and snap of the nearing cold, Dorry grew stronger and stronger. So well did he feel that after the first week or so he began to allude to himself as quite recovered, and to show an ominous desire to get back to his work; but this suggestion was promptly scouted by everybody, especially by John, who said she had come for six weeks at least, and six weeks at least she should stay,—and as much longer as she could; and that Dorry as her escort must stay ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... Weeks had started on his ominous mission to Holcroft his wife remarked to her daughter confidentially, "I declare, sis, if we don't get rid of Cynthy soon, I believe Lemuel ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... little while longer alone. Then came a rush and rustle of many feet upon the stairs, many dresses moving, many voices blending in a soft little roar; as ominous as the roar of the sea which one hears in a shell. My four room-mates poured into the room, accompanied by two others; very busy and eager about their affairs that they were discussing. Meanwhile they all began to ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell |
